The Energies of Love

by Donna Eden

Maturation

  Brains change with age and experience, and in many ways for the better. A man’s brain is transformed in a number of important ways as his mate’s first pregnancy progresses. His testosterone levels decrease and his prolactin levels increase. Prolactin stimulates neural connections for paternal behavior while decreasing sex drive. The father’s pheromones also “waft through the air and into the mother’s nose and trigger her to make more prolactin [which] increases the growth of maternal brain circuits.”19 During the pregnancy, men often find themselves becoming obsessed with “nesting” behaviors—painting the baby’s room, putting up shelves, fixing up the house.20 They often gain weight right along with their pregnant wives. During the three weeks prior to the birth, their testosterone levels drop 33 percent and their prolactin levels increase 20 percent.

  While these levels adjust back after the birth, dads who are actively involved in child-rearing keep lower testosterone levels than those who are not. When the infant cries, the same brain areas become activated in the dad as in the mom—areas for worry, threat detection, and gut feelings—and the baby’s smile also activates reward centers in the father’s brain. Then holding the infant releases hormones that dramatically increase the number of connections in the brain for paternal behavior, increasing synchrony, the easy nonverbal understanding between parent and child. Beyond parenting, as men move on to their later years, their focus tends to change from pursuits for their own personal gain to those that benefit their community and the coming generation.

  As women move past menopause, the “surges and plunges of estrogen and progesterone” that are part of the menstrual cycle are replaced by a “constancy of the flow of impulses through her brain circuits. . . . The hair-trigger circuits in the amygdala that rapidly altered her reality” are no longer there.21 She has stopped producing copious amounts of the hormones that had “boosted her communication circuits, emotion circuits, the drive to tend and care, and the urge to avoid conflict at all costs.”22 Nor is she getting the dopamine rushes or oxytocin rewards that had kept her focused on communicating the nuances of her emotions, keeping the peace, or taking care of others. Her brain circuits are less reactive to stress and less emotionally labile. Her interests shift from the needs and desires of those she loves to her own needs and desires.

  Misunderstandings Rooted in the Brain

  As with our Energetic Stress Styles, we tend to interpret our partner’s behavior according to our own equipment, and this is a source of much ill-conceived, injurious judgment. For instance, women change their mind far more than men, and men become frustrated, disoriented, and judgmental about this propensity. Brizendine explains that because a woman’s brain may change the way it functions up to 25 percent over the course of a month, her “neurological reality” will not be as constant as a man’s. His reality “is like a mountain that is worn away imperceptibly over the millennia by glaciers, weather, and the deep tectonic movements of the earth. Hers is more like the weather itself—constantly changing and hard to predict.”23

  Men are often accused of being driven by the “brain below the belt.” It in fact takes a man only a fraction of a second to “classify a woman as sexually hot—or not,” and his genetic programming tends to be “driving him to seek sex and encouraging him to pursue a variety of partners.”24 This traces to his ancestors’ evolutionary advantage for impregnating as many females as possible. While other brain structures mitigate this drive, many women vigilantly scrutinize their partner’s behavior for any sign of attraction to another woman and interpret it as evidence of their own unattractiveness, of his having lost interest, or of his being a philanderer and a scoundrel. Providing a neurologically sophisticated take on the situation to a client who was upset that she caught Ryan, a man she was seriously dating, “checking out a girl with big boobs at the car wash,” Brizendine explained to her:

  The lust center in the male brain automatically directs men to notice and visually take in the details of attractive females. When they see one that lights up their sexual circuit board, their brain instantly produces a quick sexual thought, but then it’s usually over. To Ryan’s mating brain, the buxom woman was like a bright, colorful hummingbird. She flew into his line of vision, caught his attention for a few seconds, and then flew off and out of his mind. For many men, this can happen several times a day. Ryan couldn’t have stopped his eyes from looking at her breasts even if he tried. But he could learn to be more discreet. Because this is an autopilot behavior for the male brain, men don’t think it’s a big deal, and they can’t understand why women find it so threatening.25

  Grasping the enormous differences in the workings of a man’s brain and a woman’s brain can help your relationship immensely. You can feel compassion for a partner you might otherwise feel like strangling. Understanding the inborn and cultural differences between the two of you can replace fierce judgments with empathy and appreciation. This kind of deep understanding can bring a balance to the two of you that can also radiate out to a world in dire need of greater understanding and balance between men and women.

  His Hormones/Her Hormones

  Your mood, your behavior, your energies, and, more than you may realize, the way you respond to your partner, are all profoundly yet invisibly influenced by your hormones. While hormones potently impact the lives of both men and women, they operate in contrasting ways for each. Estrogen, progesterone, and oxytocin build brain circuits that lead to characteristically female activity, while testosterone and vasopressin cause the brain to build circuits associated with male behavior. Beyond the impact of these and other hormones on brain development, their production influences day-to-day behavior. As estrogen floods the brain of a teenage girl, Brizendine explains, interest in communication and romance skyrockets and her “entire biological raison d’être is to become sexually desirable.”26

  Meanwhile, testosterone turns on different genes than estrogen. The genes it activates in a boy “trigger the urge to track and chase moving objects, hit targets, test his own strength, and play at fighting off enemies.”27 With increased concentrations of testosterone bathing the brain of a male adolescent, he grows less communicative and more competitive.

  In his book Venus on Fire, Mars on Ice: Hormonal Balance—The Key to Life, Love, and Energy, John Gray opens by focusing on how stress is, biochemically, a totally different matter for men than for women, and that much of our behavior is in response to the stresses we face every day.28 For instance, in a situation that is even moderately stressful, the emotional part of a woman’s brain has eight times the blood flow of a man’s. A woman’s body copes with stress by utilizing oxytocin; a man’s consumes testosterone. When oxytocin levels go up in women, their stress levels go down. When testosterone levels go up in men, their stress levels go down. Women also produce testosterone and men also produce oxytocin, but with different effects. Testosterone can feel good to a woman—it can be empowering and cause her to feel sexy—but it doesn’t do a thing to lower her stress level. In fact, too much testosterone can increase her stress level. Oxytocin can feel good to a man—causing him to feel more generous and communicative—but it doesn’t do a thing to lower his stress level. Too much oxytocin can, in fact, increase his stress level. Beyond their roles in managing stress, “fully feeling love, passion, and desire is directly linked to an abundance of testosterone in men and oxytocin in women.”29

  To be at his best, a man needs thirty times as much testosterone as a woman, and without it he loses his stamina and tends to become depressed and dejected. For a woman, with the shift in roles from homemaker to homemaker and co-breadwinner, her stress levels are twice those of a man when she is at work, and they become even more elevated as she attempts to care for the kids and manage the home with the limited time that remains. Nurturing activities produce oxytocin, but activities that involve urgency, problem solving, and sacrifice for a noble cause produce testosterone (up to the point that the situation is stressful eno
ugh to produce cortisol, which inhibits the production of testosterone). For most women today, activities on the job as well as at home produce testosterone rather than oxytocin, leaving them deprived, frustrated, and unhappy. To make it worse, finding the time to receive nurturing is often the last thing a woman will do when she is under unrelenting pressure. Gray summarizes the dilemma:

  Forty years ago or more, a woman had the time and the financial support to fill her day with an oxytocin-producing balance of nurturing and woman-to-woman support. Today’s women enjoy the freedom of creating a career for themselves outside the home, but it has cost them the nurturing and support that rebuilds oxytocin and counteracts the testosterone they build up during a workday.30

  Many of the activities our grandparents did routinely supported the biochemistry of love in ways our current lifestyles do not. Our lifestyles, rather, deplete the supplies of oxytocin in women and of testosterone in men, with serious costs to our ability to thrive as well as to bring out the best in our relationships. Other hormones such as estrogen, serotonin, dopamine, and cortisol, as well as blood sugar and blood flow, further confound our biochemical challenges.31

  For instance, a woman’s large supply of estrogen enhances the bonding effects of oxytocin, while a man’s large supply of testosterone tends to inhibit oxytocin’s bonding effects. In fact, many gender stereotypes reflect biochemistry. Women produce oxytocin when talking about a goal or a problem; men produce testosterone when achieving a goal or solving a problem. Women use up oxytocin when they are dealing with stress; men use up testosterone when encountering stress. Women restore the oxytocin they have consumed during a stressful day through quality relationships and pleasurable activities such as shopping or a pedicure or lunch with a girlfriend. Men restore the testosterone they have consumed by retreating within or chilling out watching a sports event on TV.32 By understanding the cause-and-effect relationships involved, we can better bolster the chemistry of both romance and love.

  Energy Techniques That Support Oxytocin and Testosterone Production

  The eight energy techniques presented in chapter 3 (Crossover Shoulder Pull, Four Taps, Cross Crawl, Crown Pull, Stress Release Hold, Wayne Cook Posture, Connecting Heaven and Earth, and Blow-Out/Zip-Up/Hook-Up) can be done in the order listed here as a set that will bring balance to your energy system. Carried out as a daily practice, they will require only about six minutes once you are familiar with them, and they will begin to build positive energy habits into your body. This daily energy routine is the most effective simple procedure we know, not only for optimizing the flow of your energies to promote your health and mental clarity, but also for keeping your hormones in good balance. We recommend it highly.33

  In addition to a daily routine, techniques are available that create an internal energetic landscape that stimulates or inhibits the production of specific hormones. For instance, when you are feeling distress, shifting your attention to taking five deep in-breaths and out-breaths has been shown to decrease the production of adrenaline and other stress hormones. Techniques that enhance oxytocin production and testosterone production follow. They can be done on a daily or as-needed basis.

  Oxytocin Hearts

  The Bridge Flow is a radiant circuit (here) that surrounds the heart and entire torso. One of its several functions is to energetically connect with other people, supporting harmony and receiving intuitive information. Because oxytocin is the hormone of loving connection, when you stimulate the Bridge Flow, you stimulate the production of oxytocin. This one-minute technique for stimulating the Bridge Flow simply has you tracing its natural path with your hands. Interestingly, the path of the Bridge Flow is shaped like a valentine heart.

  Breathe in slowly and deeply as you draw your hands up from your pubic bone until you get to the center of your chest. Before you exhale, move your hands up and out toward your sides as if you were tracing a heart above and around your breasts. Slowly exhale as you bring your hands back toward your pubic bone, completing the tracing of a large heart over your torso. Repeat a few times. You are stimulating your Bridge Flow and triggering the production of oxytocin.

  The Testosterone Cave Hold

  Men renew their supply of testosterone when they retreat into their proverbial cave, becoming absorbed in a pleasurable solitary project, vegging out in front of the TV, or relaxing on an easy chair. Each is a way of reducing tension so that the testosterone consumed during stressful activities can be replaced. A quicker way to reduce tension and initiate the production of testosterone is to simply hold a set of reflex points that reduce stress and support testosterone production.

  Place the heels of your hands on the bottom of your cheekbones, let your thumbs lie over your temples, and flatten your hands so your fingers fall easily over your hairline. Your eyes will want to close. Hold for at least five deep breaths. You are relaxing your entire energy system and stimulating the production of testosterone. End by pushing your fingers into your forehead and, with a deep inhalation, dragging them toward your temples.

  Tending to Your Hormones Is Also Tending to Your Energies

  You can use energy techniques to directly stimulate the hormones of love and relationship, or you can take actions within your relationship that produce hormones that stimulate the energies that foster bonding. Some interactions rebuild the woman’s supply of oxytocin and the man’s supply of testosterone. This is good for each partner and good for the relationship. When oxytocin and testosterone supplies are restored, the energies of love are nourished.

  If Mama Ain’t Happy Ain’t Nobody Happy

  This time-honored observation has biological underpinnings. If the wife is chronically unhappy, the husband’s deep impulse to keep her happy will be continually thwarted. If her stress levels are high, his stress levels will be high. While this challenging arrangement seems an inconvenient quirk of nature, on the good-news side, the steps he can take to increase her supply of oxytocin (read on) will at the same time increase his supply of testosterone.34 It’s a win-win after all!

  You Can Keep Romance Alive over the Years

  Romance is one of the most powerful ways to produce oxytocin. To keep Mama happy, keep romance alive. This, however, requires a different formula once Stage 1 is no longer producing the chemical cocktail that knocks you off your feet. For one thing, production of the “gotta have it” hormone, dopamine, is triggered by fresh discoveries, not by a familiar face. Whether you feel it is merciful to regain control of your brain or tragic to descend from the euphoric heights, Stage 1 does not last forever.

  But because romance was once automatic, the expectation that it will always be effortless deflects us from finding new ways to feed the spirit of romance, and we then confuse the dimming of passion with the fading of love. We long for romance to visit us again or sadly accept our fate that its season has passed. Just as love matures over time, so does romance, but both require cultivation. For romance to continue to nourish us, Gray points out, we need to “find new ways of getting our feel-good hormones made.”35 Women and men have surprisingly stereotyped requirements, yet most have no idea of what they must do to keep romance alive.

  Put the Man’s Propensity for Problem Solving to Good Use

  Particularly important on the man’s side of maintaining romance is the act of planning special times together. Where taking her out on a date had once been part of the thrill of courtship, what back then was spontaneous now requires deliberate intention. Obstacles to supporting enduring romance include not knowing what to do, not having the time or energy to do it, or previous failures. If he is able to simply make a plan and put it into action, his testosterone levels go up, her oxytocin levels go up, and the embers of romance are fanned. Gray is very direct about this: “A man should think of this as a requirement of his husbandly job. . . . At work a man doesn’t think twice about doing things he doesn’t ‘feel’ like doing. He does them because it’s necessary to get the job done. His reasoning g
oes, ‘I don’t want to do it, but if it’s necessary, I’m happy to do it.’ . . . If he wants to keep the passion and attraction alive, he must do certain things that have been proven to work, even if at first he doesn’t feel like it.”36

  His Propensity to Fix Her Problems Is Born of Empathy

  For men, repair and protection is not only part of their cultural role, it is part of their biology. Two separate empathy systems have been identified, and each uses different brain mechanisms. One is based on neurons that resonate with other people, resulting in one person feeling what another is feeling. This is what we usually think of as empathy. Another system, however, which is more dominant in men, is based on an area of the brain that recognizes and registers another person’s feelings but immediately sends the information to the part of the brain that analyzes and fixes things, motivating him to correct any problem that has been discussed.37 You’ve heard the plaintive song. She feels emotionally abandoned when he puts all his focus onto trying to fix the very problem she has just brought to his attention. She was hoping for nothing more than empathy about her dilemma and a chance to talk about it. She can learn that his scurrying into problem solving is his empathy in action. He can learn to recognize that the first “problem” needing his attention is her need for emotional contact.

  Little Things Count

  In the man’s mind, the need for little acts of courtship—like bringing flowers and candy or planning a special date—are replaced by major acts like bringing home a good income or landscaping the yard. He figures that now that he is doing the big things, the little things don’t matter anymore. But small gestures that would not be particularly meaningful to a man stimulate oxytocin in his partner, reduce her stress, and put a smile on her face. In terms of his hormones, a smile on her face caused by his actions is a powerful catalyst for his testosterone. After discussing all of this, Gray advises, “even if he’s not in a romantic mood, if a man makes the effort to take action—a kiss, a squeeze—these small moves will raise his testosterone levels”38 as well as increase her oxytocin.