“We call emotional connection “attunement,” which is how we connect deeply with another person and allow them to “feel felt.” —Daniel J. Siegel
February marks the turn of the seasonal wheel, which brings attention to strengthening our significant love relationships. Every February, we dedicate an entire day to celebrating romantic love. Although romantic love is cherished, idealized, and desired, love, is a vital part of human existence.
But what makes love endure over time? Relationships are not always easy. They often take a lot more work than you might think based on what you see on the screen or read in books. Is love enough?
The energy behind our quest for loving relationships that unite heart and soul is emotional attunement. Attunement is the emotional connection by which we form and sustain relationships.
The essence of love is the spacious, open attention of attuned awareness. This awareness is experienced most fully when we attune to others. We can facilitate attunement simply by intentionally paying more attention.
Attunement – the Felt Sense of Emotional Resonance
Emotional attunement is the cornerstone of genuine human connection. While we notice the feeling of love in the heart, love starts in the brain. We, humans, are neurologically ‘hardwired’ to connect with others. The social brain builds its structures through interactions with other human beings from birth.
The brain is an organ of adaptation. We know that it influences how we feel. Interaction with others stimulates the mirror neurons in our brain, and this phenomenon allows us to “feel” what another person is experiencing. The sense of “feeling felt” that arises in close relationships is deeply rooted in emotional attunement and connectedness.
Attuning to others allows our state of consciousness to shift so that we come into resonance with the inner world of the other. For example, parents who are attuned to a child’s needs, moods, fears, and joys can help the child internalize that she is safe and has a secure attachment with the parent.
There is emotional resonance when two or more people are in tune with their inner emotional states. Attending to, listening to, and appreciating others leads to a more fulfilling relational life even when you disagree with them.
Toward a New Way of “Being”
In attunement, we cultivate and comprehend our emotions and those of others. The act of attuning is the foundation for all human connection and the foundation of our own wellbeing.
In my work as an integrative therapist, my success in attuning to my clients’ emotions provides us the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued. To be present with another’s experience is an expression of my ability to attune and empathize through active listening, presence, expertise, and skill.
When we give space to our emotions, they’ll shift us more fully into the attuned spaciousness experienced between each other. The goal of helping clients move towards greater ease with their emotional self is full of transformative moments resulting from genuine attunement.
This process is crucial to all healthy human relationships, and it contributes significantly to our mutual wellbeing. An attuned presence is part of our social intelligence that facilitates rapport. When we lack attunement with others, we’re out of tune with ourselves. Attunement begins with getting in touch with our inner world.
Self-attunement is a felt experience. It is an awareness of what you sense and sometimes may intuit. Attuned awareness comes from slowing down, opening to your surroundings, or paying attention to the subtle energy interaction between you and others.
Whether consciously or subconsciously, your ability to feel the feelings and physical sensations that are going on in your body and accept them as they are and a capacity to pay attention to the complexities of social reality is a skill that lends itself to attuned presence.
According to author Amy Cudy, “presence is when we are attuned and able to be comfortable enough to express our authentic best selves.” We can begin to understand the power of attunement as a source of wellbeing by understanding emotional resonance.
Mindfulness practice helps to balance and ground an attuning awareness moment to moment. It also empowers us to be aware of our inner state and take responsibility for our moods and how they may influence others.
The Attunement Challenge
Attuned relating goes hand in hand with vulnerability. Not all emotions are pleasant, and often they are downright difficult. Attunement requires a thorough, open-hearted honesty about your experience of yourself and your own emotional state even before attempting to attune with another person. Opening yourself up to another person involves a degree of risk that they will not have the empathy or compassion to receive you and vice versa.
The attunement challenge for cultivating meaningful connections in our interpersonal relationships must include:
- Knowing and applying the language of human experience and emotion
- Recognizing, labeling, and accepting your own emotions
- Identifying and understanding other’s emotions
- Willingness to imagine multiple perspectives
- Applied empathy and affective responsiveness
- Compassionate care for self and others
- Staying tuned to what is going on with significant others
- Allowing vulnerability and courage to exist simultaneously
- Respect for differences.
Vibrational Attunement
Fleur vibrational Ritual Essences are created to attune to the power of place. They capture the seen and unseen energies that have merged over time. Nature constantly interacts with the vibrational imprints of people’s energies who originally inhabited the land, rituals, and ceremonies.
Attunement Ritual Essence captures the essence of the town of Assisi, where St. Francis professed his spiritual beliefs about God and loving-kindness. Through attunement, we blossom because we see in Francis what could happen to us if we were to embrace the overflowing generosity of Spirit revealed in everything that exists.
Attunement Ritual Essence allows the heart to gently open, soften, and expand energetically to embrace. Consequently, when the sweetness of attuned love flows through your heart, your relationships flourish.
That’s why I use Attunement Ritual Essence to enhance my interactions with others. Emotionally healthy relationships are essential to happy homes and workplaces.
I place a few drops directly under my tongue or put a few drops in my glass of water, aware that it has the power to alchemically transform my heart in the delicate dance of attuned relating.
The Heart of Attunement in Love
Attunement is the beating heart of any relationship. To better understand empathic, attuned relationships, we need to set aside the conditioning that creates separation. Empathetic attunement fulfills our need for intimacy, relieving us of our feeling of aloneness. Therefore, empathy is at the core of emotional attunement between us.
When we nurture and honor the sacredness of each other, we can celebrate our significant relationships through the heart of attunement. By becoming attuned to your partner, you create an opening to sense the pleasure that being attuned brings.
And tuning into that pleasure leads to the deeper sparks of a sensual connection more often because we have created a genuinely safe container in our relationships. Besides, it feels better to be in harmony with others and ourselves. We are more resilient, and our health benefits are enhanced by relating with attuned presence.
By embodying an attuned presence to our own and others’ emotions, we cultivate deep and meaningful connections in our relationships and create the enduring conditions for thriving together in love and trust.
That is my wish for you this month. In celebration of your meaningful relationships, may the frequency of love lift all your relations as you connect with and nourish your attuned heart.
All my aromatic love,
Vidya
