Introduction
We can give affection only if we are at ease with our emotional level. In this sense, the solo exercises suggested in this chapter are designed to improve our sensitivity. But above all else, we must know how to get in touch with our emotions. Since letting go is a skill which is developed, no-one is at the same level. We all need to more or less make an effort to progress in this area.

The following six exercises are subdivided into three sub-objectives to make it easier to reach the general objective. These sub-objectives correspond to three basic principles: we prepare ourselves to respect, to make oneself for an exchange of affection. Thus, we must be able to recognize our feelings, learn to let go and choose those feelings relative to affection.

Common procedure: Lie down in bed in complete darkness and silence, but do not cover yourself up with blankets. Keep your eyes closed and change your position when you feel like it, whether it is on your back, on your side or on your stomach. These exercises should be done for seven consecutive days, one exercise after the other. These are preparatory exercises for the second sub-objective.

Specific objective:
Learn to take breaks.

Directions:
Take a one-hour break during the day, just to let your mind wander

Notes:
With all our worries and responsibilities, we end up forgetting to take care of ourselves. Therefore, we never stop, we are constantly on the go from one activity to another and in our head, we are always trying to resolve one of our many problems. It is important to put aside time to get in touch with our emotions and what is going on inside of us. The first few days, it will be difficult to take an hour because you will feel like you are wasting your time. You will want to do something else after fifteen minutes or so or so. In making an effort to not get up from bed, your nervous tension will gradually lower and you will become more relaxed. After seven days of this, you will no longer feel anxiety when faced with things you have to do. One of the objectives of this exercise is to take pleasure in not doing anything so that you can forget your worries. Taking time to listen actively and concentrate on our body's reactions during a period of physical and intellectual inactivity lets us get in touch with our emotions so that we can feel the need for affection.

After a week of this exercise, you must continue to take breaks regularly to stay open to an exchange of affection. You can take a break during other activities - the frequency and duration of the break can vary such as: walking, jogging, biking, driving, or on the bus or during any other activity where you are alone and unable to tend to your usual tasks.

Specific objective:
Succeed in clearing your thoughts

Procedure:
This exercise lasts twenty minutes.

Directions:
Since these exercises are stages to follow, each exercise must be redone during the first five minutes to correspond to continuity. Afterwards, concentrating on your breathing and on the movement of your stomach in order to think the least. Thus, when a thought enters your mind, you won't push it away. You will let your mind wander freely.

Notes:
This exercise will remove the mask which serves to protect our self esteem. In fact, thinking allows us to assume our interactions with others so that we can accept or refuse their comments, for example. It protects us from our emotional reactions or it creates a distance with our emotions. Thus, if someone says something disturbing to us, our thoughts will intervene to contain our feelings of anger. A mask will freeze us emotionally - in forcing ourselves to stop thinking, you get in touch with your emotions easier.

Specific objective:
Feel your emotions.

Procedure:
This exercise lasts twenty-five minutes. v Directions:
You must devote five minutes to do the first two exercises for the reasons listed beforehand. After that, continue to concentrate on your breathing to avoid thinking; but at the same time, you must also concentrate on your heart rate to feel your body vibrating.

Notes:
This exercise lets us learn how to focus on how our inner feelings make our body react. We all have many emotions inside of us at all times and which make our body vibrate. Thus, for fifteen minutes, we must make an effort to notice how our body vibrates emotionally. From this feeling of vibration, we get in touch with our emotions. We just need to be listening to our body to notice our level of well-being or suffering.

Procedure:
Go back to the common procedure of the first sub-objective. This exercise lasts thirty minutes.

Directions:
Take five minutes to repeat each of the three previous exercises. After, concentrate on your state of suffering or well being.

Notes:
First, you must detect the signs indicating that you are holding back your emotions. This is characterized by the feeling of a fist or pressure on your sternum, with halting breathing. In fact, you particularly feel this when you try to keep from crying. The expression "to have a lump in your throat" used when you are sad, expresses this emotional restrain well. As a general rule, people hold back a lot of feelings whether to hide them from the people around them or because they were not comfortable with them. After this observation, a mask can be defined as a retention of feelings.

The goal of this exercise is to take down our ever-present protective walls, which we often ignore in the presence of others, and which block the expression of our emotions. Thus, by concentrating on the feeling linked to pressure at the level of the sternum, our emotional block will gradually dissipate. Consequently, if an emotion of sadness is within us, we might cry spontaneously. This will prove that we have abandoned ourselves. The longer we hold in an emotion, the greater the pressure will be on the sternum. In this situation, the liberation of this accumulated emotional weight will be characterized by an emotional breakdown. For example, in the case of sadness, we will start to cry and lose the ability to hold back our tears for several minutes. It is important to cry because this takes a large burden off us.

If during this exercise of abandon, we are feeling joy, we will burst out laughing. If it is a feeling of boredom, we will become melancholic. If frustration takes over us, we will scream. This will happen for every emotion that we have held back. Freeing ourselves from them contributes to maintaining our psychological equilibrium.

We must have reached the first sub-objective to succeed in letting go of our emotions. The first three exercises are stages that we unconsciously do when we let go. Therefore, they favor the appearance of automatic behaviors including affectionate behavior. Abandon is a emotional skill which develops in spite of its spontaneous nature. Thus, with time and experience, we can willingly let go, at any time and anyplace.

It is important to free ourselves from restrained emotions in order to be available for an exchange of affection. Thus, if we are feeling frustrated when we are about to give into our partner, it is rage and not gentleness or love which will come out.

We must know how to let go emotionally for ourselves and then incorporate that into a loving relationship. Letting go to ourselves, is to let our emotions run free and letting go to our partner is letting them see our feelings. In other words, we give into the emotions that our partner is making us experience at the same time that we are expressing ours.

Specific objective:
Liberate yourself from both your feelings of well-being and unease.

Procedure:
This exercise should be practiced as needed.

Directions:
Choose activities which let us release your feelings.

Notes:
Releasing ourselves is a psychological cleansing which should be done regularly. In fact, holding in our feelings makes us suffer and consequently, prevents us from giving in to affection. As I explained beforehand, we must give in to our inner feelings to emotionally free ourselves. First, we must be continually in touch with or present in our emotional state. For example, if we feel sad, time must be set aside to do something likely to make us cry such as listening to romantic music, seeing a dramatic romance film or drinking alcohol to get drunk. Since alcohol is inhibitive, it can easily lower our defenses in order to express our emotions more easily.

In the same line of ideas; if we have pent-up anger, we have to release it by screaming, cutting wood, or beating ourselves up in a sport. In fact, exercise is an excellent release of aggression, and especially a contact sport like hockey. If we are discouraged, we must give in to depression. We shouldn't do anything and should sleep as long as possible. However, any battle against our emotions is a form of retention and retaining an emotion over a long period of time will make the situation chronic.

We can also prevent ourselves from experiencing positive emotions if we have low self-esteem. In fact, in such a situation, it is difficult to experience emotions of joy because we fear the judgment of others. Since no-one has perfect self-esteem, we must make an effort - when we are happy, we must show it to others by smiling and joking. Expressing our joy to others is one way of letting go of our feelings. We shouldn't hold these feelings in, when a situation presents itself, overtly express your emotions. In general, we should let out all of our feelings of joy with the help of people around us, and our feelings of unhappiness alone so we don't hurt others.

Affection corresponds to a release of emotions of only feelings of well-being. Everything happens in the present moment: emotions that we express are those which happen during an exchange of affection and not those experienced in a past situation. Thus, through physical contact our partner makes us experience emotions of joy and well-being. This we retain for a few seconds at most, then we express them to her who will do the same for us and so on. Emotions of affection are so intense that they make us suffer if we hold them in for too long. Consequently, emotions of pleasure that we experience pushes us to express ourselves emotionally so that we can continue to feel good. In fact, affection is a purely selfish activity: it is more an exchange rather than sharing of good feelings, for the benefit of each of our bodies. Giving in to the good feelings that we have for our partner, we become spontaneously tender and soft; we like holding them in our arms and caressing them; we tell them they are beautiful and that we love them.

The management of emotions happens then through the freeing of the emotions of unease and well-being that we retain in order to lower our level of suffering. In fact, we must learn to retain our feelings of unease as well as those of well-being in order to put ourselves in a state of mind favorable for an exchange of affection.

Specific goal:
Expressing our feelings whenever we want

Procedure:
Return to the procedure of the first sub-objective. This exercise lasts thirty minutes.

Directions:
Imagine yourself in a situation using themes relative to the emergence of emotions related to affection. You should choose one or many of the themes suggested during the seven days that this exercise lasts. For each emotion which emerges, you must give into it and explore its effects on your body and on your moods. This exercise is a sort of self-hypnosis which is realized through suggestions.

The themes:

Weakness:
I see my partner as being physically weak. I pay attention to her, I hold her in my arms with tenderness.

Vulnerability:
I see my partner as being psychologically vulnerable. I take care of her by being nice, by listening to her and by looking nice.

Innocence:
I see my partner as being pure in spirit. I avoid criticizing her and judging her, I try to understand her.

Importance:
I see my partner as being important to me: I take care of her, I give her a lot of attention, I give her my time without accounting for it.

Amazement:
I am amazed when I contemplate the gestures, thoughts, beauty, presence and softness of my partner.

Sensuality:
I see my partner with a sensual body: I become gentle when I come in contact with the softness of her skin and tender when I touch her roundness.

Pleasure:
I see my partner as a source of pleasure. I have the feeling of loving her too much.

Beauty:
I see my partner as the most beautiful woman in the world. I have the feeling of being privileged. I feel happy.

Softness:
I see my partner soft in body and mind. I feel safe with her, she reassures me.

Smell:
I see my partner emitting a natural odor so agreeable that she makes me forget what I am thinking about. I feel faint from ecstasy.

Goodness:
I see my partner as being a rich and creamy dessert. I devour her because she is so good.

Intimacy:
I see my partner as being precious. I am respectful towards her. I communicate with her honestly and openly. I make myself little in front of her.

Notes:
Visualization can be compared with dreaming while we are awake, but it differs from its concrete aspect. In fact, daydreams usually are about desiring something which is unavailable or which will come in a distant future. For example, we can dream about what we would do if we won the lottery. But with visualization, we use our imagination to recreate in our head a situation already experienced or create one by logical deduction from our theoretical knowledge.

At night, in our dreams, we can sense a physical environment in virtual reality. Everything seems real to us. We hear noises, we taste food, we see things, we touch objects and we detect odors. This is explained by the fact that our brain uses information stored in its memory to create real-life virtual situations. As for the emotions that we experience in our dreams; they are completely real. For example, if we dream that we are in a biking accident, then we will suddenly wake up, sweating and with a higher heart rate like it really happened.

In order to have an exchange of affection, we must master our inner world. In fact, the more experienced our emotional life has been, the better we know it and the less scared we will be of our emotions. In fact, controlling our emotions signifies that we are able to identify them and will know where our feelings will lead us. Therefore, knowing that affection leads to well-being, we can decide to give in to it.

The exercises suggested in this chapter favor learning to feel good about our suffering. So, we feel the need for affection to relieve the suffering that comes from a feeling of insecurity. People who avoid their emotions are less able to face suffering. Consequently, it is impossible for them to let go and give in to affection if they are scared of the effect of their emotions.

When we are at ease with our emotions, we can have fun with them. In fact, it is important to get pleasure from what happens inside of us so that we can let the emotions surface at will, by using visualization. This emotional skill, lets us welcome our partner more easily in our heart so that we can have an exchange of affection. This is a game where two people are having fun, experiencing the action of exchanging their respective emotions.