The Art of Intimacy II
A 6-hour somatic gathering for couples who completed The Art of Intimacy and are ready to clear what has built up between them.
Zaki Raheem · Co-facilitator
An invitation to clear the space between you.
You may remember how it felt at the end of the first gathering. Something softened between you, and for a while you looked at each other differently.
Then ordinary life came back. The same comment about the dishes, the tone that lands wrong after a long day, the argument you could both recite from memory because you have had it so many times. None of it is big on its own. Over the years it adds up to a quiet layer of distance and resistance toward each other, and you start reacting to the story you carry about your partner more than to the person in front of you.
Underneath it, the love is usually still there. It just gets harder to reach through everything that hasn't been said and everything each of you has been carrying alone. The Art of Intimacy II: Clearing the Space is a day to put some of that down, look honestly at your own part in the patterns that keep repeating, and find your way back to each other with less in between.
"Sometimes what we see in our partner is something we have carried far longer than we have known them."
For couples who came to the first one and want to keep going.
Maybe something opened that day and you'd like to go further. Or maybe daily life has pulled you back into routine and, with it, the usual arguments, and you sense there is something behind them worth exploring.
Either way, you love each other, you feel your relationship is steady enough to hold some discomfort, and you want to learn tools to move through and release what keeps building up between you, instead of stepping around it.
If that sounds like the two of you, this gathering was made for you.
Going underneath the closeness you found.
The first gathering gave you the foundations, ways to be fully present with each other and to connect through the body and the senses. This one builds on that ground and goes to what gets in the way of that closeness in everyday life. The day moves from honoring each other, into what each of you carries, and back into closeness, so you leave lighter than you arrived.
Every practice in this day is new. They rest on the presence and connection you built in the first gathering and take you somewhere deeper from there.
What builds up unspoken is one of the quietest ways desire wears down.
Relationship research keeps finding that couples are worn down over time less by one big event than by small hurts that never get resolved and the habit of criticism that grows around them. The warmth and attraction you felt early on usually haven't gone anywhere. They are covered by everything that has piled up, and when some of it clears, they often come back on their own.
A close relationship reaches parts of us that can stay quiet for years. Old fears, insecurities and needs that were never met tend to show up with the person who matters most, because with them there is so much more at stake. The relationship doesn't create those wounds. It gives them a place where they can finally come to the surface.
That's why this gathering isn't about getting you to stop triggering each other. We work with what happens in that moment, when each of you can notice what is moving inside before making your partner the problem, and ask what part of you is being touched. With practice, those moments stop pulling you apart and become a way to know yourselves better and find each other again.
- ◆The usual argument loses its charge, and you find your way back from it faster.
- ◆You recognize your own triggers before they take over the conversation.
- ◆You stop holding your partner responsible for feelings that started long before they came into your life.
- ◆There is more room for tenderness and desire, because less is standing in the way.
- ◆You leave with practices to return to when things start building up again.
Work this deep is worth it, and it also asks something of you.
We would rather you know exactly what that is, so that if you come, you choose it fully.
How we hold this space.
Belén & Zaki
This is the first time we offer this gathering, so instead of other couples' words we want to share our own. We have been together for twelve years, and five years ago we began doing conscious intimacy work together. Every practice in this day is one we have learned and made our own over these years, through our study and practice of tantra and neotantra with different teachers in California, Mexico, India and Bali. They have changed how we move through conflict, from the way we approach a fight to the way we find each other again after one.
"This work taught me to take responsibility for my own emotions and the inner work I need to face and heal first. When I do that, I come to Zaki seeing more clearly and with less charge, and we can work on the challenges we share as a couple, whether with our families or in the ways we trigger each other when we don't agree on topics that matter to our relationship, like money and sex."
"One of the hardest things I've learned as a husband is that loving someone deeply doesn't automatically mean knowing how to be intimate with them. What has surprised me most about these practices is how much fun they can be, while also challenging me to be more vulnerable, to slow down, and to truly see Belén. They've transformed how we communicate and connect, reminding me that intimacy isn't something we achieve once, but something we keep choosing and investing in, together."
The practices we offer in this gathering are key practices we use in our own relationship whenever something starts building up between us.
Why we created this gathering.
We have been together for twelve years. Our love started easily, and over time it has been tested many times, as happens in almost every great relationship. Some of those tests have been monumental, like when we faced a conflict with part of our families, or when we had to say goodbye to our daughter. Others have been less severe or quieter, and still challenged us in their own way, like when we considered career changes or investments that shifted the balance we had, or more recently, when we decided to move from Washington, D.C. to Silicon Valley and start from scratch.
Turning 40 has also moved and challenged us in new ways. Our bodies are changing, and not only in wrinkles or shape. We also feel a different energy and changes in our hormones and metabolism, and we are learning to love our bodies again as they are now. Desire has changed as well. Often one of us wants closeness when the other is somewhere else entirely, and we have had to learn how to meet across that gap without taking it as a sign that something is broken.
Each of these seasons left something behind between us, usually small hurts we never fully talked about that came back later as the same old argument. The practices in this gathering are the ones that helped us clear that and find each other again. We have learned them from different teachers in different parts of the world, and we have tested every one of them in our own relationship. As we have integrated them and made them a normal part of our life together, we have seen our conflicts take on a different color, because we trust these tools to help us move through them with more awareness.
We created The Art of Intimacy II from our own life together. We haven't figured everything out, and we still use these practices at home. We want to share them with couples who know what it is to stay together through a lot and are ready to clear some of what that has left behind.
Everything you may be wondering.
Clear the space between you.
[Day], February [date], 2027 · 12:00 to 6:00 PM · [Venue], Silicon Valley · US$398 per couple · Limited to 8 couples who completed The Art of Intimacy
Questions? Message us on WhatsApp or email belen@intiphlora.com
Cancellation policy: full refund up to 14 days before the gathering. After that, your payment becomes credit toward a future gathering.