Raffaello brings Consciousness to our Relationships

Raffaello Manacorda - Conscious relationships coach and instructor

info@fragmentsofevolution.org

What is your Koh Phangan Story?
I first came in February 2010, I was just travelling, not looking for anything in particular. But I found some interesting things here that have kept me returning until today.
Phangan is where I started practising Yoga and deepened my studies of Tantra.

Tell us about your studies here…..
In the time I have spent in Phangan I have studied, practised and taught various styles of Yoga and also Tantra. I have also continued on my pre existing journey of conscious relationships.

What got you interested in conscious relationships in particular?
I guess the main factor was that my relationships weren’t going too well, in fact very badly. I used to be quite jealous, controlling and generally speaking a bit unhappy in my love life. So for that reason I decided to change my life completely
I spent about twelve years living in different conscious communities in Europe. I did an awful lot of experience with relationships and I started to slowly change my whole perspective on the subject.
I did many experiments with jealousy, openness and communication but the main factor was that during that time I was dedicating six hours a day to interacting with other people, communicating and spending time with friends and lovers.
In hindsight, what was missing at that point is that I didn’t have any theory to refer to, role models to look up to, or workshops to attend! So this is why I decided to create a conscious relationships workshop myself.

Tell us about your workshops….
The Network of Love is a workshop that stems out of the experience I have gained during those years, plus the studies and research on relationships that I have done in the last five to six years. The workshops are for couples and single people, even someone in a couple can attend without their partner if they want to learn.

What can people gain from these workshops?
The main advantage is that your relationship life can change for the better and if relationships are important for you then your whole life can change. In my opinion, for most of us relationships are important and yet we dedicate very little time and energy to prepare or even train for them.
So in my workshops I try to fill in this gap by empowering people to look at the main issues with consciousness and awareness.
When I say the main issues, what I refer to, to give a short list is sexuality, sexual chemistry and attraction, communication, emotional responsibility, truthfulness, jealousy, openness and forgiveness. I do this through a mixture of both theory, practical exercises and experiential work.

Have you had any major breakthroughs where it has really helped people?
The feedback to the workshop is always generally positive but sometimes it does stand out. For example, I remember this yoga instructor from Canada who a month after the workshop had finished wrote me a very short message from back home, the message was ‘Thank you, I am a different woman now’.
One other participant to my workshop who was in her 50’s said to me after she had finished the workshop ‘This should be taught in high school’ and since so many of our emotional traumas happen during teenage years, I think she had a good point.

How has it helped you, I hope you haven’t left yourself behind?
Teaching a workshop like this forces me to always be aware of my own shortcomings and undeveloped pieces of my personality.
So quite a few times I have found myself teaching a certain topic in the workshop, for example,. jealousy at the exact moment when I was jealous in my private life. And that has helped me teach myself how to bring even more consciousness into my relationships.

Why do you think Koh Phangan attracts conscious people?
I think Phangan has definitely become a hub, a hub for people that are interested in consciousness and self development.
I believe it’s a sort of snowball effect, the more conscious people hang out in a place the more they tend to attract like minded people. Also Phangan being a tropical island doesn’t hurt!

What do you like to do in your free time?
Free time? What’s free time? (Laughs)
Because I don’t have structured work, the boundary between free and work time is blurred for me. When I want to relax and disconnect I love going to The Dome in Chaloklum, or just going to the East side of the island which is much less populated and no one knows me there.
But I have to confess that I don’t do these things very often, most of the time I am reading, teaching, writing and practising Yoga.
I write for Elephant Journal, am finishing a book and I also have my little blog called Fragments of Evolution.

Do you have a life philosophy?
Evolution.
My whole life is about evolving and getting closer and closer to my true essence. At the same time I love interacting with the world so I like to do a million things at once but I always check that what I want to do goes in the direction of evolution and growth.

You can follow Raffaello on Twitter: FragmentsOfE
His Facebook page click here