Author : Mali & Joe

About the Author:

11 1213

To Mom

Dear Mom,

You may have left your tired and withered body today, but I feel you all around me.Doris Adah

You live on in the stained-glass mirror that reflects the morning light streaming in through the bathroom window. Your ability to take on and quickly master new art forms was remarkable.

You live on in my love for nuances of the English language, clean lines in architecture and furniture, and well-written books.

You live on in my disdain for illogical rules, inefficient procedures, and pointless societal expectations.

You live on in brother #1's guitar playing, brother #2's keen intelligence, and brother #3's love of music. The influences you've had, both genetic and otherwise, on each of us—and on each of your four grandchildren—are numerous and profound.

Chris CarmichaelYou were a child prodigy, a musical genius, and a crossword puzzle virtuoso. I will never forget how we wouldn't let you declare a win in Trivial Pursuit until you'd answered all six questions on your card correctly.

You live on in my belief that I can do anything.

I'm happy you don't live on in my kitchen, or at least I'd like to believe that. God love you, Mom, but your cooking was truly awful.

Mom you were, and are, one of a kind.

Love always,

Your daughter

 

Mali & Joe March 30, 2015 , 11 1213 0 Read more
7 980

Why We Haven’t Read a Book on Sex in Over a Decade

As relationship coaches and authors of books on relationships, people often give us recommendations for other books, blogs, and movies on relationships that they have enjoyed. But for the 11 years we've been together, and the 8 years we've been writing books together, we've never once read any of these books or seen a single one of these movies. Why?

Very early on in our relationship, we knew there was a purpose behind our meeting each other. There was something we were meant to do together. For a long time, we didn't know exactly what that was. So we just kept trusting, following along wherever our passion led us.

Our conversations—which were intense and meaningful and fascinating from the very first email—only grew deeper and more intriguing over time. As an editor by profession, and a lifelong book lover who always knew one day I would write my own, I took notes. Lots and lots of notes. Eventually I bought a voice recorder, because the ongoing conversations we were having kept growing more and more fascinating, and I had an insatiable desire to capture many of the ideas we were exploring and revelations we were uncovering.

Those endless pages of notes, and hundreds of hours of recordings, eventually became the initial manuscript for our first book, The Soulmate Experience. As we wrote chapter after chapter, and met with our wonderful review group to hear about their reactions and to further explore our ideas, we eventually realized we had too much information for one book. So we set aside some of the "spicier" ideas—ideas that became the starting point for our our first book's sequel, The Soulmate Lover.

All this while, we have felt "guided" to do this work. The more we open to each other, the more we explore relationships and sexuality and spirituality between the two of us, the more we work with others to implement our discoveries in their own lives, the more fervently the material "comes through" us.

Upon the publication of our new book, though, something has shifted. Suddenly I feel okay about reading what others in the field have written. In fact, I'm feeling quite passionate about it. Our ideas are already set on paper and circulating out in the world, so I no longer have the feeling that our in-process work will be influenced by reading that of other writers. So for the last few weeks, I've been thoroughly enjoying discovering what others in the field have to say, how they are grappling with the issues of keeping relationships alive and connected.

she comes firstIn that spirit, I bought Joe a book a couple of weeks ago that I knew he was just going to love, She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman. This happens to be a topic he already knows a lot about (lucky me!), and one he is quite passionate about. I ordered the book through one of our local bookstores, as I believe in supporting bookshops as inviting places to discover new ideas, meet our community, and engage our imaginations.

When we went to pick up the book, the bookseller smiled knowingly as he placed it in our hands.

We both smiled back. It was a sweet, delicious secret to be sharing with a stranger.

As we walked out of the shop, he called after us: "Have fun with that!"

We most certainly will…

Mali Apple & Joe DunnThank you for being here! ~Mali & Joe, authors of The Soulmate Experience, 52 Prescriptions for Happiness, and The Soulmate Lover.

Mali & Joe February 25, 2015 , , , , , 7 980 0 Read more
2 841

How We Write Together: Two Voices Become One

We’re often asked what it’s like to write books together. One of the most amazing aspects of the writing process, for us, is how our two very different voices come together to create "our" voice.

Typically, we begin by having many conversations exploring a particular idea. Eventually I go off and write up a first draft. I’m very left brained, very logical and linear, and tend to write like a college professor. The ideas may be great, but they often come out sounding like a duck penned them.

Then it's Joe's turn to read the piece. Joe is more right brained; he doesn’t so much think about the meaning behind the words as feel it, feels for the heart or the essence of what we're trying to convey, then allows the right words to come up to express those feelings. His changes often "soften" the presentation, making things just flow more easily. Then we read the piece together, edit, and read it again, usually many times over a period of weeks or months (really!), making small adjustments to the wording each time, learning a bit more about the idea by trying it ourselves (again!) and sharing it with others who try it too, until we feel the piece expresses exactly what we'd like it to, and in a way that flows.

Here’s a little sample of wording changes that came from Joe. This is a piece that will be in our new chapter "Sex and the Practice of Being Present." This section explores how to practice presence with your lover while giving (or receiving!) a sensual massage. Notice how he suggested changing the phrase "create a romantic mood" to the much lovelier "add a little romance". Even more importantly, he noted that we were getting to the massage too quickly, and suggested the couple "Take a moment to connect" before beginning.


addalittleromanceUSEFINAL

This next one is another example of how my original draft morphed into the final piece that will appear in the book. Here is what we started with:

Heart Grow Fonder original

The lovely new title and the idea of moving from the "bitter" side of bittersweet and towards the "sweet" side both came through Joe:

heartgrowfonderfinal USE

To us, our styles feel like they were meant to go together. It's certainly clear that neither of us could write these books alone. Mine would come out sounding like sleep-inducing technical manuals, and Joe’s would end up being a few sweet words scribbled on some scraps of paper that would float away on the wind when he went off to go for a swim.

Mali Apple & Joe DunnThank you for being here! ~Mali & Joe, authors of The Soulmate Experience, 52 Prescriptions for Happiness, and the upcoming book The Soulmate Lover, and creators of Mantras for Making Love.

 

Mali & Joe October 26, 2014 2 841 0 Read more
15 1261

The Gifts of a Blind Eye

“Are you sure you don’t notice anything unusual about my face?” I asked her again.

It was Saturday afternoon. A gorgeous sunny day at a winery somewhere among the vineyards of Napa County. We’d been chatting about ten minutes when it struck me that this was the first time I’d ever met and had a conversation with someone who didn’t do that awkward double-take, nervously looking away from my face and back again, trying to figure out what was going on with me and which eye to look into.

I’d seen that response all my life. Having been born minus one optic nerve, my left eye generally just floated around. That plus the thick lenses I wore for the severe myopia in my "good" eye meant I was teased regularly in school.

Molly Nov 1964I remember standing against the gym wall with the two learning-disabled kids in my class, feeling humiliated that the team captains couldn’t decide which among the three of us to choose next.

You develop a thick skin. You come to understand that what a person looks like on the surface may not tell an accurate story about their capabilities and who they are.

I remember transferring to a new high school my sophomore year and, upon arriving my first day, being immediately escorted by a kind lady to the classroom for students with physical and mental limitations.

You learn to speak up for yourself.

“This can’t be my classroom,” I said. “It must be a mistake.”

I remember spending an entire summer trying to learn how to return a tennis ball until I realized, this is just not the sport for me. Along with baseball, basketball, frisbee . . .

You become resilient. You work hard to discover where you can excel.

I remember a woman in an aerobics class, who’d apparently gotten herself all worked up by the time she finally turned around and screamed: “Why do you keep staring at me?!”

You learn to smile at the little ironies of life. Before that moment, I hadn’t even known she was there.

I remember a young woman in college I’d just met who said flat out, “Why don’t you get that eye fixed? It’s really unattractive.”

You develop empathy. It’s been said that facial defects are the most difficult for people to accept, and I’ve noticed that is true for me, too, when I meet people who have them.

“No, I don’t notice anything unusual about your face,” the woman sipping the chardonnay said again. “Now you must tell me why you’re asking!”

Mali post-surgeryWhat was different that day in Napa was that I’d just recovered from surgery to straighten my eye. It wasn’t 100% successful, but enough so that my misbehaving eye wasn’t the first thing someone noticed upon meeting me.

What a freeing feeling that was!

And yet . . .

This “defect” has been such a gift to me. The more I contemplate my blind eye and limited vision, the more I learn from it, the more I see how this “disability” has helped to shape who I am.

I’ve always recognized that my visual limitations encouraged my other senses to develop more fully, including my intuitive senses. Navigating life without them would be much harder than navigating it minus one eye.

Seeing the world without normal depth perception has made me into someone who searches for the depth in everything.

Having precarious vision in my sighted eye, with no spare to count on, has made me incredibly grateful for this truly magical sense. I’ve always been in love with sight. If you know me, you know I never take a sunrise, a rainbow, a baby’s face, or the cross-section of a red pepper for granted. (And I'll try to make sure you don't, either!)

Mali todayA while back, I overheard a couple in a restaurant talking about their baby daughter. They had just found out that she was blind in one eye. They sounded scared, really worried about what effects this would have on her life.

I just couldn't not go over and introduce myself.

“I wouldn’t say that there haven’t been challenges along the way,” I told them, “but facing those challenges has everything to do with the person I am today. Yes, she probably won’t be a natural at softball or tennis, she will need to learn some special tricks to be able to parallel park, but with you helping her to discover all the gifts in her special circumstances, her life is going to be exceptional.”

If you’re dealing with a challenging life situation, what’s to lose by spending a little time contemplating what gifts that situation just might have for you? 

~Mali Apple, coauthor of The Soulmate Experience: A Practical Guide to Creating Extraordinary Relationships, 52 Prescriptions for Happiness, and the upcoming book The Soulmate Lover

Mali & Joe April 29, 2014 , , , , , 15 1261 0 Read more
1 594

Kiss Your Fights Good-Bye: A Book Review

KissYourFightsGoodbyeIf you're experiencing conflict, disagreements, or other communication issues in your relationship, you might take a look at the new book Kiss Your Fights Good-Bye: Dr. Love’s 10 Simple Steps to Cooling Conflict and Rekindling Your Relationship.

Dr. Jamie Turndorf, aka Dr. Love, shares in clear, understandable language her truly powerful method for healing destructive patterns of relating and transforming conflict into connection. What we think makes this book so special is that she’s willing to go deep into the trenches with you, help you assess exactly what’s been keeping you there, and then, step by step, help you free yourself again.

There's a lot of great information here, like:

  • Why we get into negative conflict and communication patterns in the first place
  • Why we can tend to misinterpret our partner’s words and actions in the most negative way
  • How to break through negative—and often unconscious—communication patterns
  • Why biological differences between the sexes can lead to poor communication patterns, and how to use that knowledge to increase connection
  • Ways to identify behaviors that cause conflicts to spiral out of control
  • How to recognize and defuse common “fight traps,” like scorekeeping, globalizing, power plays, and guilt trips
  • How to determine when old traumas or wounds are contributing to your conflict and start on your path to healing them

Here's just one of her powerful suggestions:

The next time you and your mate have a conflict discussion, turn on a voice recorder. Try to forget that it’s running and speak naturally. Then listen to yourselves afterward. Honestly examine how you both sound. I bet you’ll be surprised.

Even if you don’t often fight, we think this book is insightful for anyone who wants to understand more about how to make a good relationship great or turn conflict with anyone—like family, friends, and co-workers—into deeper connection.

Mali & Joe, authors of The Soulmate Experience: A Practical Guide to Creating Extraordinary Relationships, 52 Prescriptions for Happiness, and the upcoming book The Soulmate Lover, and creators of Mantras for Making Love

Mali & Joe April 1, 2014 , , , , , 1 594 0 Read more
1 666

Doing My Work

Marie Franklin lives with her husband in Portland, Oregon. They met 10 years ago and have been madly in love ever since. Marie is a matchmaker who wants to help others find their Soulmate Experiences, too!

SME at Book Passage

If you have started down a path in search of the Truth, then you know that certain books will present themselves to you along the way as you increase your understanding.

The Soulmate Experience is one of those books.

I’m a highly spiritual person and have been reading and looking for whatever “the real Truth is” my whole life. And I found rather quickly that if you do sincerely seek the Truth, you will stumble down a path and find it. It is not an overnight journey for most of us. For me, although I’ve been at it my whole life, I am just now really getting somewhere.

The first thing you learn on this path is that all answers must come from within. Which is really confusing, especially when you are holding a book in your hand outside of your body, and it is telling you that the answers you seek are within you. So you respond with “Huh? If the answers were within me then I would already know what I am trying to learn!”

And the next thing you find out is, yes you do already know what you are trying to learn. The Truth is held forever safe and sacred in a spot within you.

Then you find out that in order to find that sacred spot, you must “do your work.”

Your work will be different from anyone else’s work, and you’re the only one who can do yours. But if you do it… if you really do your work and complete most of it… literal treasure awaits you.

Emotional treasure.

The Soulmate Experience is a book for people who are ready to do their work. I think everyone could benefit from this book’s cool and beautiful tone and message. But readers who are on the path to Truth and who are ready and willing to work at the soul level will probably be greatly affected by this book.

As I read it, I was reminded again about so many Truths I have learned along my path.

Be in the present moment.

Treat everyone as a guest.

Release all guilt and resentments.

Don’t play negative tapes in your head all day.

Feel your gratitude.

SMEcafegratitudevenice

When you have begun to do your work, the list above is easier. I’m so glad I found this book right here on my path, because I have at least done enough work to come back to these practices and put them back into place. I haven’t done enough work yet that it is habit to have these in place, though. But I intend to get there. The Soulmate Experience is clearly the right step for me at this time.

When you really are present and loving and treating your life partner as your honored guest, you begin to feel that spot within you. That spot within you where the Truth is forever protected and waiting for you to find it again. When you engage on the soul level you feel yourself begin remember these important truths.

The authors are clearly people who are farther on down the path than I am. They are exactly the type of calm and centered loving people who can really use manifestation techniques well, because they understand how they work and why. After reading the book I went and watched a few clips of Joe and Mali in the Media section of their website, just to get to know them a little better. Seeing them for a few moments, I felt like I knew them and that I could trust them. When people do their work and get on down the path a bit, they can help the rest of us, sometimes just by their mere presence. You can see that they are at peace, and you know that peace might rub off on you a bit.

Readers who may have never been exposed to such metaphysical concepts will be amazed at what is presented in this book. I can imagine it could actually prompt someone onto their own path to Truth.

I am drawn to this book on many levels. The first one is that I am in a Soulmate Experience right now, every day! I am married to the man of my dreams and we are in love on the deep, soul level the book describes. When Joe and Mali are telling us what they “know” about romantic relationships, you can feel their love for each other, but also their ability to love in general. This shines through the book and helps the reader engage with their inner, deepest capacity for love.

Another level this book appeals to me is in the realm of romantic relationships, because I am a dating coach and matchmaker. I can’t wait to give this book to certain clients who I know will be able to use it! For some, this book could be a life changer. If a person can clear the space in their lives for their “guest,” then amazing things can happen.

SMEonthedeck

The book emphasizes that to engage on a soul level, you have to believe that you deserve it. This is hard for some people. So many of us have felt held back by life or cheated out of good things, especially romantic relationships. Then you don’t know if it is chicken or egg. Did I end up with poor results in the past because I didn’t really think I deserved true love, or did I really not deserve true love and that’s why I didn’t find it? It is easy for some people to feel that they are not deserving must be the answer.

But this feeling can be overcome and if you do overcome it, you’re going to be so much more likely to find that love you deserve. When you know you deserve it, your path opens up to better possibilities for you. This is true in so many other areas of life, but particularly in manifesting a truly loving relationship.

I’m pretty good at manifesting, but I still have a lot of work to do. Reading The Soulmate Experience reminded me to get more of my work done. I have so much still to do, and I know that if I do it, the type of relationship experiences Joe and Mali promise can happen, will happen. I have had enough glimpses in my life to know that I’m almost there.

This book is about Soulmate Experiences in the truest sense. We all have souls, and we can all experience each other on that level. It does not even have to be in the form of a romantic relationship, but when it is, it is like Heaven.

Marie, we honestly can't thank you enough for taking the time to share your experience with our Experience. Love and gratitude, Mali & Joe

Mali & Joe February 27, 2014 , , , , 1 666 0 Read more
1 1445

Mantras for Making Love

The author of this tender letter, the very first review of our brand new CD download, Mantras for Making Love, has graciously allowed us to share it with you.

As far as sexual experiences go, mine have been far from pleasant… a lifetime of sexual abuse. Sex has NEVER been pleasurable, at all. I have never experienced an orgasm.

Listening to Mantras for Making Love was a lesson for me, a long-awaited lesson. Obviously I already knew that the experiences that I have had in life were not accepted in society as normal. I wasn’t shut off from the outside world: I had friends, heard them talk about their relationships and sex lives etc., so it’s not that I was naïve enough to not know the difference but [the abuse I endured] was MY norm and I had no way to break that norm…

My point here is that listening to the mantras opened up a whole new world for me that I never knew existed. “Honor and pleasure to explore your desires with you” — for me sex was always about the other person, what they desired, them taking what they wanted. I got to the point where I left my body, let them do what they wanted and pretended it wasn’t happening. It was over quicker that way and I was hurt less.

The words “spiritual connection through our physical connection” is a foreign concept to me but one that sounds so spiritually and physically safe that even I would want to do it! The choice of phrases is remarkable. “In this loving space you are safe to try out being anyone with me,” “I am here to create a brand new experience with you tonight,” “my deepest desire is for you to open up and know yourself as a fully sexual man/woman,” “intention for our souls to unite”…

It doesn’t matter what stage of a relationship a couple is in, these mantras will be of use to them. Old, young, starting out in a relationship, together for a lifetime, trying to reconnect or reclaim their passion. These mantras will make people feel comfortable, at ease, will give them focus, encourage a feeling of openness and safety in the relationship, and improve communication.

I swore I would never have a physical relationship with anyone, ever again. What I just listened to makes me want to experience that. It has dispelled much of my fear. It makes me believe that sex and intimacy can be a pleasurable and enjoyable experience. It makes me believe that a physical connection is so much more than just the act of intercourse and that spirit and soul have as much to do with it as anatomy, if not more. It makes me believe that I am worthy of experiencing that connection with someone and also that it is not as impossible as I allowed myself to believe that it was.

After listening to it, I know that I need to do work to fix myself. I am not as emotionally or physically broken as I thought I was. Mantras for Making Love is something I will use when I find myself ready to explore the physical side of a relationship with someone. It is something I believe will help me create a safe place in which to move forward and something that will be of immense help to me in creating, experiencing, maintaining and enjoying a healthy physical relationship.

There is no doubt in my mind or in my heart that the magic people discover through you two will stay in their hearts and that the water of life will never be still; the ripples will continue forever.

Mantras for Making Love—soul-opening mantras and affirmations to create a space for profound intimacy and infuse your lovemaking with more connection, more passion, and more pleasure—is available here.
Mali & Joe September 19, 2012 , , , , , , , 1 1445 0 Read more
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Overcoming Jealousy: A 23-Day Online Course

If you've ever experienced jealousy, our new Overcoming Jealousy course at the Daily OM is for you!

Jealousy can be emotionally intense and physically exhausting. We don't like to admit we're feeling jealous, we don't enjoy how we act when we are, and most of us don't have effective ways of handling it. Jealousy can overtake us in an instant and leave us feeling insecure, embarrassed, paralyzed, angry, or out of control. We can find ourselves consumed with fear, imagining the worst, and disconnected from the one we love.

Whether you're currently in a relationship or not, you'll come away from this course feeling confident about your ability to approach jealousy in the future in an empowered way. With the tools and insights you'll gain, you'll never look at jealousy in the same way again.

In this 23-day course, you will:

  • Learn the root causes of jealousy
  • Explore the powerful influences of your cultural conditioning
  • Examine your personal experience with jealousy
  • Identify where your feelings of jealousy originate
  • Understand why our typical responses to jealousy are ineffective and destructive
  • Cultivate a deep sense of compassion and self-love
  • Acquire eight essential keys to freeing yourself from the pain of jealousy
  • Use powerful healing, meditation, and visualization techniques to absorb and integrate what you've learned
  • Discover how to transform jealousy from an experience of disconnection to one of increased connection
  • Learn how to harness the energy of jealousy to increase the passion in your relationship

SPECIAL VIDEO FEATURE

In support of your healing and transformational journey, each day you will watch an interview with a real woman, Lisa Vincent, who shares her own experiences with that day's exploration as well as the insights she gained through it.

"I wanted to do this course with you," Lisa says, "because one of the most important and inspiring aspects of other courses and workshops I've attended was in the sharing of the participants. Their personal stories helped me to know that I wasn't alone and to discover even more about myself."

Hearing Lisa's deeply touching stories, and witnessing her transformational process, will reassure you that you really can radically transform your own relationship with jealousy.

Head on over to the Daily OM to enroll. Your first lesson will be available immediately.

Mali & Joe April 4, 2012 , , , 605 0 Read more