Welcome back to Tuff Love with Rob Kandell. This episode has two very special guests, Erwan and Alicia Davon. One of his first teachers, Erwan Davon has been one of the most influential people in Rob’s life. Rob was a numb, dumb, chauvinistic, misogynistic yuppie on March 20th 1999. He sat in a room full of people, Erwan mirrored back parts of himself Rob couldn’t see, including the shadows, and he basically said the solid truth. One of the greatest gifts we can give people is mirroring back what we see with approval, with intention and not saving us from ourselves. Erwan just let Rob sit and that morphed him and changed him.

Both Erwan and Alicia are very interesting people, and Erwan has been helping people with relationships and sexuality for 25 years. They share with Rob how they got started, what has motivated them and how they’ve kept going:

Personally it started out with an extremely rough childhood for Erwan. He ended up in therapy very early out of necessity. Then got into transformation work and started studying psychology at the University of Santa Cruz. That difficult accident, the difficulties of his childhood, ended up being a blessing because it got him going early.
He also dove into it completely. First through therapy, then studying psychology, getting into transformational work and working for a transformational organization for 7 years. Then moved into another transformational organization that was more sexuality based. It was many long years of apprenticeship and study.
Erwan also credits choosing a direction that’s true, a direction that really really feeds his heart, that he’s honest and passionate about. That inquiry is important to stick with something for the long haul. The human being, much less the romantic human being, is challenging to work. It’s a very challenging but very rewarding area.
Alicia met Rob in 2003 in the pleasure course and that experience totally blew her mind. She felt so high, so expansive, so taken care of that she didn’t want to go home. Soon after she switched from her career track to become a therapist. After finishing her masters degree she joined Erwan’s organization.
The story of how Rob, Erwan and Nicole were part of OneTaste’s path. They had an off again, on again relationship and also were teaching together. In May of 2003 Rob joined and that ended in Ocotber 2003.
Erwan also lived in a zen monastery for a while and a yoga ashram.

How Erwan and Alicia help people:

They support singles and couples in creating an eternal date. That is a romantic relationship that reaches higher and higher peaks of intimacy and sexual attraction and spiritual union over time. So it’s for both singles and couples and they do that through spiritual and psychological inquiry, sexual development, and training in romantic skills. The foundation is cultivating presence and awareness in relationship.
Singles come because they want to get into a really great relationship, and learn how to create the long lasting, juicy, soul mate relationship that has the amazing passion but also the stability and heart and intimacy.
Couples usually come because they’re together and things are either great, pretty good or challenging. The thing in common is they usually want to get the spark and passion and chemistry back in the relationship.
Erwan and Alicia teach people to meditate. They do 3 weekly groups and have people meditate in the live groups. One of the defining factors is people being awake and present, There’s no substitute for that.
Alicia is more schooled in psychology than Erwan. Where people are really challenged, the biggest knotholes are psychological. In workshops and seminars some of which are very good, you can learn things and really open up but it’s not really going to stick unless there’s a psychological change.