In this episode of the PolySoCal Podcast, Alonzo Banx sits down one-on-one with Dr. Joli Hamilton for a deeper conversation about non-monogamy, depth psychology, and the real work of building relationships that actually function. Dr. Joli shares her own path through polyamory, school, parenting, Jungian psychology, and the creation of The Year of Opening, a year-long learning community for people consciously rethinking relationship structures. The conversation explores deconstructing monogamy, justice jealousy, relational repair, apology and accountability, and her minimum viable agreement process. Rather than treating polyamory as simply having multiple partners, Dr. Joli frames it as a larger question of self-knowledge, repair, agreements, and becoming more conscious about what love asks of us.

Alonzo Banx, Dr. Jolie Hamilton
Are you ready to open your relationship successfully? Take my quiz and find out

co-host of the Playing with Fire podcast 

Dr Joli Hamilton 

Alonzo banx: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Poly SoCal Podcast. I am Alonzo Banks, and we have, um, one of my very favorite guests in the house tonight, Dr. Jill Lee Hamilton. Doctor, welcome

Dr. Joli Hamilton: Thanks for having me back. It’s always fun to be in conversation with you

Alonzo banx: Doc, I, I gotta tell you that of all the guests that we have on this show, I have more people reach out and talk to me about you and the content that you’ve made on our show and the conversation. Before I get into that, I forgot. for those who don’t know you because, well, they’ve been living under a rock, tell us about yourself

Dr. Joli Hamilton: Okay, uh, the long and short of it, I’ve been polyamorous for 18 years. I’ve got– I, I did it all wrong at the beginning. All wrong. Like re- like when I say wrong, I mean objectively wrong, not like subjectively, like everybody does weird things. I, I did some really, ugh, yuck. Um, so I went back to school. I got a whole bunch of degrees.

I did my bachelor’s, my master’s, my [00:01:00] doctorate, and then another master’s for good measure, all in the, in the complete direction of I gotta figure out how human relationships work. And so I also have a whole bunch of degrees, and that led me to start teaching people, like, like we do, right? Once we figure stuff out.

And along the way, I figured out how to actually have really high quality relationships. I have, um, wonderful, wonderful people in my life and seven amazing children who are all grown now. So that’s another little tidbit about me. Um, and I run a program called The Year of Opening, which is sort of my…

That’s where I spend most of my time. It’s not just a program, it’s a community where we’re all in the soup trying to figure out how to do relationships in a way that actually works for us. Consciously designed, really making them work for us, and using the best practices that I’ve found can only be gleaned through taking what we learn in books and what we learn in therapy, and then actually putting into practice and crafting it for [00:02:00] ourselves

Alonzo banx: So I wanna put this in context. You clearly don’t sleep more than 30 minutes a night. You

Dr. Joli Hamilton: have been

Alonzo banx: s- you have seven children, a boatload of degrees, um, multiple projects, um, you’re poly so you have a few relationships, and you’re an author of a bunch of stuff. I mean, come on, overachiever or what?

Dr. Joli Hamilton: I may or may not have h- been accused of not sleeping enough. I will say, though, perimenopause is handling that for me. I now actually even sleep. I didn’t for a long time. I … You’re, you’re not wrong. And people used to ask me all the time, “Do you have more hours in the day or something?” I am one of those people who is genuinely fueled by my work.

Like, it i- it, it’s so easy for me to see how what I’m doing and what I’m learning impacts everyone around me. So even… I went back to school when I had, you know, all these kids were home and young, and I was homeschooling them as well, and it was easy to [00:03:00] see how the work I was doing was paying off in all of my relationships, including my relationships with my children, with my parents who were living then, with like, it, it made it worth it.

We don’t need to sleep if it’s worth it.

Alonzo banx: And, uh, but I’m s- I’m, I’m in awe. I know what, I don’t even know which way to question that. Um, you went back to school with the kids

Dr. Joli Hamilton: Yeah, I went back when, um, I was 35. My, um… It’s a pretty ridiculous story, but I had, I’d gotten divorced. Um, I’d gotten divorced. I, I was living full-time in a triad for the first time. Um, so went from four kids to seven kids overnight. Very interesting adventure to do that. And I was running a business with my two partners.

Um, and we l- I liked the business, but I was very aware that it was not my life’s work. I, we… I, I owned a CrossFit gym, so clearly I’m into cults, right? Um, [00:04:00] I did that, and I, I was in… I enjoyed it a lot, but it… What I noticed is, over the years, I was always doing the same thing. I was always talking to people.

That’s really what I was doing. It wasn’t actually about the physical exercise or anything else. It was, it was, oh, people wanted to come in. They wanted to talk to me. They wanted to get my take on things. And I thought, “I really don’t have, I don’t have the, the background for this. I shouldn’t be… I don’t I don’t wanna stand in this space of, of p- having people come to me and have no, no foundation.”

So yep, uh, at 35 I decided to go back to school. I, I had to go all the way back. I did my, um, my bachelor’s in psychology on the weekends. It was crazy. We picked up a program where I could do 12 hours on, of classes on Saturdays so I could get it done as fast as possible. And then psychology held my interest.

I was obsessed even in my undergrad with depth psychology, so Jungian and archetypal psychologies. [00:05:00] And the tough part about that is it’s not, it’s not standard issue therapy. So it’s not something that people will just like look you up to go find, and it’s not something that’s reimbursed by insurance. So I had to make a hard decision.

Like, I’m, I’m 35. I’ve got all these kids. I’m living in a triad. Like, what, where am I gonna spend my energy? And I have found that my soul doesn’t, it won’t rest until I give it what it demands. And what it demanded was that I study Jungian psychology, and that I allow myself to do that even while raising the kids.

So my youngest was five years old, and my oldest then was 12 years old when I went back, and I spent the next 12 and a half years in school. Um, I have, I have no regrets about it. I, I, I wondered all the time when I was doing it, would I have regrets because it’s a lot to [00:06:00] balance. Um, but now that the kids are grown, the youngest is 19, I think all the time about how what I was doing was becoming the person that they deserved to have as a parent.

I, I was becoming the mother I wanted to be, as well as learning how to do all this other awesome stuff. So zero regrets, but it was, it was a lot at the time

Alonzo banx: I can’t even begin to imagine. Okay, so I really wanna talk about you and some of your things today, but you mentioned something there, and in fairness, I gotta kinda go down the path a little bit. Um, depth psychology, union, um, for those who don’t know, give me a what does that actually mean?

Dr. Joli Hamilton: Yeah, so Carl Jung, most people are familiar at least with the concept of, like, the shadow or the concepts of introversion and extroversion. Those are some core Jungian concepts that we all, we talk about them in just, like, general life, right? Um, Carl Jung was a, a s- a psychiatrist in Switzerland. We go back [00:07:00] to, you know, early 1900s.

What he was writing about was, um, a psychology, a study of, of the human soul, of, of the human mind, that really took seriously the unconscious, and he wasn’t alone. There are other depth psychologists before and after. Um, but depth psychology is a way of experiencing, um, what I feel like it’s, it’s a s- it’s almost a spiritual psychology.

There’s– it takes the soul seriously, and if we look at the word therapy, the word therapy in Greek really means tending or care of the soul, right? So that’s the heart of this work. But we also take the unconscious seriously, which means we don’t just work on behaviors that we’re seeing right now. We’re looking under the surface.

We’re looking for not just the historical, not just what you’re y- what you remember of your life, but also everything that you don’t know about yourself, and we [00:08:00] use dream work, and we use, um, somatic techniques, and we use, um, I, I use a lot of different ways to help people see what’s going on underneath, behind, around the corner from the obvious.

That’s what we’re doing over there.

Alonzo banx: I g- you said help people and, and I wanna go down that path. Um, I know for a fact that a couple of the members of our table come to you and now they can’t stop gushing about working with you and actually being enrolled in your programs. Um, so all I get now is g- to listen to the amazing stuff that you do and have done.

So what’s that all about? What, what do you do for couples that has got good friend of mine just going on about you nonstop?

Dr. Joli Hamilton: Well, I think first off, uh, you know, there are a lot of ways for people to be coming to non-monogamy, right? Like, a lot, a lot of ways. And so [00:09:00] somebody who’s coming to it, um, in their early 20s or even early thir- 30s may have a, a sort of sense of like, “Oh, I’ve always been this way,” and, and they kinda head in the direction, and they don’t have as much to unpack.

I tend to work with people who are at mid-life, um, so like 35 and older, um, who are… They’re- they’ve come to non-monogamy, they want something out of it, or their partner has tapped them on the shoulder and said, “Hey, so I want to explore this thing.” Um, and they not only need to learn a new paradigm, need to figure out how to make, um, a, a relationship structure that they’re not familiar with actually work for them, but they also need to unpack, “How did I get here, and what, what is, what created my relational reality?”

So depth psychology is a fantastic method for this. So what I’ve done is create a, a program that is, it is both a learning community… Uh, it’s three things really. It’s a [00:10:00] learning community, it’s a mentorship, and it’s also an ongoing community, so even after you graduate the program, you stay a part of the community.

And we continue to have a space where we’re talking about how non-monogamy isn’t just about our relationships. It’s about questioning everything. It’s a little like deconstructing from high-demand religion, right? Deconstructing from monogamy doesn’t mean that you’ll always have multiple partners, right?

You might have just one partner, but once you deconstruct from monogamy, you have the capacity to see multiple relationship structures that can work for you. You have the capacity to create your relationships in a really mindful way. So what I do is help people over the course of a full year, and then in the community afterwards, carefully, thoughtfully step through all of the things I wish I had known, all of the things I wish somebody had said, “Hey, you need to think about power differentials and how they show up in your relationships.”

And [00:11:00] so we’ll walk through that topic, and then we’ll tie that topic to, say, asymmetric agreements, and we’ll tie that topic to justice jealousy, right? And so when we, when we get into the year of opening, you have a whole year to be held in a space where someone else, someone who’s already gone down the path, has organized for you a way to thoughtfully consider the stuff that usually we don’t deal with until it whacks you upside the head with either an angry partner or a dissolving relationship or just hating what you’re doing.

And we’re doing that in connection to each other. ‘Cause a lot of times people will seek out therapy, and therapy’s wonderful, but therapy is often about fixing things or about looking at what’s happening this specific relationship, and what we’re doing is psycho-education. We’re re-educating your soul on what’s possible in relationships for you.

And also, I have absolutely no agenda about what relationship structure people choose. [00:12:00] I happen to… I’m polyamorous. Polyamory works for me. Um, but we have plenty of people who go through the program and they’re like, “Oh, actually, it is monogamy for me. That, that’s it. That’s for me.” Great. All of the tools that we learn, all the techniques I teach, they all apply in monogamy as well.

But sadly, what we learned in monogamy doesn’t necessarily pan out and help us when we’re trying to do non-monogamy. So that’s kinda what it looks like

Alonzo banx: You hit on a couple of things here, but I wanna back up. Um, I’m putting words in your mouth, so correct me if I say this wrong. Um, so you’re not therapy

Dr. Joli Hamilton: I do not consider myself, not in this realm. So I have, I have a master’s degree in mental health counseling. I don’t practice as a licensed therapist on purpose because I have found that what’s missing w- and what most people need is really psychoeducation. So I went back to my roots. I’ve been teaching, I’ve been teaching my whole life [00:13:00] basically.

If I, if I go back and look, I’m like, “Oh, I started teaching very, very young.” So the work that we’re doing is often people experience it as therapeutic, as in it tends their soul. But it’s not, “Oh, I’m going to therapy.” We’re not boxing up our stuff and going to therapy and then doing that. Instead, we’re getting into a container where we’re intentionally looking at specific topics and then, and then delving into how does this topic inform my non-monogamous experience?

How is it informing my relational self? Um, which is very different from therapy where we come and we say, “Here’s my problem right now,” or, “Here’s what’s coming up for me right now.” Both valuable, but very, very different experiences. And most therapists ha- the … I have had so many recommendations for people to come to our program while they’re doing therapy because in a therapeutic hour, we don’t have time to do all the psychoeducation needed when we’re, especially when we’re doing a paradigm shift.

So this can be really ha- [00:14:00] advantageous to pair these things together

Alonzo banx: Okay, so paint me a picture. My partner and I come to you and say, “Help.” what does that next year… You said it’s a year-long process.

Dr. Joli Hamilton: it is

Alonzo banx: what, what, what are we group talks? Are we meeting online? What, what are we doing for a year that gets us

Dr. Joli Hamilton: Yeah, so the very first thing I do if you and your partner show up, the first thing we do i- is a complimentary consult, ’cause I need to meet you and find out if I’m the right person for you. I’m not always. Uh, but I only invite about 25% of the people who reach out to me to actually do the Year of Opening, because my work is pretty specific.

What we’re gonna be doing is meeting weekly for an hour. We have a group call. Your cohort has a group call. That cohort only has up to 20 people in it, so you’re gonna get to know them. You know, you know, a room full of 20 or fewer people, we get to know them. Those are our people. They become our, our little group.

We bond together, and we take a very patient path through the material. [00:15:00] So we work very hard to build group trust together. We don’t just show up and everybody just, like, splays their heart open and says, “This is why… What’s been hard for me.” Instead, we come in and my p- my anchor partner co-teaches with me, so Ken is in the room for every single class.

We guide you through this, learning how to take risks, learning how to share in your group cohort. But you also have, um, access to cohort meetings and our community meetings. Our community meetings are anybody who’s ever gone through the program can come to those. So we have people who’ve… Uh, I’m enrolling the 20th cohort right now, so people have been going back a ways in this.

And we show up, and in those community calls, we are doing more open discussion or talking about a topic, like we had one earlier this week on using, um, dialogue techniques for repair, for relational repair. So sometimes you’re showing up to a call going, “Uh, [00:16:00] I fucked up. Things are really bad. Um, remind me how to use the tool.”

And sometimes you show up and you listen when we talk about a topic like excavating desire when desire seems to have gone missing. And you might not think that that topic even has anything to do with you or what’s going on in your situation. But inevitably, as you listen, as we do our little… There’s a mini lecture at the beginning, and then we get into group conversation, and as we do that, the room starts to open up, like, “Oh, this is relevant to my life.

This is the stuff nobody told me to think about. This is the stuff we don’t talk about in polite company.” But here’s a space where we do. We do talk about it, and we talk about it week after week. And the reason it’s a whole year is because we need to not just present ideas, but then go put them into action.

Go try it out. So, like, I teach a very specific agreement-making process. I could teach that process in 90 minutes, and [00:17:00] I could just, like, have a little workshop, you take it, and go make ’em. What I need you to do is go try the process out, screw it up, make mistakes, come back, show us what happened, what worked, what didn’t.

Be held by your community. Be witnessed in like, “Oh, I see what you tried there. Yeah, it sounds like you need to repair from that,” or, “Oh, it doesn’t, it didn’t work to do the agreement that way. What do we do different next time?” So we have to make space for ongoing community to sh- show up and support you as you put an entirely new way of relating into action.

So not just, “I’m gonna learn this, but now I’m gonna enact it. I’m gonna live it.”

Alonzo banx: Hey, I understand.

Dr. Joli Hamilton: I, I, it’s not a small ask I make of people. It’s not a small

Alonzo banx: com-

Dr. Joli Hamilton: ask

Alonzo banx: but like I said, I, I, I know someone enrolled in your program, a couple that are enrolled, and they’re loving it.

Dr. Joli Hamilton: I’m really glad they are. I am. I am

Alonzo banx: it. you used a term that I wanna understand better, [00:18:00] justice jealousy.

Dr. Joli Hamilton: Oh. Okay.

Alonzo banx: out there and I

Dr. Joli Hamilton: I did. I just tossed it in there. Okay. Yeah. So justice jealousy is a term coined by Jessica Fern in her book Polysecure. I’m sure Jessica was using the term before that even. I am a jealousy researcher, so when I saw justice jealousy, I was like, “Oh, great. Awesome.” I will say justice jealousy is really more closely related to envy, if we wanna get technical about our terms.

But justice jealousy is when I– it’s the whole host of emotions that come up when a partner can do or wants to do something with a new partner that they haven’t been willing or able to do for us. Yikes. Very specific way of feeling the ick about… It’s, it’s one thing to watch your partner in NRE when you’re like, “Well, I get that, and now a new person gets it.”

It’s particularly challenging when a new person gets it and you’re like, “Oh, wait a second. I thought you said you couldn’t do that. I thought you said you wouldn’t– I thought planning dates was too hard [00:19:00] for you. I thought you didn’t wanna do kinky stuff. I– Turns out you didn’t then or you didn’t for me.”

Yikes. This is some heavy stuff. I actually just taught a class on this last night. It’s– It wakes up all the envy monsters in us, and that is not a small thing

Alonzo banx: That is a, a big thing. So tools

Dr. Joli Hamilton: Yeah

Alonzo banx: You talk about tool

Dr. Joli Hamilton: I’m a big fan. I’m an operationalizer by, by like nature.

Alonzo banx: I, I, you know, I think in the same way too, and that’s always one of my, you know, give me the tools. I don’t, I don’t understand. What are the ones that you find you’re pulling out of your toolbox the most and, and giving people? I mean, like, give me like the top two or three where it’s

Dr. Joli Hamilton: Yeah.

Alonzo banx: one gets called on all the time.”

Dr. Joli Hamilton: Yeah, okay, well, w- let’s start with, with the big one. The apology and accountability ladder. If you don’t have one, get one. This is not optional. Everyone needs to learn how [00:20:00] to deliver a really beautiful non-defensive apology, because stuff’s gonna go wrong. When we talk about relational repair, that is, that’s the number one skill I need to have people start learning.

And most people imagine that they have a good, a- ability to apo- apologize, and then they learn the A&A ladder, and they’re like, “Oh, I’ve been doing that wrong my whole life.” It’s, it’s a really simple thing to learn, and then we gotta practice. We gotta learn how to actually live it. The other big one is my MVA process.

MVA, minimum viable agreement process. That’s my, um… It’s a, it’s a very specific way of looking at agreements in our relationships, and it doesn’t have to be agreements about sex or non-monogamy. This could be agreements about how we load the dishwasher. But an MVA, or a minimum viable agreement, is a very intentionally created mini agreement.

They are short-term experimental agreements designed to help us [00:21:00] understand better what we actually need and want, and what we actually have to offer our partners in a way that lets us make some mistakes, fix it, come back to the table, and over time, be able to make more durable agreements. The MVA process is, I couldn’t do without it.

I- Most people, when they talk about making agreements in non-monogamous relationships, they’re like, “Let’s make values-based agreements.” And they make these big, beautiful vow-like agreements with each other. And then they screw them up, and they hurt each other, and they’re like, “Oh, I fell short again. I fell short.”

And then they give up on agreements. They’re like, “I don’t even wanna have them.” So I’ve made an incredibly tight, um, it’s a, it’s a concise process, and it’s designed specifically to teach us how to actually be in agreement. Not to have rules, but how to be in agreement. In other words, how to collaborate with other people to create what we want without over-functioning or over- or, or under-functioning, without people-pleasing or being too rigid.[00:22:00] 

It’s a, it’s a really, really helpful process

Alonzo banx: that sounds awesome, but I’m, I’m gonna make you open that up a little bit. How does practical application… I mean, that sound, that sounded great. Yes, I’m in.

Dr. Joli Hamilton: Sure. Yeah

Alonzo banx: does that really mean when we crack it open and look inside?

Dr. Joli Hamilton: Yeah. It looks like cr- first defining what is the duration of this agreement? Most people make agreements that are ongoing forever. So I’ll just, I’ll give you the, the whole one, two, four on MVAs. Most people make agreements and they’re like, “It’s in place, you know, forever.” I don’t do that. We just do not do that.

The first thing we agree on is what’s the duration of this agreement? And when we’re learning MVAs, I want your agreements to be very small, less than a month long. I s- recommend people start off with one night, one event, one weekend, very short term. So we pick a duration. Then we make offers and requests, and there are other ways to do these agreements.

I actually have a three-part description. This is just one of them. We make offers and requests. [00:23:00] Everyone in the agreement field needs to make some offers, and everyone needs to make some requests. This breaks us out of the habit of one person being the relationship administrator, uh, or being the, the w- the only person who’s ever driving this

Alonzo banx: Give me a hypothetical. Give

Dr. Joli Hamilton: Hypothetical,

Alonzo banx: get my head around

Dr. Joli Hamilton: okay, we’re gonna go to a sex party.

We are going to a party. It’s not our first party, but it is our first party at this event space, so we don’t necessarily know ex- exactly what’s gonna happen, and we have a habit of going to parties and just beating the crap out of each other afterwards. Like, afterwards we’re… We, we, we wanna go, but then afterwards we’re just m- miserable with each other.

W- we’re just… Like, we can’t get back together, and so it takes, like, two weeks, three weeks to recover every time we go to a party. So we make an agreement tight. The agreement field is not just for the party, but for the lead up time, might be even a day ahead of time, and for the recovery time afterwards.

So we’re gonna have an agreement field there that’s gonna be at least three days long. [00:24:00] Then we each make requests and offers. Requests might look like, “I agree to stay within eyesight of you while we’re at this party,” or, “I agree to hold your hand during the first 30 minutes and during the icebreakers part of this party,” or, “I agree to leave the room if you decide to connect with someone and I feel a little ick about that person.”

My requests and offers can be as detailed as I want them to be, but the idea here is that each person is making some requests and some offers, and we’re getting specific. And then we do detailed expectations and definitions. So we don’t make agreements like, um, it’s okay to have sex with other people.

That’s, that’s an insane s- statement because what is sex? Who are the other people? What do I mean when I say sex? What are the parameters that… Like, when? When, when? What does that mean? It’s just too big. We’re gonna make it really narrow. We say something instead like, “We’re open to exploring penetrative sex during [00:25:00] this party, but all penetrative sex will use barrier protection,” or, “We’re not open to penetrative sex.

So I’m not open to penetrative sex, but I’m open to you experiencing penetrative sex, so I offer to, um, to leave the room if I see you having penetrative sex because I don’t want you to.” See, we get into, like, the… We really get into, like, the, the nitty-gritty here. This is why really small containers What happens when people go through this process is they find out, oh, my agreements have been failing because we don’t share definitions.

We, we– when we make an agreement, we say something like, “We’re gonna go and we’re gonna support each other, having an open-hearted time.” What the hell does that mean? Like, what does that mean in action? What does it mean to you, and what does it mean to me? I might think that that means that you’re gonna stay very close and you’re gonna check in with me, and you might think that means that we’re absolutely just gonna split up when we get to the party and, and just really just energetically support, go have a good time.[00:26:00] 

We gotta get into the nitty-gritty. It’s making these detailed agreements about short-term experiences that helps us start to know what actually works for us in real lived experience. And the last piece of an MVA is always gonna be what’s the action plan if we hit a deal breaker? If like, if somebody violates expectations or something happens, what’s our action plan?

Who are we calling? Like, are we, are we getting in touch with our coach or our therapist? Are we reaching out to our cohort for support? What are we– how are we coming back together? Do we need alone time to process if there’s a hurt? Um, are we gonna do an A&A ladder afterwards? But we have a plan ahead of time.

So that is the long and short of the whole, the whole process, and what happens is people learn it and they’re like, “What the hell? Making an agreement’s so hard.” I’m like, yeah, it, it is if we actually get clear on what our expectations are, and most agreements fail because we leave our expectations behind a curtain and expect our partner to [00:27:00] just e- know what they are.

They get easier over time. I make agreements with my partners now, and I can whip these things out in ten minutes, no problem. At the beginning, people are usually like, “Whoa, this is a lot.” It is a lot. We, we, we get better at what we practice, though.

Alonzo banx: It’s very clear why people love your work so much

Dr. Joli Hamilton: I’m very specific. I mean, y-

Alonzo banx: awesome.

Dr. Joli Hamilton: me or hate me, and I’m fine with that

Alonzo banx: Well, I’ve yet to meet anyone who doesn’t fall in love with you in the first five minutes, so

Dr. Joli Hamilton: that’s very sweet

Alonzo banx: So what else you, what do you got going on in your life? What kind of stuff? You, you s- I mean, you talk, any new books coming out? Any, you got some, your, you got your ongoing, um, work, but, uh,

Dr. Joli Hamilton: Yeah, so I,

Alonzo banx: in

Dr. Joli Hamilton: I have my ongoing work. The Year of Opening is, it, it is the l- like, it’s the, the beating heart of, of my life. Uh, you know, now that the kids are grown, I, like, The Year of Opening is definitely the thing where I spend most of my time. But it is not the only thing. Um, I also run a program called Individuation Alchemy, which is for [00:28:00] people who are trying to figure out how to, how to live their, their, like, their soul’s calling, how to open up to their unconscious.

Um, I d- teach that over a nine-month period of time, and that group, it’s not the, it’s not non-monogamy focused at all. It’s, it’s just about our soul’s calling. But it is, it’s really interesting that people who come to me often are, so it’s also in a space where it’s, it’s possible to talk about our non-monogamy as just part of our larger work.

Um, and I am also currently writing a book. Um, the title is still in work, so I won’t say it now, but it’s essentially about relationships as a soul-making vehicle. Um, we’re working on exactly… The h- the world may not fully understand yet what I mean by soul making, so we’re still workshopping how I’m gonna convey that fully to people.

But really, it’s the h- it’s how do I help people understand that our individuation, our, our process of becoming more and more [00:29:00] ourselves, is not something we can do alone. We can’t just go sit alone in a cave on a mountain. That’s, that’s giving some unhelpful energy right there. We actually need to use our relationships, and the projection, and the shadow, and the messes, and the, the dialogue that comes up to actually know ourselves.

That’s what we do. And that’s, that’s it. That’s my work. So there’s the intersecting, like, Venn diagram of, of what I’m doing. And then, you know, then there’s the rest of my life. I mostly, if I’m not doing that, I am absolutely knitting.

Alonzo banx: Of course you do. Okay. I was gonna ask the question ’cause you threw another term out there, but then you explained it a little. Individuation.

Dr. Joli Hamilton: Individuation.

Alonzo banx: does that mean?

Dr. Joli Hamilton: Yeah, I use it in a very specific sense. So Carl Jung coined the term individuation specifically to mean bringing my unconscious material into conscious awareness, right? I’m– It is not just becoming… Individuation happens at one level, just, like, we grow [00:30:00] up and we, we, you know, we s- like, start to recognize ourselves as separate from our parents, and we start making independent decisions, and we…

That’s the sort of natural level. Like, yeah, everybody is doing that. But individuation as a psychological process is doing things like actually engaging with our dream material. Like tracking our dreams and then engaging with it. Um, engaging fully in our imaginable capacity, right? So taking our fantasies seriously, taking our, um, all the images and the symbolic life that we live, taking that seriously.

Um, individuation is, it’s another way of saying, “I wanna become the most me version of me possible, and I can’t do that just waiting for it to happen. I have to actually engage with my psyche.” And so what I do is, well, it’s the same thing I do in the year of opening. I say, “Well, let’s, let’s get a little bit methodical about it so that we can then be incredibly artistic and free with it,” right?

I give people clear tools and [00:31:00] techniques so that then something like dreamwork or, um, I’ll often ask people to tend the images in their life. Like, what does that mean? How do I do it? I’m just gonna give you steps. Just like, try this. And then over time, like when we learn to paint or knit or do anything creative, you start with those basic steps, and then before you know it, you’re just making your own thing.

Alonzo banx: You have such an infectious energy. I could sit here,

Dr. Joli Hamilton: I infected you

Alonzo banx: yeah, you, you… You know, I’m sitting here going, “Okay, we, we promised we’d keep this talk today down to about 30, 40 minutes,” and I’m going, I got this whole list of notes just from what you’ve said that I could, I could keep going. But I’m gonna, I’m gonna honor my commitment to you and, and keep it brief today. So how can people get ahold of you? How can, how can they track you down, other than… Yeah, obviously we’ll put all the links

Dr. Joli Hamilton: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the easiest…

Alonzo banx: way to get to you?

Dr. Joli Hamilton: Yeah, the easiest thing to do is if, if when I was describing the Year of [00:32:00] Opening, if that was your thing, just go to yearofopening.com. On there, you’re either gonna see the wait list will be open or my calendar will be open for calls right now, depending on when you listen to this episode.

So that’s the easiest way. If you wanna talk to me, if you wanna have a consult with me where we find out is that the right fit for you, go to yearofopening.com. If you’re just like, “I don’t know, but this Joli person, I want more of Joli,” you can go to listentojoli.com, get on my mailing list, and from there you’ll get my rela- my top three relationship guides, uh, in there.

But also you’ll just be welcomed into my world. You’ll hear when I’m teaching. You’ll hear when new programs are opening up. You’ll also hear when I have free events going on, and you’ll hear when I release podcast episodes, ’cause the other good place to find me is on Playing With Fire. It’s a weekly, um, release that I do with my anchor partner, Ken.

Uh, we just… We’re releasing our 250th episode this, uh, th- this weekend actually, and it’s a ridiculous episode. It’s two and a half hours long. It’s– I’ve [00:33:00] never done anything that long. It’s crazy, but we’re celebrating, right? We’re celebrating

Alonzo banx: I can’t thank you enough for coming back, and you know I’m gonna be begging you again in the future

Dr. Joli Hamilton: I am more than happy. Thank you so much for having me, Alonzo. It really, really matters to me that, like, we, we get to have an ongoing conversation. It’s, it’s so much different than just a one-off, so thank you for that

Alonzo banx: You are amazing. I am still Alonzo Banks. This has been the Poly SoCal Podcast with the amazing