She Scored 23 Out of 27
(Article Based in Part on Chapter 7 of Our New Book!)
In more than forty years of doing this work, there's a particular kind of couple I've learned to recognize the moment they sit down.
They're not in crisis. Nothing is technically wrong. They love each other, and they'd tell you so without hesitating. But something quiet is missing, and neither one of them can name it.
A couple I'll call Robbie and Laura came to us exactly like that.
"We love each other. We just want to take it to the next level."
They'd been married nearly a decade. From the outside, everything looked solid. But on the inside, both of them were carrying the same quiet ache:
Isn't there supposed to be more?
When we asked what they meant, Laura said she longed for deeper intimacy. Not just sex, but tenderness, attention, the feeling of being cherished. Robbie said he wanted fewer misunderstandings. More ease between them.
Then we gave them an assessment, and everything cracked open.
Laura scored 23 out of 27. Robbie scored 20 out of 27.
They are both what psychologists call Highly Sensitive Persons.
Laura's whole face changed when she heard it. "That explains so much," she said. "People have told me my whole life not to be so sensitive."
I wonder how many of you just felt something reading that.
What it actually means to be highly sensitive.
A Highly Sensitive Person's nervous system takes in more information than most people's. It processes more deeply. It registers subtle emotional and energetic shifts that other people walk right past and never notice at all.
This is not fragility. It's sensitivity. And sensitivity is a STRENGTH.
Highly sensitive people tend to feel emotions intensely, have rich inner lives, and need more downtime than others to stay balanced. Most have been told at some point that they're too much, or too emotional, or that they simply need to toughen up.
Laura had heard it from her older siblings growing up. Her teachers said it too. So she learned to hold parts of herself back, because showing her real feelings had always seemed to cost her something.
Here's what was really happening in their marriage.
Underneath everything, Robbie carried a Core Wound that said I don't deserve love. His father was critical. His mother was distant. He'd learned as a boy that love had to be earned, and he was never quite sure he had earned it.
Laura's wound said something different: I'm not acceptable the way I am.
So the two of them got caught in a loop. When Robbie withdrew, it confirmed Laura's fear that she wasn't acceptable. When Laura was disappointed, it confirmed Robbie's belief that he didn't deserve her love.
They were never short on love. The problem was never each other at all. It was the unhealed gunk they had each carried in with them, and because they are both highly sensitive, their nervous systems were amplifying each other's pain.
Once we released those wounds and they finally understood how each of them was wired, something shifted. Robbie looked at her with tears in his eyes and said, "You are more than acceptable. You're everything I ever wanted." Laura took his hand and told him, "You deserve love. You've always deserved love."
Your sensitivity was never the problem.
This is the part I most want you to hear.
Their sensitivity wasn't a flaw to be managed. It was a superpower. It was the very thing that made them so attuned to each other, so intuitive, so capable of the kind of connection most couples never reach.
It wasn't that they felt too much. It's that no one ever taught them how to honor and regulate the gift.
If you're wondering about yourself, Dr. Elaine Aron developed the original sensitivity assessment, and you can take it free at HSPerson.com. It's 27 questions, and answering more than fourteen of them as true of yourself means you're probably highly sensitive. Which tells you something about Laura's 23. For a lot of people, it's the first time their whole life suddenly makes sense.
So let me ask you gently:
• Have you spent years being told you're too sensitive, too emotional, too much?
• What if the very thing you've been apologizing for is the thing that makes you capable of extraordinary love?
That's exactly what we help people uncover here, with a team of more than 50 Master Practitioners and a retreat that's custom-designed around exactly where you are, In Sedona or At Home. We find the Core Wounds, we find how each of you is actually wired, and we teach you how to work with that instead of against it.
Can you imagine stopping the apology you've been making for who you are?
Can you imagine your sensitivity finally being treated as the gift it is, by the person closest to you?
There's no cost or obligation to talk it through with one of our Soul Guides. We're even open on Sunday, because we're here for you.
Tap here to learn more and schedule a consultation with one of our Soul Guides.
High-Vibe Relationship
For a while now, Richard and I have been quietly writing it all down. Everything we've learned about love, about why two good people can drift so far from each other, and about what it actually takes to come back. It's become a book. We're calling it High-Vibe Relationship.
(Robbie and Laura's full story, and what it really means to be highly sensitive? That's Chapter 7.)
Before it goes out into the world, we want to put it in the hands of the people who'll carry it the furthest.
We're calling them the Founding 100.
A small circle of heart-centered people who believe what we believe — that relationships can heal, that families can heal, that love can become conscious and connected again.
As one of the Founding 100, you'll get the book early plus a free digital copy, our "Raise Your Vibration" meditation and tools, private Zoom gatherings with Richard and me, and teachings we won't be releasing anywhere else.
No big following required. No special experience. Just heart, and a real belief in the message.
Want in? Email us at [email protected] and put "INTERESTED: Founding 100" in the subject and we'll send you everything.
- Debra & Richard
Soul Travel
Return to Egypt — Total Solar Eclipse Tour | August 2027
The next time you could do this, it will be the year 2114.
On August 2, 2027, a total solar eclipse will hold the sky dark over the ancient temples of Egypt for up to 6 minutes and 23 seconds. That's the longest total eclipse anyone standing on Earth will witness for the next 87 years. Most eclipses give you two or three minutes. The one that crossed America in 2024? Four and a half, at best. This one lasts more than SIX full minutes… directly above temples that were built, thousands of years ago, to honor the sun.
I've been writing all week about people who feel things more deeply than most. If that's you, then you already know that places have a temperature to them. Some rooms you walk into and your whole body settles before you've said a word. For someone wired that way, this isn't sightseeing.
I've stood inside those temples before, and there's an energy in them I still can't quite put into words. Can you imagine what it would be to be standing in that, as the sky goes dark at midday? I already know it's a moment I'll carry for the rest of my life.
We're still putting the final pieces together. If you feel even a flicker of yes, let us know, and we'll send you everything the moment it's ready.
Solar Eclipse Over the Nile | August 2027
Soul Academy
You Have an Inner Pharmacy (And Your Breath Is the Key)
Here's something most people never learn in their entire lives:
You can reach a state of deep peace, euphoria, even profound healing… without a single substance. No pill. No drink. Nothing from the outside at all.
Your own body already makes the chemistry. You just have to know how to unlock it.
And the key is something you've been doing, unconsciously, since the moment you were born. Your breath.
The breath is the bridge.
For thousands of years — in yoga, in meditation, in martial arts — the breath has been used to regulate the nervous system and calm the mind. There's a reason for that. The breath is a direct bridge between your body and your mind.
But here's what happens to most of us. Under stress, fear, or old pain, we unconsciously restrict our breathing. We hold it. We shorten it. And over the years, that becomes a habit — locking tension and unprocessed emotion into the body, where it just… stays.
Conscious breathwork interrupts that pattern. It lets the body finally release what it's been holding, and come back to a regulated, open state. It reaches places that thinking alone simply can't get to.
You activate your own inner pharmacy.
There's real science emerging here. Researchers like Dr. Joe Dispenza are beginning to map what actually happens: intense, conscious breathwork triggers a cascade of neurochemicals and peptides that flood the brain, creating euphoric, expansive, sometimes genuinely mystical states, generated entirely from within.
In other words: the pharmacy was inside you the whole time. Your breath is how you fill the prescription.
I've watched people connect with parts of themselves they'd lost touch with for decades. I've watched old wounds, the kind that talk therapy circled for years, finally lift in a single session.
This is the cornerstone of everything we do.
I did my first breath journey back in 1989, and it changed my life. Everything I have learned in all the years since went into building the process we call Inner Journey Breath™. It's the culmination of every breath modality and teacher I ever trained with, and it sits at the heart of every single Sedona Soul Adventures retreat.
And now we train people to facilitate it.
Become a Certified Breathwork Facilitator │ September 13–18
Some of you read this and feel a quiet tug. Not to be healed… but to help others heal. If that's you, don't brush past it.
The training is led by our Master Practitioner Gwen Payne, who has guided thousands of people through breath journeys. It begins with a 6-day experiential retreat right here in Sedona, September 13–18, followed by 9 live online workshops over 5 months, with one-on-one coaching from Gwen, just for you.
Most certification programs out there take up to two years. You can be fully certified in less than 5 months. And here's my favorite part: we have almost 9,000 Soul Adventures grads constantly asking us to help them find a breathwork practitioner near them. When you're certified, we tell the grads in your area about YOU.
Can you imagine starting this work with people already waiting for it?
Our grad Rachel told us she healed more in that one week with Gwen than in every other modality she'd tried, put together. That's what this process does. It's why we keep the training small — just 15 spots, so Gwen can train you personally.
If you've been feeling that tug, this is your answer.
Inner Journey Breathwork Certification Program
September 13-18 Retreat + Online Training
Did You Know?
Sedona Soul Adventures was named:
- “Best of Sedona” for Retreats for 2020–2026
- “Best Marriage Retreats in the US” 2015–2026
- One of the “11 Best Couples Retreats Around the World” by Bride's Magazine
- One of Global Radiance Review’s “20 Most Trustworthy Companies”
- “Ten Best Companies of the Year for 2025” by CEO Views
Because what we do gets results.
Whether you’re struggling in your relationship, feeling lost in life, overwhelmed with anxiety, grieving a loss, or simply longing to reconnect with yourself again… we are here for you.
There is no cost or obligation to speak with one of our Soul Guides.
We will listen deeply, understand what’s happening, and custom design the perfect retreat experience for exactly where you are.
Call us at (928) 204-5988 or request a call today.
That's all for this week!
Wishing you a week filled with honoring everything you feel!