I came to realize I’d met these two people - who don’t even know each other - at the Esalen Institute, the iconic personal growth retreat center with the nudity-inducing hot springs sublimely overlooking the ocean in Big Sur, California.

It’s amazing how quickly a conversation deepens when you start with this sentence. While almost all of our MEA “compadres” (our students) remain fully-clothed during their Baja experience, a certain amount of emotional nakedness defines our time together. Bestselling author Brené Brown says, “Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection.” And, this is part of the reason our alums feel such a deep connection.

I was just in Houston where Brené lives and, boy, do I wish I’d gone over to her house after I gave my speech on Tuesday night. Instead, I ended up in a nondescript, downtown hotel bar with this collection of midweek road warriors (video below). No one naked there, that’s for sure! Maybe “smartphones” should be renamed “apart-phones”? Sarvesh Jain wrote the book, “Naked Wisdom of the Child,” and suggests, “I guess people don’t understand how much you can be happy by simply talking with the right person.”

Who might you emotionally expose yourself to as a means of deepening the relationship?