Let Your Love Flow and Relationshop

The Bellamy Brothers Album Cover from 1976 featuring "Let Your Love Flow." Howard Bellamy is on the left and David Bellamy is on the right.

The recent Toyota Prius ad with the song, “Let Your Love Flow” by Larry E. Williams instantly took me back in time to March of 1980 and my first Relationshop in New York City. Although the song I remember was performed and made famous by the Bellamy Brothers, it was performed by someone else in the Prius ad. I bet that anyone who participated in Relationshop recognized the song also and was taken back to the moment at the end of the workshop when the song was played.  Relationshop was a two and a half day workshop that took place over a weekend. The workshops were held in NYC and Los Angeles. The purpose of Relationshop was to “provide participants with the opportunity to experience the truth about love, sexuality, and relationships so that frustration, effort, and scarcity in these areas are supplanted by mastery, spontaneity, and fulfillment.”

Dr. Michael F. Valente and Dr. Lawrence D. Lewis were the co-founders of Relationshop. I wrote about Larry in a previous post called, “Thanks for having the courage to be here.” Larry lived in Princeton, NJ. Michael taught at Seton Hall University and moved to Santa Monica, California in the early 1980’s.

The workshop was held in a hotel ballroom. It began on a Friday night and usually went into the early hours of Saturday. It started again on Saturday morning at 9:00 AM and went into the early hours of Sunday morning. It started again at 9:00 AM Sunday morning and went late into the night. There were breaks during the day and a dinner break sometime in the evening. The Bellamy Brothers song was played at the very end of the weekend. During the weekend there were lectures, discussions and what Larry called “experiments.” Sometimes the experiments were done individually, sometimes with another person and sometimes with the entire group. Relationshop was a powerful, life-changing experience for a lot of people, myself included.

If you click here, you can watch a recent video for Barclay’s Bank in England with the Bellamy Brothers original version of “Let Your Love Flow” playing. According to the credits on the back of the album cover, “Let Your Love Flow” was written by Larry E. Williams. According to Wikpedia, Larry Williams was a “roadie” for Neil Diamond.

If you visit the Bellamy Brothers website, you can see a video of them  performing a new song called “Guilty of the Crime” (with Kevin Bacon and his brother Michael.  Kevin Bacon really is everywhere).  I am almost certain that Howard Bellamy is the one on the left on the album cover. David Bellamy is on the right.  Howard’s picture on the album cover looks a lot like Larry Lewis to me. I don’t remember noticing that in 1980 when I first saw the cover.

I’d love to hear from any Relationshop graduates out there who run across this post. In March 2010 it will be 30 years since my first Relationshop weekend. It seems like yesterday.