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| Kindred Spirit, Mind body and Spirit Magazine - Alternative books, Holistic Books |
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BODYWORK - THE SEVEN DIMENSIONS OF TOUCH - PART TWO A former editor of Massage Therapy Journal and co-founder and core faculty member of the Lauterstein-Conway Massage School in Austin, Texas, David Lauterstein completes a two-part article on touch. His insights can benefit everyone with an interest in conscious touch, from professional bodyworkers to those who just like to give and receive.
In this ‘virtual’ age, a time greatly affected by the pace of computers and their powerful yet imaginary realities, the need for the actual becomes more and more urgent. Touch is a medium of actual reality – a medium of living reality, just as light is a medium for physical reality. It implies not just physical contact – would you say you are touched by the pen as you hold it? Touch requires at least the three dimensions of space – length, height and depth – but the reason why we would not ordinarily say we are ‘touched’ by a pen is that touch is an active reaching out. The realms of intention and attention imply more than three dimensions, for intentional touch requires not just the contact of one structure with another, but also of one energy with another. To really touch we need to look beyond just three dimensions – into energetic quality, into relationship, into love – very real things that certainly cannot be explained by everyday geometry. Let us – right off the bat – help lessen the tendency to excessively mystify energy. Consider shaking hands. When you meet someone and shake his or her hand, you notice the structure of the hand, but also more than that. You get the feeling of their energy from how they grip. How they relate to you is determined by their energy which manifests through the way they choose to use their body, their physical structure. In our ‘virtual’ world, structure and energy are separated. In conventional medicine, for example, a diseased lung is viewed as a thing to be fixed. The energy dimension of the person – their feelings and thoughts, some of which may have played a role in creating the disease – is often ignored. People feel disconnected today in many ways – from each other, from their own bodies, from their true selves, from nature. Because touch is simultaneously physical and energetic it is not possible to address the disconnection endemic within the modern world without it. Martin Buber said: ‘It is not the educational intention which is fruitful, but it is the meeting which is educationally fruitful.’ Taking this statement one step higher, we might say that it is by definition, meeting, and perhaps only meeting, which is fruitful. Until we meet, nothing new is born. And touch is perhaps the purest form of meeting. It is my contention that, beyond the three already explored (see issue 41), there are four specific dimensions to meeting through touch. The growing science and art of truly meeting is the growing edge of humanity. The geometry of this meeting is the geometry of healing and of touch. As we explore each of these dimensions in turn we encounter lessons about being alive that augment the lives of each of us who want individual and collective lives of deeper meaning. Graceful verticality – the fourth dimension of touch Most structural models show humans supporting themselves in a largely vertical manner. All our major anatomical structures are vertical in their orientation – the skeleton, nervous system, lymph and blood flow, the muscles. And the rich traditions of energy theory also have a startling level of agreement. The meridians of Chinese medicine, chakras, kundalini, the nadis of the Indian view, Western bioenergetic models of body-oriented psychotherapy – each speaks of energy as flowing vertically through the human body, between heaven and earth. So in exploring how being in touch comes to have power in the world, how we stand is essential. For, in balance, the more relaxedly vertical, the more free and upright we are, the more our structure and the energy flowing through it are enhanced. The American Indians ask a wonderful question referring to personal integrity: ‘How do you stand with respect to the four directions?’ The final four dimensions of touch relate to this. Try this experiment – stand next to a friend who is sitting in a chair with his or her eyes closed. Standing rigidly vertical, at ‘attention’, touch the person on the shoulder for ten seconds. Then disengage and discuss together how that felt. Now stand slumped over and repeat the experiment. Finally, stand gracefully erect, more a graceful reed than a rod, and repeat the experiment. In most cases touch from a rigid body feels mechanical, inhuman. In the case of the slumped over body, it may feel hulking, de-energized or somewhat ‘creepy’. In the case of the touch from a gracefully vertical body, the energy feels more available, less defended, freer. The experienced voltage of this touch is greater. This experiment reminds us that though we may establish contact with our hands, we do not touch just with our hands, we touch with our whole selves. We can see and cultivate our meeting each other by noticing this tender discovery. Touch acquires its maximum energy when we stand up and face each other as free, inquiring beings. A touch that arises from a body that has been allowed to grow, to ascend, to be free in the world – this touch is much higher in its transformative potential. Free, undefended touch is positively contagious – it lets those we touch know in a bodily felt way that there is more room for freedom, more room for love, more room for grace than we often imagine. With this high form of touch we can stand up for each other and succeed together. Without it we stand apart filled with longings for a fuller life. The fulfilment of life requires this graceful stance and this touch that unites us with heaven, with earth and with each other. Touch with graceful verticality also conveys a sense of lightness of being since, appropriately aligned, we stand and move with less effort. Touch born of a lighter experience of self is en-lightening for others. People suffer from treating themselves and others as mere things, just as structures. This gives rise to the experience of life being literally and figuratively too hard. Energetically potentiated touch dissolves the sense of life being too hard. The experience of energy dissolves the excessive solidity of the world. It opens us up to the essential softness and malleability of reality. So we see the enormous potential in standing by each other. Krishnamurti said that if two people could totally cooperate the world would be instantaneously transformed. Every time we stand together as free beings and touch, our world is transformed in some way in that very instant. Heartful touch, Mindful touch, The alchemy of touch MORE INFORMATION |
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