We forget about our bodies a good portion of the time.
If you’re reading this on a hand-held device or a computer screen, you are possibly at least 50% disconnected from the sensory capacity of your body.
Most likely, you are about 90% in your head feeling like “the watcher.”
This is one of the neurological perceptual shifts we get from technology.
A message or media post that spikes dopamine temporarily overrides the pain in our back and neck from sitting too long. The release we experience from this disconnection explains why we’re plugged in all the time.
There’s a tricky relationship with time that we experience when we are lost in thought or the swirling hyperlinked pages within cyberspace. Time can race, it can slow, and it can stop altogether. But curiously, this experience collapses into the present moment as soon as we experience touch.
Touch is a language in itself
Touch is amazing — it’s a direct form of communication that somehow entirely bypasses words and thought. Touch manages to engage on a direct, visceral, bodily level, an aspect of reality we often forget about while immersed in day-to-day life.
Touch collapses the bubble of self-protective space we wrap around ourselves to keep the physical, emotional, and subtle intrusions at bay.
Touch helps us experience palpable knowledge much more rapidly than mental meditation practice alone. While meditation allows us to connect with our thoughts and sentiments, touch reminds us of how actually to experience them and locate their bodily existence.
Conscious touch is perhaps one of the most potent meditation methods known to man, and it’s particularly powerful when engaged as a partner practice.
It feels incredible to have someone acknowledge your body. When someone slows down and takes the time to communicate and listen to your body through their body, we are brought into the tacit experience of the timeless now. The reality, connection, and presence are self-evident.
As the receiver of touch, there is no doing, only an allowing of what is present to bloom fully within awareness, occupying the totality of all we know at that moment, as and through the body. Thought dissolves into wonder and awe. Words are superfluous and would only subtract from the fullness of love’s presence, already present in the awareness within two bodies contacting each other.
The quality of how someone touches you can communicate almost anything – from anger, aggression, softness, passion, and erotic interest to uncertain vulnerability.
There is considerably more dynamic range accessible through our sensory-based body parts than via the limitations of human vocabulary. Unfortunately, most people discount the range of what can be communicated and experienced through touch because they are desperately seeking to explain and understand through mind and words, something which a simple touch can reveal.
Practices for rediscovering the art of physical touch
Touch is an incredibly important part of long-term relationships. When we default to communicating using words, we inevitably pull our partner up into their minds, and in doing so, we direct their awareness away from their bodies and their carnal desire.
There is space for immediate improvement in your intimate communication if you drop the focus from your verbal communication and instead actively investigate expanding your nonverbal communication skills.
So how can you develop this skill to improve intimate communication with your partner?
1. Discovery
First and foremost, begin by acknowledging the need for consent. Even in a long-term relationship, agreements about what’s okay, and in what scenarios, are incredibly important. What are you and your partner okay with in public vs. in private? Does your partner want to be touched – leaning on their shoulder, holding hands, etc. – in certain situations but not others?
When consent is received and mutually understood, initiate contact by clearly communicating your intention to touch your partner through your eyes, breath, and presence. Open the door for playful touch consciously and playfully.
Consider using parts of your body other than your hands. How does your knee communicate something to your partner’s thigh? How does your wrist communicate something to their hip? How does your breath feel on the back of their neck?
You may think or feel, “I don’t know how to do this!” That’s great! That’s an honest confession, pure beginner’s mind! Start there. Relax. You can’t do this wrong. Rediscover the child within: innocent and curious. Even bring along your impish, mischievous self that just wants to have fun. Pixies and Satyrs need to play and frolic, lest they become repressed, grumpy, stiff adults.
2. Releasing physical tension together
Next, take a moment to look at your partner softly.
Ease your gaze and look at their whole form. See their silhouette throbbing with heartbeat and breath. Locate, with your body’s awareness, where your partner is storing tension.
Where does the resilient motion of breath stop or seem stuck?
View the tension as trapped or stuck vitality that desires to be brought into play, freed into circulation. How can you tease that cramp out of them using just touch? (Try using the back of your hand instead of your fingertips.) What would a tickle, a scratch, or a slow purring and clawing liberate?
Don’t think — explore and experiment through doing.
Play. Make mistakes. Laugh. Take it all lightly. It’s just your body and their body, learning.
Discover what feels good and how tension wants to be liberated. Tension and pain hold an invitation to share and experience together what was once hidden, repressed, and judged.
Allow your touch to be the action of love itself. Melt into the invitation to feel. Everything. Without limit.
3. Playful experimentation
Finally, once the flow of touch has begun, you can build upon your established trust and allow space for experiment and improv.
Try restricting yourself to only touching a certain part of their body. Discover how much you can communicate only by touching the top of their feet, for example.
There are infinite variations you could entertain to make the process more exciting, challenging, and rewarding.
How sensitively can you explore the back of their knee? What is a knee anyway? How does it respond to aware, enveloping pressure? How many joints and tendons can you feel within one finger? How does the pad of the thumb respond to deep, steady pressure?
And remember, this play doesn’t have to be overtly sexual. Of course, it can be if you and your partner desire, but the main goal of this practice is simply to rediscover your ability to communicate, “I see you,” “I feel you,” and “I want to know you” — on the body’s terms.
Refine and reveal the distinctive secret language expressed between you and your intimate partner via touch. Inside jokes, shared memories, and sensuous language between lovers weave hearts and bodies together into genuine human beings.
For men and women who want to experience the depth of love that their hearts and bodies yearn for, check out the https://sunyata.info/awakening-into-intimacy retreat. It begins on September 26, 2022. Enrollment is now open.