Nectar for your body, nectar for your soul

We all long for true affection. Touch-based approaches can foster connection and deeply nourish body and soul.

 

Talk­ing is a nice thing, yet when you feel pain or grief,  are anx­ious, exhaust­ed or lone­ly,  it doesn’t always help. We want to feel safe­ly con­nect­ed on a much deep­er lev­el. Some­times a kind, silent touch heals places that words would nev­er reach. This is an essen­tial and cher­ished part of my work: Con­nect­ing beyond words — with what can’t be said; gen­tly and with com­pas­sion;  cre­at­ing space for the ten­der feel­ings – so they can stay silent for as long as they need to, yet with a kind com­pan­ion at their side. A client once described her expe­ri­ence of this kind of touch as “nec­tar for my body, and nec­tar for my soul – pure nour­ish­ment“.  Oth­ers feel as if “bathed in warm water and ener­gy“ Often­times inner blocked places open up and start to flow again, or a state of light­ness calm­ly expands inside us as we recon­nect to our deep­er Selves. Anx­ious or avoidant attach­ment There is a grow­ing body of research exam­in­ing the dif­fer­ent heal­ing fac­tors involved in touch and touch-based ther­a­peu­tic approach­es. The “Deep Touch — Con­nect­ing beyond words” approach, which I apply in my work, is one of them. Also Bren­nan Heal­ing Sci­ence, anoth­er modal­i­ty I like to use to bal­ance bio-fields, involves touch. With­out ever being touched, babies can­not grow up health­ily. Through­out the mil­len­nia, human­i­ty has been using touch for heal­ing. Yet ulti­mate­ly the ques­tion is: What touch­es us inside? I believe that there needs to be some­thing ‘in‘ the touch: love, attune­ment, the invis­i­ble aspects of our­selves. When we suf­fer from anx­ious or avoidant attach­ment, we long for this feel­ing of safe  con­nec­tion to and from our inner self. The East­ern tra­di­tions in par­tic­u­lar, devel­oped com­plex sys­tems to describe our human body not only as a mate­r­i­al object, but also as a feel­ing organ­ism with a spir­i­tu­al dimen­sion. West­ern Somat­ic Psy­chol­o­gy devel­oped a vari­ety of approach­es to include the felt sense, our embod­ied expe­ri­ence of our­selves, into ther­a­peu­tic process­es. Meet­ing as who we are Every­day life in our mod­ern soci­ety often seems mechan­i­cal and we are reduced to per­form­ing and func­tion­ing. Yet in our own cells and souls we know of our nat­ur­al long­ing for expe­ri­ences which real­ly touch us inside. Real moments of meet­ing feel nour­ish­ing, often­times they cre­ate space for old pain to heal. Touch is also a gift for the one who is giv­ing it.  We need to be deeply con­nect­ed to our­selves to meet the oth­er per­son at this depth of con­nec­tion. Yet when this joy of con­nec­tion is accessed, we can real­ly get a glimpse of par­adise – and this can be sim­ply between friends or, if you would like to explore this sub­ject more deeply, in a ther­a­peu­tic heal­ing ses­sion. I’d be hap­py to offer you these moments of meet­ing for the ten­der places in you which long for hold­ing, care, sup­port and integration.

Food for Thought

• What came up in you when read­ing this text?
• If you think of a kind, ten­der touch on the back of your hand, maybe from a cat or oth­er pet, or of a warm hug from a friend:  How does this affect you? Does your mood change, maybe your breathing?
• What is it like for you to touch a being you love or like?
• Sense into your body: What kind of touch are you long­ing for? What would be heal­ing for you? Can you give this to yourself?
• Would you like to explore this togeth­er? Send me a note.

How about attend­ing or host­ing an intro-work­shop in Bren­nan Heal­ing Sci­ence? You can check out train­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties here.  

 

Nina Koren is a train­er,
coun­sel­lor and author
in the field of trans­for­ma­tion.
She pro­vides in-depth
guid­ance for indi­vid­u­als,
teams and leaders.