The Quality of Touch
As Ishta Spinal Touch practitioners we are used to touching people and some
of us may centre ourselves before hand and may have thought about the quality
of our touch. Recently on one of our training weekends we reviewed an article
"The Seven Dimensions of Touch", which is the work of David Lauterstein.
David is the co-founder of The Lauterstein-Conway Massage School in Austin,
Texas, and has been involved in bodywork for 30 years. He is a prolific writer
and his articles and writings inspire me and make me think about the work
we are doing and the level of contact we are having with people.
Below is a summary of that seminar.
The Seven Dimensions of Touch
We are in a renaissance at the present time which is of greater or equal
importance to the one of the 15th and 16th Centuries. This was predicted
by John Naisbitt, who is referred to as a global philosopher among futurists,
in his book Megatrends 2000 he states that there are two megatrends at present-
1. High Tech, the virtual world.
2. High Touch, a heightened experience of actual reality.
Due to the increasingly high tech world we live in people become desperate
for touch, there is an unmet hunger and social need for the actual and with
time this becomes more urgent. To meet this need there has been a proliferation
of touch therapies in the last 20 years. This takes us back to the source
of our power. Perhaps touch is the leading edge for the next step in our
cultural evolution.
Touch is the medium of actual reality
Touch wakes us up from the illusory world of materialism and virtual reality.
Through the tender power of our touch we touch the truth of our aliveness
and we restore our sense of deep enjoyment. What is more important than this?
How does touch get this power? And how can we enhance it?
David has come up with seven dimensions to touch which will help improve
our effectiveness as practitioners. As individuals it will help all of us
share in the power inherent in our connecting with each other.
First Dimension: - Contact
The initial contact, if carried out mindfully, creates a place, interface
or "home-base" that we can return to. It is a living place and the first
touch, when we truly touch, is an archetypal experience, like the feeling
evoked by Michaelangelo's painting of God and Adam about to touch.
When we have a compassionate understanding of and feeling for the structures
and functions of our bodies we are more likely to evoke the incredible effect
of feeling illuminated by the simplest of touch.
In body work before touching someone we need to focus on organizing our thoughts,
feelings and spirit as we touch; i.e. organize the psychic as well as the
physical self.
A healthy mindful touch partakes of the same spirit as meditation. In most
forms of meditation we centre our awareness on something, a mantra, a breath
or a prayer, why not do the same with body work? This results in our awareness
shifting from being random in its organization to having a home base to return
to.
A meeting place of two people's structure and energy.
Second Dimension: - Movement
We are touched and then moved in body and soul by another. Movement requires
energy. Therefore when we experience movement we experience energy. Movement
proceeds mysteriously out from stillness. Loving movement proceeding out
from stillness leads to ecstasy, (ecstatic meaning "out from stillness").
We are not only touched and moved from without , we are touched and moved
from within as the wisdom of our life processes manifest themselves, or perhaps
in our terms, as the Innate Intelligence manifests itself.
The sense with which we perceive and give touch is the haptic sense or haptic
communication. Touch is the earliest sense to develop in the foetus and is
involved in the infant's haptic development. It relates to the development
of other senses such as vision. It is difficult to survive without the sense
of touch. Most life forms respond to touch whereas only a minor have sight
and hearing.
The haptic sense includes sensations of pressure, heat, cold pain and
kinaesthesia. No other sense engages in feeling and doing at the same time.
We would say we are touched by a friend's hand, but are we touched by the
chair we are sitting on? Touch implies an energetic dimension.
Touch is a living relationship.
The liberating potential of our movement and of our every touch is assured
by the fluid nature of the connective tissues in the body. The fascia, connective
tissue, is thixatrophic; i.e. it acts like a liquid crystal. When we touch
with both structure and energy the fascia can change from a solid crystalline
structure to a fluid and be reshaped.
This touch isn't limited to the fascial plane but will also work on the neural
pathways of memory, emotion and thought. The body's movements and postures
do not come from the muscles and connective tissues; rather they are initiated
by the nervous and endocrine systems. When we touch, when we move, with love
and mindfulness, we are introducing clearer and stronger haptic impressions
into the neuro-endocrine system.
Touching with love and clarity, our movements can reshape body, mind and
spirit.
Third Dimension: - Breath
How do we sense we are alive?
Through the rhythmic expansion and contraction of breathing.
We may have around 20,000 breaths per day. To be fully alive we need to fully
breathe. Breathing is the primary source of our energy, in this form it can
be viewed as a nutrient.
As touch originates in the breath, two people touching could be said to be
breath touching breath.
The respiratory system responds continually to the ever changing nature of
our inner and outer reality. We can stimulate or sedate our entire organism
with the breathing rate. As a result we can fine tune our autonomic nervous
system when we breathe with intention.
When we touch with breath, filled with more life and balance, we give each
other the living permission to heighten life and to restore more balance
and flexibility to the autonomic nervous system. To touch with breath is
to touch with Spirit.
Something to contemplate: Hands shape our breath through touch, whereas voice
shapes our breath through song.Touching with conscious breath brings lightness,
loosens our illusion of solidity and unites us all.
Breath combines the physical and energetic experience.
Fourth Dimension: - Graceful Verticality
All our major anatomical structures are vertical in their orientation, the
skeleton, nervous system, lymph, blood flow and the muscles. The energy theories
of various cultures tend to agree with this, the Chinese meridians, chakras,
kundalini etc. Here in the West we talk of energy flowing down through us
as if the body is between heaven and earth.
Perhaps the power of our touch is related to how we stand; i.e. the more
vertically relaxed, the more free and upright we are the more our structure
and energy can flow.
An Experiment
Stand rigid and touch someone for 10 seconds and get some feed back. Adopt
a slumped posture and repeat. Then stand gracefully erect and repeat.
The differences are quite alarming aren't they?
In the gracefully erect posture it is as if we are touching with our whole
self.
Take care that you do not treat yourself and others just as mere things,
just as structures. This can result in life becoming too hard, literally
and figuratively. Energy potentiated touch dissolves the sense of life being
too hard and opens us up to the essential softness and malleability of reality.
Unites us with heaven and with earth and with each other.
Fifth Dimension: - Heartfelt Touch
To touch with our hearts adds another dimension to the quality of our touch,
it adds emotion. We reach out with our emotions from the heart region. The
energy is moving outwards from within, e-motion.
When we need to defend ourselves we tend to tense up around the heart region
and become self-shielding. When this continues we become chronically defended.
Chronic tension around the heart and lungs becomes a life-limiting factor
and this limits our ability to touch and be touched.
To be able to touch from the heart we need to be able to go within ourselves
and touch the tense or hurting places within ourselves. This calls for bravery;
a characteristic of the heart realm. To reach out and touch all of ourselves
or all of someone else is one of the bravest things a person can do.
As we touch our chronic tensions, they begin, as if by magic, to dissolve.
This dimension includes a new quality of energy flow and also a new direction.
The arm and hands allow us to move out, with deep feeling, horizontally into
the world around us.
We begin to sustain ourselves and others.
Sixth Dimension: - Mindful Touch
When we meet as equals we touch with our whole selves. As we are made of
mind, body and spirit, we touch with our minds and spirits as well as our
bodies.
How do we touch with our minds? An interesting question.
When we touch with a rational and intuitive knowledge regarding how that
person feels, then the touch communicates not just care, but understanding
as well. As sanity is defined 'as the capacity to imagine how someone else
feels', then touching in this mindful way is expressing sanity.
In the nature of a knowing touch is also the time it has taken to get to
know. Knowing is always a process. This takes time, so care enough to take
the time.
An understanding touch is a touch open to the mystery of another's being
unfolding in time. The experience of being touched with love and understanding
can lead another into an experience of feeling beautiful and worthy.
Celebrate our successes in our efforts to connect with each other.
Seventh Dimension: - The Alchemy of Touch
When we are meeting, touching, with the above dimensions in mind, there is
a third energy. May be it is love, God, or some other energy. But when we
allow ourselves to touch with devotion and an effortless letting go, we open
a window through which the extraordinary can happen.
The presence of this extraordinary power is recognized by its alchemical
power and its transformative abilities. With this quality of touch we begin
to realize we are not alone, we are an integral part of a wide world which
includes us. It is our isolated self that is the illusion. Unity is our essence
not separation.
Experience the true, redemptive power of touch.
Whether you agree with the whole of David's ideas doesn't matter, but putting
some of them into action can only make us better Ishta Spinal Touch
practitioners.
Please go to
www.tlcschool.com/about-articles.asp
for more information and a full copy of this amazingly thought provoking
article.
David Lauterstein is the author of Putting the Soul Back in the Body, the
pathbreaking article series, "The Seven Dimensions of Touch," editor of the
manual, "The Alchemy of Touch," and former editor of Massage Therapy Journal.
Mr. Lauterstein teaches in Austin, throughout the U.S., and in England, trainings
for healthcare professionals on Deep Massage: The Lauterstein Method and
Zero Balancing.
Megatrends 2000, by John Naisbitt
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High Tech, High Touch, By John Naisbitt
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Putting the Soul Back in the Body , by David Lauterstein.
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