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I have done individual Touch Practice with men ranging in age from 19 to 82. I have noticed in my own personal practice, as well as during workshops, that there are sometimes powerful forces that exist in all Touch Practice that are exaggerated or amplified when there is a big difference in age range between the partners.

Even in practice partners of the same age, there will be a variety of forces operating, and I’ve written about many of these: attraction (the force that makes us want to move closer to someone;) aversion (the force that makes us want to push away;) projection (“pasting” pieces of ourselves onto the other person so that we can do the work on others instead of ourselves;) attribution (inventing stories about who or how the other person is, what their motives are, and why they do what they do.)

Sometimes Touch Practice in a partnership with an age differential will feel more vivid or activated, and it is often because one or more of these factors is being amplified. I’ve learned to watch this carefully and am still in the process of trying to figure it out, but as is often the case I figure things out by writing about them.  In defense of my blogs, I am writing not because I already understand, but as an exercise to help me understand.  I am also triggered to write by my experiences of this past week, where my individual touch practice brought three new partners, one after another, all of whom happened to be undergraduate college students. “What a coincidence,” I thought as I prayed this morning. “Not a coincidence,” came back the voice that answers my prayers.

I have written about the idea of “time travel” in Touch Practice and the pesky limitations that we face, as beings, because we perceive time the way we do. Science tells us that time is not at all a constant thing, as we experience it, nor is it in some sense a “real” thing. We experience time from left to right, one second at a time, day by day, but only because of our perceptual limitations as beings. The most compelling scientific theories–practically proofs at this point–tell us that experience of time, like the experience of gravity, depends largely on the position of the observer. Humans are only aware of the particular slice of time we happen to be sampling, and we naively believe that reality is limited to what we see. If we can’t perceive something, it must not exist.

Your entire life exists, right now, from beginning to end, as an event, not a process. It is true that you might experience it as a process, but that’s only your experience of it. Look for example at the life of MLK Jr. or JFK or Hitler or someone else no longer with us. We do not tend to look at those lives as process; most people see those lives as events, things that happened. Even if you tried to step through one of those lives day by day, second by second, to try to understand how it would feel as process, for most of you it wouldn’t make sense to try to do it that way. You understand that life as a singularity. And it is not because those lives are over and yours isn’t; it’s simply because you can see the entirety of those lives (because of where you’re standing, because of position) whereas you can’t (yet) see the entirety of your own.

Even though you are not aware of it because of your inability to get around time as a limit of perception, your life is already perfect in the sense that it’s already finished.  (The original meaning of perfect means “finished” in the sense of completed-in-time. That doesn’t excuse you from working your way through it, but only because that’s the only way we can understand things.)

When we become open and comfortable with ourselves, then when we sit with men who are younger than we are, we are sitting with the younger part of our own selves. The 19-year-old in me is the connection pathway to the 19-year-old in the person I am sitting with. It’s just another form of empathy.

“Then what do you do when you sit with a 70-year-old,” you might ask? The 70-year-old in me sits with him; I am sitting with the older part of myself.

“But your 70-year-old self doesn’t exist yet!” you might protest.  Yes it does; it not only exists; it already lived and died.  I just haven’t experienced that part of my existence yet. Like a headlight on a dark road, I can only see one slice of my experience at a time, but the road itself is not limited by what I can see. Touch Practice allows me to access younger pieces of myself, those my perception of time says are gone now, and it also allows me to access older pieces of myself, those my perception of time says don’t yet exist. There is something about the process or the ritual of Touch Practice where the work becomes timeless; time becomes irrelevant.

One of the places I have seen men limit themselves is when they attach to age as an identity structure, “i AM a 26-year-old” versus “I am experiencing the slice of my life that is 26 now.” That kind of identity formation then creates an inclusion/exclusion structure: those who are 26-year-olds and those who aren’t.

So 26-year-olds with this kind of attachment will react to 19-year-olds as though they are immature and silly, and 30-year-olds as though they are fossils, and they are reacting that way because they haven’t yet developed the ability to accept that they themselves exist at a variety of ages. It it typical, for example, that someone in this state of attachment gets embarrassed about what they looked like when they were younger, and terrified of how they’ll look when they’re older. They have a strong aversion response to younger and older versions of themselves, and predictably, they will have a strong aversion response to others who are younger or older.

You can see more extreme examples of this where someone will then try to remain 26 for life, through plastic surgery and extreme workouts, because they have been so attached to a specific age as an identity structure (rather than a facet of experience) that they feel as though they will “die” if they someday become “other than 26.” And, in fact, if they’ve formed their identity around that, they will!

Sometimes it’s not aversion we experience, but the opposite, attraction, which is enhanced in age differential. An older person will have a feeling of longing or craving to be close to a younger person, or a 26-year-old will have a feeling of attachment or security with someone the age of his dad. While aversion responses tend to reflect an acting-out of “this is what I’m not comfortable with in myself, this is what I can’t accept,” attraction responses like these, particularly these deep feelings of longing, are also symptoms of projection.

We are drawn to someone half our age because we have “unfinished business” with ourselves at that age and it’s easier sometimes to “paste” the work onto someone else. Or we are drawn to someone twice our age because we feel cut off from our own deeper wisdom, authority, and inner strength and go looking for that in someone else.

Both are reflections of an inner parent-child relationship that each of us has inside. There is a piece of you that is wounded, childlike and innocent, and there is a piece of you that is strong, clear, and powerful. Each piece needs the other, but they don’t always find each other, at least not easily! And sometimes we go looking for them outside ourselves, not realizing they were in there all along. Touch Practice helps us sit with someone who has gone looking for those pieces. We look together.

As I sat with my 19-year-old brothers this week I was often acutely aware that they were seeking comfort, strength, wisdom, a kind of parental “it’s all going to be ok” reassurance. My job is to help them find that in themselves and to let them use me as a reflector so that they can eventually see that the thing they seek is in themselves, not in me. What I got for myself? I got comfort, strength and reassurance for my own inner sophomore, a crazy and somewhat tortured time of life that I can still access and experience now. I got a reminder that my body is strong and beautiful, that I have and can access innocence in myself, that I am young and still learning.

I am currently experiencing the slice of life in my mid-50’s, but I am very much in touch with my 19-year-old, and my 13-year-old, and my 30-year-old, and while I have not experienced them consciously yet, sometimes I can summon my 60- and 70- and 100-year-old man in moments of wisdom, or moments of unexplained “knowing,” knowing that comes from beyond my experience. All of those pieces are alive simultaneously, even though I only experience time one slice at a time. Touch Practice is a temporal flexibility exercise for me, a yogic practice that encourages me to be supple and adaptable when it comes to working with time in myself and others.

Have thoughts you’d like to share?

Touch Practice is a sacred practice for me, and part of that is keeping confidences sacred. While a name and e-mail address are required to post a comment, feel free to use just your first name, or a pseudonym if you wish. Your e-mail address will never be seen by or shared with anyone. It is used to prevent spam and inappropriate comments from appearing in the blog. I’d really like to hear from you!