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Those of you who follow me closely may have noticed a drop-off in the frequency of my blog posts as of late. There’s a lot of my life energy being redirected into a new home, new location, new job, all of it requiring a certain devotion of time and energy.

The redistribution of energy around moving has interesting and varying impacts. In my marriage, it seems to make us closer, because we’re both experiencing the same stresses of dislocation. Historically we seem to cling to each other a little more tightly during moves, lending extra support while we find our feet again in the new place. Sometimes it feels like it did when we were very young and just finding our way out in the world together for the first time, a kind of second honeymoon.

In my friendships, it has made me a little further away, a little less available for dinner, not so good about keeping in touch or answering e-mails. (Sorry, friends!) In my spiritual life, I seem to have found more time to pray, because I feel anxious or scared a lot of the time and feel like I need the grounding that prayer provides. But working out, another part of my spiritual practice, seems to get neglected a bit.

Like all these other aspects of my life, so too has Touch Practice been impacted by the shifting demands on my time and energy. I’ve had to cut way back on my personal individual practice times with people, and think carefully about future workshops that we’re planning, to make sure I don’t spread myself too thin. It’ll all work out. I have no doubt that once I’m fully adjusted in my new place, my energies will redistribute themselves and off we go.

This period for Touch Practice is a little bit like when the garden goes fallow, that time where the earth is allowed just to rest, not produce any crops, not grow anything productive. The land occasionally needs a chance to recharge.

In fact, this might be the first “pause” I have ever taken since Touch Practice found itself a name. Since that moment a few years ago, this practice has been like being shot out of a cannon. It seemed to unfold with a speed that took my breath away, but nonetheless had me throwing myself into it more and more, faster and faster.

It’s good to pause.

It’s good to have a period of time to abstain from just about everything, including, I suppose Touch Practice. In the same way that coming back into speaking society after a silent retreat clarifies why we speak, my hopes are that I will come back from this fallow time clearer than ever about what carrying Touch Practice means for me, why I do it, and where we go next.

New geography will impact that (the earth has a very different energy in different spots, and particularly in my new homeland.) A new schedule will have an impact too. And there are lots of interesting future possibilities: perhaps a research study on the psychological impact of being held (already well documented in other modalities but not in Touch Practice) and studies of the yogic aspects of Touch Practice.

I have gone through fallow periods of many different kinds in my life. Some were deliberate, like when we abstain from something intentionally. Some were little mild periods of depression, which is a sort of fallowness, a time when nothing seems to be growing in the garden. Some were the periods in between relationships, where I felt ready to grow something, but nothing was sprouting.

The one thing that I know about fallow periods is that they are followed by periods of profuse growth, where things start to grow like crazy, bloom, bear fruit, and completely transform the face of the earth.

I’m suddenly mindful as I write this that Christians are celebrating Good Friday, the beginning of a three day period where the body of Jesus is said to have lain fallow, lifeless, resting, before emerging transformed. That story further encourages me to enter this period with a kind of faith, that Touch Practice is sleeping, for a moment, in the belly of the earth, resting, and about to re-emerge with a new vigor in a new place.

And, since we’re on the verge of spring, that seems just about right! Hope it’s warming up wherever you are.

Have thoughts you’d like to share?

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