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I’m getting ready to head to Asheville, NC, for my first visit to what seems like a very cool little town, and the workshop that will take place there next weekend. There has been a lot of preparation for this moment logistically, but even more important, there is a lot of spiritual preparation that goes into Touch Practice, and that’s true for me whether it’s a workshop for 24 men or whether it’s an individual session. 

As Touch Practice began to emerge and codify as a practice years ago, I became aware that some of the men who were coming to me were coming at significant cost, and taking significant risks. There was the man in Idaho who drove two and a half hours each way to be held for 90 minutes. There was the man in Ohio who lost his partner of 12 years to a battle with cancer; the first time he allowed himself to be touched by another man, two years after his partner’s death, was in Touch Practice with me.

There are dozens and dozens of people who were sexually abused as children who took significant risks to try to engage bodies they had dissociated from years ago, and they took those risks with me. There was the pastor in Utah who came at significant risk to his career, his marriage, and his community, to ask me to hold him.

When I became aware that for many of the men who came to be held, it took them hours or weeks of preparation to do that, I began to take my own preparation for our engagement more seriously. Knowing that someone had set out on a drive of an hour or two (not at all uncommon,) I began to keep vigil with them during that period, trying to be with them during the drive.

A tradition that I still do to this day is to wash my hands ritualistically before I hold someone. It’s not just a matter of hygiene, although it’s a good idea as far as that goes. I wash my hands with the prayer, “may I be clean, may I see clearly, may I be a vessel for Spirit, like a hollow pipe. May I be a servant of a higher power.” That moment becomes an opportunity for me to set aside my own needs and wishes for this person and make myself available as a servant, to do whatever work needs to be done. That practice was inspired by my experience as a child growing up Catholic, watching the point in the Mass just before the eucharist where the priest would ritualistically wash his hands praying, “Lord, wash me of my iniquities, and cleanse me of my sin.”

It is not uncommon that before meeting for a Touch Practice session a person will have exchanged a dozen, two dozen, sometimes fifty or sixty e-mails with me. One of the ways that people create safety for themselves is by asking and exhausting all of their questions and raising all of their fears. When I am holding someone for the very first time, I will often go back and read, from the very beginning, the entire course of our e-mail discussion. There is a story there, a story of this person’s hopes, fears, desires, needs. I read the whole story, and try to understand what is important to them, what brings them to Touch Practice, what they seek.

When I prepare for a group, I try to understand the experience of each man in the group and try to anticipate the chemistry of the group as a whole. The latter really can’t be done; one just has to wait and see, but it does help to understand the individual history and personal journey that has brought each man to a workshop. Touch Practice doesn’t really have an agenda; it’s not a program with an outcome. It’s a practice of service to men. The men who come drive the agenda; the agenda serves the needs of the people who come.

When Touch Practice really took off and became something that transformed my life and the lives of others, it was at the moment where I realized that every single 90 minute encounter with every person who came was not just a recreational opportunity to hug and cuddle (although it is that.) It was, at the same time, a potential for spiritual transformation, for healing, for communion and connection on a level that men crave and rarely experience. In short, the possibility in that 90 minutes was for an encounter with God, with the holy, with the sacred, with the One who is the connection between all things. And when I realized that, I began to prepare differently for it. After all, the way one prepares to spend an hour with God vs. the way one prepares to hook up are, at least for me, very different forms of preparation.

So in each session I do, and in workshops, I am prepared for, and I expect to encounter, the holy, the sacred, the profound, the divine. I may sit down with and look into the face of a man and before I know it be staring into the face of God, the force of love, the source of connection, the one who makes all men brothers.

What would happen, I wonder, if every time men made plans to connect, they left room for the possibility that it would be an encounter with God?

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!