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- BlogDear Reader: Welcome to my very first blog! This blog represents the next step of faith in a journey I never could have imagined ten years ago, a path full of unexpected turns, rich discoveries and shared connections—personal connections to some of you who might be reading at this very moment, as well as a larger sense of shared practice, kinship, and brotherhood with many of you whom I will never meet. What I now call “Touch Practice” began as an effort to explore and heal my own body. I thought of it as something I created, something invented or made up, just for me. I slowly realized that while it was profoundly healing for me, it also seemed to have tremendous benefit for others, and so it became something for “we” rather than something just for “me.” I began to think of Touch Practice as a form of partnership. Next, I understood that something I imagined I had created or invented myself actually existed before I found it—Touch Practice is more accurately something I discovered, something I became aware of rather than creating. I came to understand that this aspect of touch has probably existed in an infinite variety…
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Clamping Around Emotion
2It is common that during the course of Touch Practice work, we experience emotions. Sometimes touching different parts of the body will elicit different emotions, some pleasant and welcome, others difficult and challenging to feel. Emotions normally pass across the energy body the way clouds …
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Letting Go
Driving through the Vermont mountains yesterday, the trees were beginning to hint (in some places not so subtly) at that change of season which in this part of the country can be so breathtakingly beautiful. Beautiful, but ambivalent, for me: this final, dazzling array of …
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Humiliation and Spiritual Practice
One of my very best buddies once said to me, “it is impossible to live a deeply committed spiritual life—to walk the walk with our whole heart—without experiencing humiliation.” I have found this teaching to be profoundly true. In last week’s blog, I spoke about …
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The End of the Story
One of the experiences of the spiritual path I am just beginning to understand is the aspect of “getting your buttons pushed.” You know what I’m talking about: someone who manages to get to you. Repeatedly. Incessantly. Even when you’ve vowed in your mind that …
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Me and My Kid
The practice of sitting with other men in many hours of Touch Practice has sharpened my awareness of seemingly opposite characteristics within myself. There is a part of me that loves to hold other people and take care of them. But there is another side …
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Touch as a Path to Recovery
I, like many men who recover from childhood sexual abuse, began that process by talking to a professional therapist. It took me until I was almost 40 years old until I was ready to talk about it. But once I got started, I couldn’t stop. …
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Working with Shadow
It’s popular in our culture to think of people in terms of “strengths and weaknesses.” On evaluations of a child’s schoolwork or an employee’s performance, this phrase is often euphemized into “strengths” and “areas for improvement,” but hey, we all know what that code means, …
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Finding Touch Practice Partners
I often hear from men in remote parts of the country who stumble across my website and ask, “can you help me find someone here who does what you do?” Sometimes I’ll leave a city, having shared Touch Practice there with several people, and one …
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Out of my Mind: The Limits of Talk Therapy
One of the greatest moments of my life occurred on a Thursday evening when, at the end of a yoga class during the shavasana period, I, quite literally, went out of my mind. That is, I felt my own sense of self fall down out …
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