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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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My Very Last Blog (well, maybe!)
5Those of you who know me (and perhaps a few of you who don’t) have sensed that the way I carry Touch Practice has changed over this past year. I have changed too. This might be the last time I ever write in “blog” format …
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Checkout Time: Touch Practice and Dissociation
One of the wonderful things that can happen during a Touch Practice session is that the person I am working with becomes so comfortable and relaxed, he drifts off to sleep and naps while I hold him. Sometimes it is actual sleep, complete with purring, …
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Holding the Enemy
My favorite moment in my undergraduate ethics class came one day during this exchange: “How many of you feel that killing other people is evil?” (all hands went up) “How many of you feel that Hitler was an evil person?” (all hands went up) “If you …
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Old Enough to Be Your Dad
Those of you familiar with my story know that Touch Practice began as a kind of “hobby” for me, a personal indulgence. It did not begin with the name it has now; instead, I and a few close friends kept referring to it as “my hugging …
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News from the World of Touch Practice
I realize it has been a while since I’ve blogged. Sometimes blogging comes in seasons for me and needs some “down time” to let the garden regenerate. I don’t know that I’m ready to start writing regular weekly articles again, but I did want to …
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Half of a Couple
I will often do Touch Practice with a person who is half of a couple. I’d say maybe 30 percent of the people who have come to Touch Practice would define themselves as “not single.” There’s a whole world to write about there. I think what …
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The World of Grindr and Scruff
Back when I first started exploring what I sheepishly called “my hugging thing” (there’s an interesting story if you don’t know it) I tried to find hugging partners using Craigslist ads. That was actually reasonably productive, although if you’ve ever done anything at all through …
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Dying for Affection
I just finished holding someone from the Middle East who is here in the US for graduate school. Like all the people I hold, he is a beautiful guy, open-hearted, with deep, soulful eyes, thoughtful, curious. It was really a beautiful session, longer than most, almost …
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Our Next Workshop
There has been quite a flurry of communication about our next workshop—a workshop intended for experienced practitioners—and much of that discussion has centered on the issue of naked practice. It is a conversation that has caused me to wrestle, intellectually, and given me reason to …
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Bennett’s Story
[editor’s note: Last weekend, I offered a Touch Practice session to a young writer, and following our session, I asked him if he would be interested in writing about his experience for this week’s blog. I’m so grateful that he took me up on the …
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