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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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Touch as a Path to Recovery
1I, 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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Resting and Abstaining
I’m halfway through a two-week period of personal retreat for myself which includes fasting, abstaining from alcohol, increased periods of meditation and prayer, and a lower activity level in general. But it includes something I’m noticing particularly because it is so absent from my “regular” …
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The Brilliance of Kindness
Among American men, kindness often seems to be perceived as a useful thing for guys who really don’t have anything else going for them, sort of a consolation prize for the second- and third- prize winners in the race. So if you’re not smart as …
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Consolidating
All living things follow a predictable sequence of opposites: after periods of growth or active change, there is a moment of dormancy or rest, a time when nothing in particular seems to be happening. In human experience, I refer to this process as consolidation: periods when what …
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Touch Practice: Mission, Vision, Values
Touch Practice describes an improvised, ritual practice of non-sexual partnered bodywork for the soul that empowers men through compassionate touch. My mission: to physically hold men as a spiritual practice of compassion to support and nurture physical, emotional and spiritual well-being, safety, and happiness to be …
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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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Working with Aversion
In Exploring the Energy of Infatuation, I write about ways of working with attraction. We generally don’t need much encouragement to engage attraction, because we naturally seem to move towards things we like. This week, I want to write about the possibilities that open up when …
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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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Is Touch Practice related to other forms of Body Work?
Since I’ve become more public about the work of Touch Practice, I’m met at least a dozen people, and become aware of many more, who are working in similar ways: using physical touch to bless and heal physical bodies. Some of my closest cousins seem …
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Hanging On, Letting Go
Sometimes a guy will come to Touch Practice once, send a note that says “thank you, that was wonderful,” and that’s the last of our communication. Others who met me initially through Touch Practice have, over the course of years, become close friends, people I …
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