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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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The World of Grindr and Scruff
3Back 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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Preparing to Embrace the Unknown
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 …
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Me and my tiger
I often describe the process of my own recovery from childhood sexual abuse as a little bit like being roommates with a gigantic cat, like a panther or a tiger. For many years, the cat simply slept, all the time—it took up an enormous amount …
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With Thanksgiving
This Thanksgiving weekend, I thought I would take a moment for gratitude, to give thanks for the many people and events who have moved me forward in Touch Practice and helped me find my way. I give thanks for all of those men who answered …
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Spiritual Practice and Reactive Engagement
I’m spending the weekend at one of my spiritual homes, a place where I have deep roots, a place which has fed and nourished me over the years. I’ve been thinking about my other spiritual homes along the way–the Catholic church, into which I was …
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Fear, Part Two: Feeling it
I want to follow up today on two recent blog topics–one about bullying, the other about fear–by reporting one of the most interesting and useful spiritual journeys I have taken in perhaps the past five years. The very simple exercise that I engaged was, “what …
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LOCKDOWN!
Living in Boston this week was…. Let’s just say it provided some material for reflection. What was particularly interesting, stressful, anxiety-making, for me, was yesterday. Yesterday, Boston was locked-down, with a stay-in-place order. Everything that could close down, was closed down. Mass transit. Taxi service. …
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The Power of Intention
When a sailor takes a boat out on a journey, there’s usually an aiming point, a destination, a course that has been charted. Only if the sailor is very lucky can one follow the wind directly to that destination; having the “wind at your back” …
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Appetite and Need
In this weekend’s blog, I want to explore the distance between appetite (what we think we need in order to be well) vs. need (what we actually do need.) These two things are frequently misaligned, sometimes drastically so. Let me give you some examples: Americans …
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