Touch Taboo vs Exploring embrace, holding & Conscious touch

Touch Taboo vs Exploring Embrace, holding & Conscious touch.

As the nights draw in and we settle into the darkness, many of us begin to feel the natural longing for warm companionship, tender holding and nourishing touch.

Whilst we know it feeds our soul and is essential for maintaining health & well-being, often we hold back, depriving ourselves of warm, safe conscious connection.

Why is this?

The Conscious Touch Foundation has been holding safe, nurturing, non sexual

conscious touch events and training since 2015, yet for the last two decades

has been hiding under the table – until NOW.

Why is this?

Well, the answer to both is, strangely enough, the same; it's because of shame.

Back in the early 2000’s, when I was doing my Somatic Psychotherapy training alongside extra university modules in Gender diversity and Law, one lecture title stood out for me – The personal is political.

Now, on one level, you wouldnt imagine that every belief, every action is in some way political. That doesn’t mean political with a capital P, rather political in that it makes a statement of what we stand for and collectively those statements create societal norms (expected ways of public behaviour), sometimes even becoming statutes.

Until 1967, homosexuality was illegal in the UK, and still today, public displays of affection between same sex couples are frowned upon in America. PDA is illegal for heterosexual people in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Dubai (UAE), Egypt, Pakistan, and parts of India. Yet both sexuality and the need for touch are natural human state and whilst thankfully attitudes are changing its takes decades, generations. During these transitions, one thing that slows down acceptance is shame. The law may change, but shame hides the nervous system until it feels safe enough to express and be seen – nowhere more than with touch.

Let me explain. Touch, tho being an essential need to human growth and development in babies and children, became shameful around the age of 7. Parents were advised by childcare professionals to withdraw nurturing touch to allow children to mature independently, especially boys. Fathers were also discouraged from cuddling their girls after puberty. Touch was considered an immature need and also somehow became sexualised, so even tho the need for consensual nourishing, supportive, encouraging, caring touch remains, people were ashamed to express their naturally felt need, which leads to becoming disconnected from self (to suppress the discomfort of lack). Touch became taboo.

Similar story with The Conscious Touch Foundation. After the closure of the local mental health charity MIND (due to funding withdrawal), my Psychotherapy business became busy. In those days, Mind therapy and touch therapy were considered incompatible in the UK. I had originally studied Hakomi body-centred Psychotherapy in NZ in 1980, then Phenomenological Psychotherapy in 2000. What I witnessed in my group therapy clients (funded by the NHS, ironically) was both a quicker and more longitudinal recovery than the

pure mind therapy clients. However, because the two modalities (touch/mind) were considered unethical by my professional body, I had to hide what I was offering. During the initial group sessions, I taught about the need for touch as a theory rather than practice, and I taught about shame.

As the groups became established, we shared our experiences of our relationship to touch and the all too common shared felt sense of touch hunger and the shame around that. Slowly, we de-shamed the human need for touch. It didn’t end there, but suffice to say that as the group continued to feel safer, they learned to trust each other to express when they felt the need for a hug. Consent and boundaries tho not as common as nowadays, were introduced to foster more trust and openness.

I remember the first time I invited the group to consider a shared hug. It was so emotional seeing the hesitation, consideration, deep breathing, boundary setting and for a few, the actual running into a hug. So many deeply buried emotions were released that session for some, others more gently expressed, some still chose not to connect and that was honoured equally valid.

That was 20 years ago. It's been slow, but through medical scientists researching the effects of for health is now becoming a more acceptable and valid healing modality.

Conscious touch is coming out of the closet, yes theres a long way to go but with all the neuroscience research alongside the Consent and boundaries work of Dr Betty Martin shame is on its way out, giving space for that natural essential human need to feel safe enough to be expressed – and with the right practitioners/community/family groups, to be fully met.

For further information or to get in touch, either as a practitioner or receiver, please see the website: connection@conscioustouchfoundation.org for the contact link.

Love n blessings,

Sidtsara

The Conscious Touch Foundation