Sounds like you were doing beautiful co-regulating of your nervous systems. Non-erotic, safe or loving touch helps bring our bodies to homeostasis - it really heals us on a cellular level. We literally need touch to survive - having regular touch lengthens your lifespan! We see other mammals spending their time just lying in a pile all together and playing constantly - that’s what we’re meant to be doing…
If the idea of sharing this type of touch is completely new to anyone, I recommend starting with non-erotic self touch…cuddling yourself, lightly caressing your own skin, squeezing, pat your own hair - whatever you’re drawn to. The touch you may seek from others, you can give to yourself. You can do wonderful self-soothing in this way and bring a whole new self-loving quality to your life. And so fun - you can also do it with the natural world - rolling in grass, letting waves rush over you, feeling the wind whipping around you…these can become ‘touch’ feelings - the environment is constantly caressing you!
I would say get comfy with doing this yourself first if you don’t have strong boundaries or if you have any trauma related to touch. Consent workshops are excellent if you want to work through any issues with lots of support and psycho-education before moving on to touch with others. Somatic practitioners often run these. Euphemia Russell is a wonderful full spectrum pleasure coach who teaches this! Their Insta is @Euphemia.russell and they have a great book 🦋
I just want to say I love being queer…the expansive view of our bodies and who each other is, and what pleasure and consent look like etc, and all this being completely normal to talk about in queer spaces is just such a gift. I hope everyone creates this for themselves in their own worlds
You know what this brings up for me? FURY! I feel like--of course. Just another hidden fucking thing. Just another example of mens language owning and capitalizing on the erotic. Like what if this IS erotic and the trouble is that gentle, holding, and caretaking has been thrown out of the erotic terrain.
Yes. Even though I'm in a relationship with a woman (a woman who gets called Sir a lot) and though there is a lot of daily, heavenly holding and physical caretaking, apart from fucking, I think most of us still have fairly conventional software loaded into our minds about who to touch and how, when to touch, outside of a primary relationship (or secondary, or whatever -- this, for me, is connected to but not really about monogamy. I'm exploring these things in the context of an open relationship and that helps the exploration stay wide because I don't get fixated on an old fashioned sense of "the forbidden" and begin to wonder about subtler forbidden things -- like this experience with Josephine. Because lust, with it's very pointed need, is a kind of narrowing premise, it becomes laser focused (rather conveniently, if you're wanting to keep women busy.) And I wonder what gets left out, what other nutrients, things we don't even know to long for because they are useless to capitalism etc. And yes I'm open to thinking of this all as erotic. Also, note to self for future posts: even in lustful/longing situations feeling out the edges of what the desire might be for, besides sex. Trying other things.
But do you not find that "art" fills all that desire? I think a lot of us (me!) hope that it will. Have you found that it does? Have you found that it doesn't? But also for a second I saw OH YES, this is what it means to live without duality. We made this whole triangle (right wrong, what we want in between) and we can also remake it so we're not always pushed to the edge. And also I see that you're work is that you're exposing your whole remaking in real time always WHICH IS AMAZING AND THANK YOU!
Yes, I think art in the most expansive sense covers all the bases, but not art that is kept separate from how you live and touch and eat and dress and bathe and love day today.
Had similar thoughts, the way one defaults to 'it wasn't sexual' to describe what you are trying to convey. I think a lot gets flattened trying to make ends meet between girls who are decades ahead of boys a great deal of fundamental things. Just knowing that you part of the group that birthed the entire human race is a huge head start. I don't think it became real until after the first child is born and even though I been at several home births I realized the other day that I had only spent fleeting moment thinking about birth in the first person. I'm afraid 'equal' got interpreted as the 'same' I'm sure it did in the early days.
I’m not able to watch the video at this moment, but I did have a realization today about how I feel in my body. I’m in an intensive mental health program right now and every day we do a mindfulness meditation. For the last few sessions, the meditations have all been visualizations about for example, a ball of light, or visualizing a particular type of candle and watching it flicker. But today it was all a body scan as they call it, which was only thinking about your body and your feeling within it. I found that I really resisted it and preferred visualizing another objects in accessing my body through that. I also realize that I’m somehow afraid of feeling in my body and I resist doing so and I feel like I don’t feel my physical bodily functions and feelings in my body because I resist feeling them. So during the meditation today, I didn’t even listen and I was judging myself for not following along at first And then I thought well it’s OK if I don’t do it every day and I did have that realization that feeling in my body is something I need to address in the future when I’m ready.
I love this. You convey the nurturing aspect of the experience quite well. I'm a writer but most of my friends are massage therapists and we cuddle/touch a lot (with clear boundaries and consent). The way we dance and play and hold one another has a sensual quality that is very sweet, fun, and restorative. Thank you for helping to normalize intimate touch with a wider range of possibility than we are used to. ❤️
I love this! I had an intuitive hit about something like this many moons ago, and I am so happy to see someone talking about it -- and in public! Some months ago, after a massage, a friend of mine started to worry about her uterus, that there was something wrong with it or her or her body. And I thought to myself, what if I just put my hand on her womb? But I was too afraid to bring this up to her, worried that she might think I was being weird or trying to hit on her or something. Or maybe I just felt embarrassed for having the idea at all. After hearing you two speak about your experience, I feel more confident now about bringing this sort of practice up with friends. I mean, if we can't trust our closest friends with our bodies, can we trust them with our hearts? Or are our bodies more delicate than our hearts??
Also, how does gender fit into all this? I could see myself easily suggesting this sort of practice to female or non-binary friends, but with male friends, it feels like a whole huge potentially gross-feeling can of worms.
Among those of us with wombs, and especially those of us who have experienced sexual assault, I can see how this could be a really lovely and healing practice to do together and make space for together. Many years ago, I remember doing a visualization that took me into my uterus, and I was really surprised at what I found in there. I know that a lot of people with wombs feel afraid to go into that space, physically, emotionally, mentally, etc. It seems like it could be potentially easier to go there with a friend, someone who you can trust and who can hold these sometimes dangerous or scary feeling parts of your body in a safe and nurturing way.
Funny that we don't have many words for touch. That might account for going with 'it wasn't sexual' to describe it. Liked how much context you all gave when motherly came up. My first thought was to the 4B movement in South Korea which was sparked by a book. A similar reaching out for sisterhood ? One of the biggest surprises when I did an adoption search was that it was rare to find someone when I mentioned it...and this went on for five years, it was rare to find someone who immediately came back with "That's great." The Mother and all that's behind that, seemed to be regarded as something to get over, or certainly not shaking up its foundation. Yet another tribal source that got edited out. Speaking to the circle is another. It is not a sign of health that fear of public speaking tops fear of death in some surveys. Sometimes I think we miss doing things that take a group acting more or less in unison. Now if it takes more than two or three people you get a machine. I only say that from the experience of presenting a Chinese dragon. When I did it with kids they could take off, not so quick with grown ups but either way...electric,..like a folk dance circle straightened out. Really enjoyed the video.
I’d be eager to hear you expound on your final thought:
“And obviously there are a few people who all I want is to turn them on as much as possible, but that's an entirely different subject and frankly one that is much more well covered.”
Yes! This is such a beautiful practice. We need to largely expand our vocabulary of touch - it is so limited to touch leading to sex, rather than touch as another form of communication of so many other things in addition to sex. And an incredible source of connection. Perhaps it would help sort out the bag of worms touch can illicit, if we were more versed in it. And we could empower ourselves by unlinking negative touch experience to all touch by having a much wider pool of touch 'data' to draw from.
Thank you for sharing. What you said about not feeling full in terms of connection really resonated, and how friendships get cut off the neck. Sometimes I just want to be cuddled and it’s hard to ask for that from my partner without feeling the pressure for it to turn sexual. I’m interested in how the conversation continues and how to live this way too.
had a lovely bath/brush/oil massage experience a few years ago with a massage therapist and started to cry uncontrollably when she wrapped me up tightly afterwards in warm linen sheets and stroked my hair back with her fingers. i realized i had never knowingly had an experience of being touched without it being a question or demand of me, one that had to be answered.
in the meantime: am i weird for always when in bed with a sexual partner wanting to go “all the way” and pretty straightforward into just intercourse? cause that’s what i feel like doing and not liking the fumbly part of foreplay and annoying massagey stuff. that’s what’s happening in my head before. if i’m not already there, i don’t even want to go to bed with them.
also: why are we avoiding talking about the possibility of this being sexual or turning into it? is “just sexual” somehow bad or inferior? isn’t it also a valid thing to feel sexually aroused by someone’s touch even if they are not in the “normal” group of our potentially sexual partners? i feel like we are missing the point of how this all is about opening up to so much more possibilities and previously unexplored options. i don’t see being reminded of being a sexual being has somehow to be separated from the joy of touch and physical human connection.
My interpretation of this conversation intentionally *not* being about sexual arousal, is to draw attention to the possibility of connecting with others in another way. It's about opening up to another type of intimacy that we may not have ever considered; one that may be profoundly needed. It's not saying that a sexual experience is bad, but that there's another non-sexual physically intimate experience available to us if we choose to explore it.
I have a friend who was not touched much as a baby, left alone in a crib at a day”care” facility due to her mom being single and focused on work. We have had long talks about the desire and need be touched in ways that are loving but not sexual. I am so glad you are opening up a conversation about a crucial aspect of health and happiness. My mom was a big hugger and I became a baby wearing, co-sleeping, attached parent with my son who just turned into an adult and I know he is a calmer, secure, confident, body comfortable human because of it.
I crave being touched but have had unwanted groping too so there definitely needs to be an expanded vocabulary and better communication on the subject in order to explore comfort in a consensual way.
Wow, what timing with this! Recently been more cuddly and touchy with a good a female friend. I think for us it’s combo of mothering and erotic-leaning but either way it created brand spanking new neural pathways in me about wanting to be touched and touch another woman, in complex ways I never new I needed or desired. Super sucks that “platonic” “touching” is seemingly taboo among certain generations because damn, it feels really natural.
Sounds like you were doing beautiful co-regulating of your nervous systems. Non-erotic, safe or loving touch helps bring our bodies to homeostasis - it really heals us on a cellular level. We literally need touch to survive - having regular touch lengthens your lifespan! We see other mammals spending their time just lying in a pile all together and playing constantly - that’s what we’re meant to be doing…
If the idea of sharing this type of touch is completely new to anyone, I recommend starting with non-erotic self touch…cuddling yourself, lightly caressing your own skin, squeezing, pat your own hair - whatever you’re drawn to. The touch you may seek from others, you can give to yourself. You can do wonderful self-soothing in this way and bring a whole new self-loving quality to your life. And so fun - you can also do it with the natural world - rolling in grass, letting waves rush over you, feeling the wind whipping around you…these can become ‘touch’ feelings - the environment is constantly caressing you!
I would say get comfy with doing this yourself first if you don’t have strong boundaries or if you have any trauma related to touch. Consent workshops are excellent if you want to work through any issues with lots of support and psycho-education before moving on to touch with others. Somatic practitioners often run these. Euphemia Russell is a wonderful full spectrum pleasure coach who teaches this! Their Insta is @Euphemia.russell and they have a great book 🦋
I just want to say I love being queer…the expansive view of our bodies and who each other is, and what pleasure and consent look like etc, and all this being completely normal to talk about in queer spaces is just such a gift. I hope everyone creates this for themselves in their own worlds
You know what this brings up for me? FURY! I feel like--of course. Just another hidden fucking thing. Just another example of mens language owning and capitalizing on the erotic. Like what if this IS erotic and the trouble is that gentle, holding, and caretaking has been thrown out of the erotic terrain.
(edited)
Yes. Even though I'm in a relationship with a woman (a woman who gets called Sir a lot) and though there is a lot of daily, heavenly holding and physical caretaking, apart from fucking, I think most of us still have fairly conventional software loaded into our minds about who to touch and how, when to touch, outside of a primary relationship (or secondary, or whatever -- this, for me, is connected to but not really about monogamy. I'm exploring these things in the context of an open relationship and that helps the exploration stay wide because I don't get fixated on an old fashioned sense of "the forbidden" and begin to wonder about subtler forbidden things -- like this experience with Josephine. Because lust, with it's very pointed need, is a kind of narrowing premise, it becomes laser focused (rather conveniently, if you're wanting to keep women busy.) And I wonder what gets left out, what other nutrients, things we don't even know to long for because they are useless to capitalism etc. And yes I'm open to thinking of this all as erotic. Also, note to self for future posts: even in lustful/longing situations feeling out the edges of what the desire might be for, besides sex. Trying other things.
But do you not find that "art" fills all that desire? I think a lot of us (me!) hope that it will. Have you found that it does? Have you found that it doesn't? But also for a second I saw OH YES, this is what it means to live without duality. We made this whole triangle (right wrong, what we want in between) and we can also remake it so we're not always pushed to the edge. And also I see that you're work is that you're exposing your whole remaking in real time always WHICH IS AMAZING AND THANK YOU!
Yes, I think art in the most expansive sense covers all the bases, but not art that is kept separate from how you live and touch and eat and dress and bathe and love day today.
Had similar thoughts, the way one defaults to 'it wasn't sexual' to describe what you are trying to convey. I think a lot gets flattened trying to make ends meet between girls who are decades ahead of boys a great deal of fundamental things. Just knowing that you part of the group that birthed the entire human race is a huge head start. I don't think it became real until after the first child is born and even though I been at several home births I realized the other day that I had only spent fleeting moment thinking about birth in the first person. I'm afraid 'equal' got interpreted as the 'same' I'm sure it did in the early days.
I’m not able to watch the video at this moment, but I did have a realization today about how I feel in my body. I’m in an intensive mental health program right now and every day we do a mindfulness meditation. For the last few sessions, the meditations have all been visualizations about for example, a ball of light, or visualizing a particular type of candle and watching it flicker. But today it was all a body scan as they call it, which was only thinking about your body and your feeling within it. I found that I really resisted it and preferred visualizing another objects in accessing my body through that. I also realize that I’m somehow afraid of feeling in my body and I resist doing so and I feel like I don’t feel my physical bodily functions and feelings in my body because I resist feeling them. So during the meditation today, I didn’t even listen and I was judging myself for not following along at first And then I thought well it’s OK if I don’t do it every day and I did have that realization that feeling in my body is something I need to address in the future when I’m ready.
I love this. You convey the nurturing aspect of the experience quite well. I'm a writer but most of my friends are massage therapists and we cuddle/touch a lot (with clear boundaries and consent). The way we dance and play and hold one another has a sensual quality that is very sweet, fun, and restorative. Thank you for helping to normalize intimate touch with a wider range of possibility than we are used to. ❤️
I love this! I had an intuitive hit about something like this many moons ago, and I am so happy to see someone talking about it -- and in public! Some months ago, after a massage, a friend of mine started to worry about her uterus, that there was something wrong with it or her or her body. And I thought to myself, what if I just put my hand on her womb? But I was too afraid to bring this up to her, worried that she might think I was being weird or trying to hit on her or something. Or maybe I just felt embarrassed for having the idea at all. After hearing you two speak about your experience, I feel more confident now about bringing this sort of practice up with friends. I mean, if we can't trust our closest friends with our bodies, can we trust them with our hearts? Or are our bodies more delicate than our hearts??
Also, how does gender fit into all this? I could see myself easily suggesting this sort of practice to female or non-binary friends, but with male friends, it feels like a whole huge potentially gross-feeling can of worms.
Among those of us with wombs, and especially those of us who have experienced sexual assault, I can see how this could be a really lovely and healing practice to do together and make space for together. Many years ago, I remember doing a visualization that took me into my uterus, and I was really surprised at what I found in there. I know that a lot of people with wombs feel afraid to go into that space, physically, emotionally, mentally, etc. It seems like it could be potentially easier to go there with a friend, someone who you can trust and who can hold these sometimes dangerous or scary feeling parts of your body in a safe and nurturing way.
Funny that we don't have many words for touch. That might account for going with 'it wasn't sexual' to describe it. Liked how much context you all gave when motherly came up. My first thought was to the 4B movement in South Korea which was sparked by a book. A similar reaching out for sisterhood ? One of the biggest surprises when I did an adoption search was that it was rare to find someone when I mentioned it...and this went on for five years, it was rare to find someone who immediately came back with "That's great." The Mother and all that's behind that, seemed to be regarded as something to get over, or certainly not shaking up its foundation. Yet another tribal source that got edited out. Speaking to the circle is another. It is not a sign of health that fear of public speaking tops fear of death in some surveys. Sometimes I think we miss doing things that take a group acting more or less in unison. Now if it takes more than two or three people you get a machine. I only say that from the experience of presenting a Chinese dragon. When I did it with kids they could take off, not so quick with grown ups but either way...electric,..like a folk dance circle straightened out. Really enjoyed the video.
This is so expansive - thank you for sharing.
I’d be eager to hear you expound on your final thought:
“And obviously there are a few people who all I want is to turn them on as much as possible, but that's an entirely different subject and frankly one that is much more well covered.”
I’d like to try that.
Yes! This is such a beautiful practice. We need to largely expand our vocabulary of touch - it is so limited to touch leading to sex, rather than touch as another form of communication of so many other things in addition to sex. And an incredible source of connection. Perhaps it would help sort out the bag of worms touch can illicit, if we were more versed in it. And we could empower ourselves by unlinking negative touch experience to all touch by having a much wider pool of touch 'data' to draw from.
Thank you for putting this out here.
Thank you for sharing. What you said about not feeling full in terms of connection really resonated, and how friendships get cut off the neck. Sometimes I just want to be cuddled and it’s hard to ask for that from my partner without feeling the pressure for it to turn sexual. I’m interested in how the conversation continues and how to live this way too.
had a lovely bath/brush/oil massage experience a few years ago with a massage therapist and started to cry uncontrollably when she wrapped me up tightly afterwards in warm linen sheets and stroked my hair back with her fingers. i realized i had never knowingly had an experience of being touched without it being a question or demand of me, one that had to be answered.
in the meantime: am i weird for always when in bed with a sexual partner wanting to go “all the way” and pretty straightforward into just intercourse? cause that’s what i feel like doing and not liking the fumbly part of foreplay and annoying massagey stuff. that’s what’s happening in my head before. if i’m not already there, i don’t even want to go to bed with them.
also: why are we avoiding talking about the possibility of this being sexual or turning into it? is “just sexual” somehow bad or inferior? isn’t it also a valid thing to feel sexually aroused by someone’s touch even if they are not in the “normal” group of our potentially sexual partners? i feel like we are missing the point of how this all is about opening up to so much more possibilities and previously unexplored options. i don’t see being reminded of being a sexual being has somehow to be separated from the joy of touch and physical human connection.
My interpretation of this conversation intentionally *not* being about sexual arousal, is to draw attention to the possibility of connecting with others in another way. It's about opening up to another type of intimacy that we may not have ever considered; one that may be profoundly needed. It's not saying that a sexual experience is bad, but that there's another non-sexual physically intimate experience available to us if we choose to explore it.
I have a friend who was not touched much as a baby, left alone in a crib at a day”care” facility due to her mom being single and focused on work. We have had long talks about the desire and need be touched in ways that are loving but not sexual. I am so glad you are opening up a conversation about a crucial aspect of health and happiness. My mom was a big hugger and I became a baby wearing, co-sleeping, attached parent with my son who just turned into an adult and I know he is a calmer, secure, confident, body comfortable human because of it.
I crave being touched but have had unwanted groping too so there definitely needs to be an expanded vocabulary and better communication on the subject in order to explore comfort in a consensual way.
Wow, what timing with this! Recently been more cuddly and touchy with a good a female friend. I think for us it’s combo of mothering and erotic-leaning but either way it created brand spanking new neural pathways in me about wanting to be touched and touch another woman, in complex ways I never new I needed or desired. Super sucks that “platonic” “touching” is seemingly taboo among certain generations because damn, it feels really natural.