A fluffy puppy. Dandelion fronds. The spiky parts of an Artex ceiling. Silk. Skin.
Touch is one of our most flexible senses. If we lose our sight we can use touch to assess our surroundings, or read facial expressions. If we lose our hearing we can still feel vibration; still ‘hear’ music. The texture of food is just as important to our sense of taste as the flavour of it.
Touch positions us in the world, and yet all too often we forgo our access to it in favour of residing up in our thoughts. We leave our bodies, our sense receptors, and head up into the mind where we can travel back in time to the past, or spin out into the future for as long as we need to. We can spend hours (days?) up there without really registering the touch of the present moment, the feel of the immediate world around us - unless there’s a problem. Unless pain, or discomfort, or displeasure drags us out.
I spend a lot of time in my head. I’ve always been that way. A big dreamer. Imagination running farther and faster than I ever could. It sounds romantic, and sometimes it is: I’m a voracious reader because I can completely lose myself in books; I’m creative and have a lot of ideas; I have big visions for my life; I design a delightful ambiance. But the payoff is anxiety and overthinking. Sometimes I find myself with all the ideas and little execution, and the self judgement that can accompany that is painful.
I know I’m not the only one (although my brain tells me otherwise), and I believe that our journey into a progressively digital world is one of the many things exacerbating the problem. I’m not anti-tech; I love that I can carry my music collection and a camera and a writing platform and inspiring artists and interesting podcasts and a map and travel recommendations around in my pocket. But I am increasingly aware that even the tech I use - and I am not ahead of the curve by ANY means - requires me to opt out of my body and into the cloud in order to use it. We know that social media apps are designed to capture our attention and hold it as long as possible, and they often get criticised for where that attention goes. The comparison it causes, the consumerism it encourages etc. etc. - but what about what it’s taking my attention FROM. Do you ever notice the jolt of returning to your body after a particularly long scroll? Like the bump of an aeroplane on tarmac, we have to adjust to landing on solid ground after being suspended above it for so long - and I worry that the more time we stay up in the air, the more we’re experiencing the negative side of our mental health.
So when it seems like our inner and outer worlds are hellbent on keeping us in our heads, finding ways to land in our bodies becomes increasingly more important - and I’m starting to figure out that touch is one of the most powerful tools we have.
Small but mighty note: all advice here is intended to provide gentle support, relaxation and connection to your body - there is nothing advanced or dangerous here. However, our bodies are all unique, and if yours hasn’t felt like a safe space to reside for a long time, you may not feel comfortable in that connection. That’s okay. If anything doesn’t feel right, just back off, release a big exhale, and move the body out of its current state. Part of building that connection back up again is simply opening up the conversation and listening to what your body needs. Sometimes stopping or leaving is exactly what it needs, and I encourage you to honour that.
Notice what you can touch.
This has become my mantra over the last few weeks.
We start by literally noticing what the body is in contact with. Right now, if I pause and bring my awareness to the edges of my body, I find my hands resting on my Macbook. The metal is cool and smooth. I’m sitting on a high backed bar stool, so I can feel it meeting my mid back with gentle but firm support. My butt and my right ankle are both resting on the seat of the stool. My right foot is tucked up against my left thigh. The bend of my right leg means that my thigh and calf muscles are pressed tightly together. There’s warmth in both those spots, where skin meets skin. My left foot is up on the second stool next to me; the velvet is soft beneath the arch of my foot, and my shin meets the solid wood of the kitchen island on one side, and the curved, softer edges of the stool on the other.
Give it a go - wherever you are right now, take a second to breathe, tune out some of the noise, and allow your attention to move to your edges. Complete a scan of each part of you; where it’s touching, and how that touch feels. As you do, notice if and how your breathing changes.
This isn’t about feeling some momentous shift, but it IS about creating intentional pockets of calm, and allowing them to accumulate over time into a more regulated nervous system.
Think of your nervous system like a complicated scanner. It’s constantly scanning inside, outside, and around your body to check that everything is right as rain and no problems are arising. When it’s on high alert it sees everything as a threat, like the deer bolting at the slightest rustle of leaves. When it’s at ease, it can hear the rustle, and then further focus its senses on analysing the disturbance, ready to bolt if necessary. We want to be aware that not every rustle is an attack, but still rely on our innate responses if one should occur.
One of those scans is designed to check where your body is located in the world. It needs to know where your limbs are so that you can walk around without looking at your feet or bumping into everything around you. It does this subconsciously, but it has a calming effect on our systems when we do it on purpose.
For bonus points see if you can reach out with your awareness and ‘touch’ the wall behind you with your spidey senses. This is a little harder, but your nervous system loves to know where our safe places are.
Notice what your eyes touch.
I’m stretching the definition of touch here, I know, but this is less about what your eyes see and more about how they move.
Before we start any of our Somatic School modules, we always do a very simple practice called Orientation. You start by allowing your eyes to relax, and then letting them move around your environment, touching on whatever they want and then moving on whenever they want. If something feels pleasurable for the eyes to rest on, you might stay there a little longer, but you gradually allow your eyes to communicate with the world around you without a need to translate or do anything with that information.
It will feel like you’re not really doing anything, but I encourage you to try it now, and take note of how you feel before and after the practice.
I like to take this a step further when I’m out walking in open spaces - especially if there’s a hill I can walk up. At the top of a hill, or simply at a point where my eyeline is clear for as far as possible, I stop and take a breath. Then, without ‘looking’ at the view, I allow my eyes to move to the furthest spot they can reach, then slowly drift back to my feet. Rinse and repeat.
Before I started nervous system work I assumed the sense of calm that accompanied this small action was due to some ancient human desire to scan the land around me for danger. I pictured myself atop a turret in the Middle Ages, waiting to signal an approaching battle, or something equally dramatic.
This might be part of it, but learning that tight, close eye movements signal to the brain that it needs to be alert and focused, and long, loose, distant eye movements signal that that it can relax (consider the phone or the laptop you’re using right now, and perhaps a second to look up), take my understanding to another level.
It helps me realise that bringing a sense of calm to my life doesn’t have to be about defined self care, and it doesn’t have to take up a lot of time. It doesn’t have to be yet another check on the list.
We just have to get out of our heads enough to let our bodies do what they already know how to do.