Touch:
In our western societies we don’t practice male to male demonstrations of affection. It is rather regarded as a sign of weakness. However, traveling to other countries, specially throughout Asia, One see this practice in a natural daily basis and looking at the bigger picture, one see groups of men consciously or not: laughing, sharing, recognizing, validating, celebrating and supporting each other.
Being culturally restricted or even deprived from touch: male to male, father/ mother to son/ daughter, brother/ sister to brother, friend to friend, even lover to lover, has strongly contributed to create the bubble of isolation that has the urge to present us often as something we aspire to be but we are not.
In cutural basis, and often unaware of it, we do practice reinforcing our egos in that illusion of isolation, not knowing the consequences it has. It has the tendency to make us strangers in our body, specially when we do not practice any form of physical exercise or any art form or creative activity. Often when touched, we did not even knew that muscle was there, right?
This cultural practice has strongly contributed and continues to do so, in that long list we have in our days of emotional unbalances from stress to severe forms of depression. We end up using the fruit of our work, our saved money, to pay our doctors, our medicines; and masseurs of course. At the end of the day we discover ourselves caught in stressed life, overwhelmed, and with material debts like eternal mortgages and credit cards.
That life style leads to lack of time for the things we truly want: Love, Our bliss, insights.... Spirits sadly start fading, and all is there is the predictable and boring routine, so we want more and we want it now. It prevent us from knowing ourselves. We focus only the external with the terrible calamity of fear and desire.
Being on our own, being in silence, going inward becomes a truly frightening experience
When naturally should be the opposite, because everything starts from within. And the physical expression of these emotional reservoirs sadly will ultimately result in irreversible damage and deadly diseases. Good news though, is that through love and compassion we can come back to balance.
Better news? TOUCH in full presence has that healing power beyond explanation, no word can do it, 'cause it is only by personal experience you can sense it, feel it, embrace it, be aware of it and guess what? All this process is a practice of meditation where a shift of attention from the distractions of desire, time and outer world will yield to inward attention to the million of components your body is made of, to your breath as the essential being, you'll feel the whole of your presence. It's a journey, an adventure and as such; Will be so vivid, anew, fresh, all your senses will be activated, your sense of alertness wil go to its max in an unexpected fashion. A RELAXED way.
Our daily cultural practice of isolation, rather dwells in the negative side of it: being shallow, secretive, aloof, It just creates an emotional arthritis that holds, collects; fears, frustrations, anger, resentment. Poor communication dissatisfaction. Perceiving life this way only makes it worse. We become what we practice. Those sharp feelings manifest in body tissues like muscles and skin in the form of tightness, knots, chronicle soar ness, etc. And all of them are reminders of something we need to recognize, embrace, learn from and let go. This process is awareness, is healing yourself by bringing balance to our life. The natural state of life is that of opposites creating the force of expansion. Yet we not easily welcome a minimum discomfort in our ways of life. How far can we go then? Are we really different from Romans or cave men? Just watch a show in Animal Planet and you’ll know we are not that different.
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