Your Body Needs Touch To Heal
Being touched and cared for as an infant is paramount for our later development of self, and the establishment of our psychological self along with our physical self.
Many of us today struggle with a sense of not being truly comfortable in our body. And that's a real shame.
Our relationship with our body will affect any other relationship we are in to some degree.
If we are not comfortable with the body we are in, it gets very difficult to share our authentic self in an intimate relationship.
Contact hunger: Often what we are scared of, is exactly what we need to reconnect and become embodied - a whole being, body, mind and soul.
It is as if we are hiding behind a shell, never really allowing anyone to see us fully. Simply because we will always be stuck at some stage of fear of rejection from others, when we ourselves reject our own physical body. This means, that we will always keep a part of us hidden - unable to truly be who we are.
All the while our insecurities are eating us from the inside out. We never feel fully at ease. Rather we are somewhat in a chronic state of fight-or-flight mode, where we feel judged, scared of being rejected and on and on.
It gets tiring - both for the person struggling with their body image - and also for the person trying to love that person up.
In today's world where we are flooded with auditory and visual stimuli, many of us lose that daily sensation of being touched. Being touched is what makes for a bodily experience; for a human connectedness.
Think about it. How often do we not encounter someone, where all they really need to calm down is just a hug. Someone to make them feel safe, cared for and that everything is OK. When we do not get the physical tending we need, we often react like a 5 year old instead: throwing temper tantrums, because we feel disconnected.
Humans need physical touch daily to feel connected to our body and heal trauma and stress in our body at a cell-level.
This is not something we can "talk us out of".
Overintellectualizing our basic instincts overcomplicates things and adds to disconnect - we get the feeling that we can't trust our body and the signals it sends. We gain the perception that we NEED to THINK about everything, when in fact our mind is NOT smarter than our body.
Our body is where our heart is - and our heart is the center of wisdom and intuition, far beyond the spoken word.
Our body reacts primal and stores emotions and memory based on sensing.
Touch plays a pivotal role in becoming embodied again.
Even our ability to tap a friend's shoulder gently during a conversation, expresses a sense of warmth and understanding at a very primal basic instinct level. This subtle physical touch, makes us subconsciously connect to that person at a deeper level.
We view them as warm, non-threatening, authentic and caring. When all they did was tap our shoulder and listen.
That is all they needed to do, because touch bypasses our conscious mind and makes us FEEL.
And we remember emotion more than words.
We like people based on how they make us FEEL, not what they say.
How many hugs did you give today?
If you are not physically connecting to something or someone daily, the body gets stuck in its state of fear, abandonment and rejection. Whether we are hugging an animal or a human matters not. What matters is, that we begin to become the love and care, that we ourselves crave - unconditionally.
Think about where you can start to act more physically warm and reach out to others, instead of always waiting for people to reach out to you.