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The benefits of touch are multiple. “If you have received touch that is personal, loving, nurturing, within our boundaries and what we want, we are likely to feel relaxed, calm, more present in our own body and happy. Touch lifts our mood,” she explains.
There is one exercise she does where the participants take turns in groups of four to choose to receive touch or not from the other three. It is clothed and gives you the opportunity to feel safety and relaxation in touch as well as exhilaration and joy as you discover touch that you enjoy.
Jan points out that touch is important for couples and singles. “It’s not just singles that lack touch,” she says, “the causes may be different but it’s an issue that seems to affect a lot of people.”
There are old patterns which can get in the way of giving and receiving touch. “It may be that our touch comes across as needy so others are turned off by it,” she says, “or sometimes men, for instance, touch with a sense of entitlement and then the woman might feel engulfed. Or we may be giving in order to receive. Or past experiences of inappropriate touch may still sit inside us and stop us being present for the other.”
Jan’s workshops encourage participants to feel all their feelings around touch in this way. “We tend to explore this in small groups so that you can have an opportunity to experience finding out and saying what you like and don’t like, and discovering the delight of being touched with conscious presence and playfulness.”
Learning to touch openly and freely and with awareness and also to receive this kind of touch is such a boon on so many well-being levels. “When we learn to relax into touch, it means our whole body surrenders and we become more embodied and more confident in every area of life.” Touch really is the antidote to the disconnected digital world.
More info on Jan’s workshops at
janday.com See page 11
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South West Connection - August / November 2017
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