Touch and Being Touched- A workshop weekend in France

This blog was started on Monday and will be finished at some point, as the conditions of work could not allow me to finish the blog yesterday as I was at the airport of Nantes… waiting for the flight which took me home finally. When I started the blog yesterday it was 11:17.

That morning it was dark and rainy, as the day started at 5:30 for me. I had slept comfortably at my dear colleague and friend’s home in Monoblet. Her name is Chiharu Mamiya (who is also a freshly graduated Somatic Dialogue Facilitator) and we had driven back from the workshop together that took place in Les Lisieres over the weekend, magnificently organised by LIM (Landscapes in Motion founded by dear friend and colleague Pedro Prazeres) and hosted generously by Les Lisieres’s founder Jacques Bret. 

It was a very rainy and dark start of the day but waking up in Chiharu’s home and having a cup of hot water together and letting the emotions sink in after the intense workshop was heart warming for both of us. She took me to the airport: driving through the Cevennes we both shared more insights about life and our work while witnessing the light growing. Our talk of the evening before and the morning on our way to the airport was touching us in many layers of our beings as mothers, dancers and simple human beings.

Here I would like to share what happened during the weekend and a little bit also during my journey, which was magical, inspiring and again an opportunity to go deeper in my work.

Marseille!!! After 25 years I arrived in Marseille. Pedro arranged for me to meet Sevan Aerivan, a musician with whom he and Chiharu have been working for some time now. I had heard about Sevan a lot and so did he. And there he was with a baguette under his arm and a big warm smile to fetch me from the Station St-Charles in Marseille. We started walking and talking, passing the vibrant streets of the centre, buying some vegetables for a soup and arriving at his flat. Going up to the top floor where he has a guest room opening to a very large terrace overlooking the town. We had a great evening, he cooked a soup for both of us, we shared olives and cheese and the baguette, and watched the sunset talking until late in the evening about music, sufism, love and dance. 

This encounter was a great introduction for both of us, because we were supposed to work together in the workshop. Yes it was a workshop with live music! What a treat!!! Pedro and Chiharu orchestrated our meeting perfectly, and we didn’t lose a minute in creating the deep bond. We all are part of LIM and slowly everyone is meeting everyone in person and starting to work together. Thank you Pedro!

The workshop was so deep (not that others aren’t but I am each time completely fascinated again, how we can go into such deep layers through this work) therefore I decided to stay very personal and write about it as a facilitator and my vision and experience of the days spent together. 

I am profoundly interested and calmly passionate about the act of touching and the notion of being touched in Somatic Dialogue. Somatic Dialogue in the beginning actually emerged through my research on touch and how it can affect our perception of the self and the world. It all started for me with working with subtle touch so that I could dive into the relational space between bodies. I followed my intuition, and going through good and also not so good experiences slowly found my way to a feeling of touch that was transpiring health, acceptance, serenity and kindness. The touch which I had experienced in usual dance practices did not appeal to me very much, as there was too much direction, will and manipulation. When agreed upon and done in a playful manner it was fun, but it didn’t touch me more than that. 

I have always been fascinated by the power of touch and the layers of perception it can open in us during both, touching and being touched.

During last weekend we were all in all 14, 11 participants, 2 facilitators and 1 musician/facilitator. I was invited to lead the workshop, Pedro accompanied and completed me and Sevan created a unique space of sound and music and held us safely in his world, every melody penetrating into our hearts. It has been a privilege to be accompanied by both of them, I could really create in the moment and felt inspired all the hours during the workshop. What a bliss!

We worked with the floor and entered into the very core, the hidden chambers, and the vast inner landscape of the body. And when the awareness was deep inside, we started the journey through the layers of the body until beneath the skin, and then through the skin dissolving into the space and letting our awareness touch not only our surface landscape but also the landscape of the space in which we were. 

As we were 11 bodies moving in just-about-the-right-size-kind of beautiful space, the invitation was to  acknowledge any kind of contact, meeting or touch that may occur. Participants agreed and the magic happened step by step. With every layer of allowing the movements harmonized and meetings through touch happened by the way, pleasantly as well as unexpectedly. 

The participants first had enough time to feel their way of touching the floor and the space and how they were touched by the sensations provoked by their movements. The music was touching them inside out, and silence had a special touch too.

In my weekly “From Body to Writing…” sharings, I have written the following:

“Touching and being touched are multi-layered, deep phenomena, which can awaken knowledge and memory in us, intensify our existence and trigger our reactions.

At the same time it makes us encounter our most ancient, familiar and magical experiences. When experienced in health it can nourish our  emotional world, amongst other beneficial experiences.”

As much touching is sacred, because the body is sacred and the meeting of two beings is sacred, it is nevertheless the most ancient experience that we have in our body. It takes courage and practice sometimes to find the right act of touching, because if we are too careful, we are not present enough for the other to feel us, and if we are too insisting we can be intrusive. When we are well in ourselves, and we have had the chance of cultivating a healthy memory of touch experiences throughout our life, we may have a healthy relationship to the act of touching, we can touch genuinely, sincerely and have the sensitivity and alertness to withdraw this act, when sensing something wrong.

I have tried to explain a tiny movement that happens in us when we touch or are being touched:

“To meet in the contact, or to meet in the moment of the touch is for me a very important notion, maybe even the key notion that allows us to open up to our inner layers. A little example:

If I am touching, I need to go a certain way in order to be able to meet the other in the touch: starting from my inner space, feeling and being aware of an intention or a desire, I need to travel through my layers in order to arrive to the gesture, movement or word that will make the contact.

If I am being touched, I need to become aware of which layers are being awakened in me and start my inner journey in order to meet with the other in that touch.

If I don’t make that journey towards the touch that I receive, the meeting cannot happen, even if the person touching me wants the meeting to happen.”

A touch that happens in a set framework and at a given time invites both parties to meet in the contact. This is one of the qualities of touch practiced in Somatic Dialogue.

When I remember the idea of “meeting” in the touch, and when I can interiorize this, I am able to touch more consciously or I can be more conscious of what happens when I am touched. Maybe then the touch can happen healthily or in a space of health…

In the workshop one of the most fascinating phenomena that we witnessed with Pedro was that the participants really went to a very deep space inside of their bodies and as they touched each other coincidently, because the meetings were happening in the ever changing landscape formed by every body, their awareness travelled from their depths until the very surface of the skin and then the skins gently met in the encounter. Every one with each improvisation was able to allow more and more little exchanges to happen during the meeting in the touch. It was so inviting that Sevan at many times took his instrument and walked in the room, moving, turning, in between the participants, touching them with the vibrations produced through his music. The sound was filling the room, whirling, flowing and creating invisible and solid connections between everyone.

All this collective experience crystallized when the participants worked in couples, this time first to witness each other's “dance” or “movement story”. They were touched by what they witnessed and also by what they shared in intimate whispers. Once the witnessing established a simple trust between the participants, they had the opportunity to experience a very specific "listening touch” in couples, this is where unique wordless conversations happened, sharings which could not be defined by speech, only though physical contact, each one respecting the other: no manipulation, no suggestion, no pulling or pushing, no fixing or commenting. Simply listening and being present for each other.

I don’t know how much this makes sense, if you have never experienced such a work… but it makes sense to me. In that workshop, as in many others, what we shared stayed with us, for us, and what was doesn’t exist anymore, because of the ephemeral nature of improvised movement, but the experience is stored in us, somewhere, and our approach to touch and being touched changed for sure.

I can go on about this forever… but I will have to put it on paper in the book instead. However, just before finishing this blog: as I started these lines on Monday on my way back to Prague from Montpelier: it was my daughter’s 16th birthday. As soon as I arrived we celebrated and had a wonderful evening. And of course, she doesn’t remember her day when she was born, I do (as all parents do), and all of my body relived the experience of the birth. It was the most touching (in all possible levels and layers) and terrifing experience that I have ever lived. She is probably the person who is able to touch me the most, unconditionally, through her eyes, her presence, her smile, her tears, her anger, her fears, her words, her voice, her breath, her vulnerability, her strength, her resistances, her love.

What a gift to learn to touch love and be touched by it.

We’ll meet soon… with love. B.