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The Intimacy of Touch, Speaking and Listening
by Andrew Fretwell
Probably the two deepest primal needs of human beings is connection and autonomy. You only have to raise a child to see this delicate balance play out.
I would be so bold as to to say that at the core of every disagreement we face on this planet is the seeming conflict between these two primal needs.
Even though these two needs seem opposite they are unified by intimacy
It's only be being intimate with our deepest selves that can we feel truly connected to others in a deep meaningful way.
So to explore this further we need to deeply investigate the meaning of the word intimacy and understand how we can use its magic to enrich our lives.
Every human being is longing for intimacy but many of us are very afraid of it and the reason for this I suspect is that as human beings we are not very intimate with the different aspects of ourselves.
Try this simple exercise notice yourself reading this article and notice that your mind will have all sorts of movements, opinions and thoughts, and that there is always some sort of movement whenever the mind gets involved. We can define this part of ourselves as the always changing.
The body is aging from the moment we are born, the mind is always thinking, dreaming, judging, everything that changes inside a human being is not really deep.
Now become aware of the part of you that is always watching or witnessing
This witnessing of our own experience is actually going on continuously, but we are rarely aware of it since we tend to fuse with rather than be with our experiences. Meditation and Qi Gong practise increases the ability to observe experience, rather than being caught in the stream of it. Strangely enough, this silent witnessing, sometimes referred to as witness consciousness, is nothing other than our very self – our Authentic Self this part of us you can notice in that it never changes and its always present.
I define Intimacy with oneself to be constantly aware of this Authentic Self, when we touch, when we speak, when we listen, when we look. If we can stay aware of this depth we will automatically create intimacy with ourselves and it will effortlessly spill into our relationships with others.
For example do you know how rare it is to be really listened to? Or really touched with full presence? It's very rare! - but it's not difficult to do if we remember not to fuse with our experience of life but be with our experience. It's a huge difference and that difference expresses as intimacy with life, oneself and others.
If you combine these three approaches in to body work I 100% guarantee you will become an amazingly powerful facilitator of others healing and connection to peoples authentic self which is where all healing comes from.
I have started to emphasise this Intimacy approach in my Chi Nei Tsang trainings and I'm thrilled at the depth that even complete beginners can incorporate when using this approach.
Please consider attending the Chi Nei Tsang bodywork trainings to learn this approach. The international schedule is available here http://cntschool.com/study.htm
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