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MoveOn
Layers of Touch
What do you need: Safe and quiet space with a place to lay down or sit on in a comfortable position.
What can it help for: Promotes body awareness, feeling the body boundaries, presence, grounding, attention and focus.
How much time do you need: Up to 10 minutes.
How to do it?
Seated or laying down, place one hand on your forearm, rubbing slightly with light touch.
Without looking, feel the texture of the clothing covering your skin; what clothing do you wear?
Touch through the cloth, and continue rubbing. Feel for the skin layer. It has tone, like a water balloon surface, creating a smooth container for the contents within. How do you know
when you are touching skin?
Touch, with your attention to the muscle layer. Rub deeper, with the same movement, but feel for muscle. Muscle is the meat of the body - your animal heritage. You know when you are touching a muscle because it changes under your touch; it responds to heat and friction.
Sometimes this takes a while, but the muscle responds.
Slide your fingers down to the outer side of your palm. Feel the cords or strings that attach muscle to bone (tendons) and bone to bone (ligaments).
Touch with your attention to ligaments and tendons. Notice their texture.
At the inner palm, feel for bone. Continue rubbing, and notice the densest tissue in the body mineral bone. How do you know when you are touching bone?
Reverse the process: start rubbing bone, slide to tendon and ligament, feel for muscle, move to skin, and then clothing.
Pause with your hand on the clothing. Then separate your hand from touching the clothing and feel for the heat around the body. Keep moving your hand away from your hand, and notice when you can no longer feel heat.
Now you can reflect:
● What is different now? What changes did you notice in your body?
● What were the most pleasant and enjoyable sensation(s) in your body?
● How would you call those sensations? How can you bring the sense of this exercise to your daily life?
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