Touch

 Now that culture is opening up a bit and we're all experiencing that change, our psyches are needing to adjust. Not only is it wonderful to be getting a little back to normal, but many of us are finding that it is also somewhat unnerving. This has happened to me more than once in the last couple of weeks. Something as positive and enjoyable as a family in-person get-together can leave me frazzled and disoriented. Psychologists predicted this, though it was hard for most of us to imagine it would be true of us. No matter what our conscious minds may be saying (i.e. Can't wait to see my friends!), the psyche has been in a situation for the past many months of isolating us from contact with others.  It was like there was a danger sign on everyone who was not someone in your household. Beware! Don't touch! Or even get close!

My bodywork practice has been closed for more than a year, except for a few sessions I've given through Zoom. But this week I decided that it was time to consider opening up again. I had turned my massage room into an office/plant room, so it took some hard work to convert it back to somewhere I could do bodywork. That done, I offered to give one of my Prairie Hill neighbors a massage. I needed a dry run first.  By the end of that hour, my body and my mind had remembered what I needed, and it felt SO good to do bodywork again. A couple days later, another Prairie Hill neighbor suggested we trade (she's a new member, and I didn't even know she was a massage therapist!). So last night was my turn, and it felt wonderful to be on the receiving end. Next week I'll return the favor.

That made twice that I exchanged touch with someone in the past week, after no touch (except at the dentist) for the last 15 months. And the third time was when I gave my nature studies class with the two young girls who are my neighbors, Anya and Fiona. This time, they came with high and bubbly energy, and while we were watching a film on Jane Goodall, they started playing with my hair, giving me different hairdos. This was the first time they had touched me too. I am double-vaccinated, and it was such fun I decided not to worry. So three times in the past week, I experienced the nurturing feeling of touch with other human beings. For those of you who live with someone else, you will not have experienced this dearth of human touch during the pandemic. For single people like me, no touch was one of the hardest things to weather.

As I looked outside at the trees and the grass this morning during Friends Meeting, I thought about the human need for touch. And then realized it is not only humans who need it. Animals need it too. And maybe even insects. And then I focused on plants. I imagined the life under the ground, where plant roots find a home. Not only is there a tangle of roots, a web of living plants, but also all those numerous tiny microorganisms, and bugs and earthworms, a veritable party of life. And on top of the ground, leaves wave in the wind and brush each other. Plants communicate both underground and above ground by various means, one of them being touch. So yes, touch is incredibly important to all of us earthly creatures. The deprivation of touch during the whole pandemic has been tough on us humans, and it is good that we can begin to recover now, carefully.