Learning To Not Touch Your Face

At a time when we're learning how to stay healthy, I'll take you through some simple and fun steps to learn how not touch your face. You'll learn how to be hands and face aware and take extra special care of yourself.

Transcript

Hi,

It's Brooks.

Thanks for joining me.

It's good to be here with you.

Today we're going to talk about learning to not touch your face.

And this is a special course because normally we would never talk about this.

But because the times that we live in and with COVID-19,

This is something that matters.

And this is something worth learning.

And I think I'm a good person to talk about this with.

Because about almost seven years ago I got a double lung transplant.

And I'm doing really well today.

But I think that has to do with the fact that after the transplant,

They told me that I had to take really good care of myself.

Because I had to take certain drugs to diminish my immune systems so my body accepts my lungs.

And so part of that is,

One part of it is washing my hands a lot.

And the other part is doing my best to not touch my face.

And that's because your fingers,

Our hands are always touching things.

We don't even realize it,

But they're touching surfaces and then they touch our face,

And they touch our nose,

Our mouth,

Our eyes.

It happens a lot and we're not even,

Most of the time we're not even aware of it.

And it's worth knowing because what happens is surfaces can have bacteria.

It's pretty common.

That's where they're hanging out.

And so we touch them,

It's like we're scooping up bacteria and putting it in our body.

But it doesn't look like that because bacteria is so tiny we can't see it.

But it happens.

And so I'll share with you today some ways to learn how to not touch your face so that you can stay healthy.

And I like to use the word learn or learning because you're not going to be able to do it 100% of the time.

There's a lot of messages out there right now that are saying,

Don't touch your face.

You better not touch your face.

You know,

There's just this like 100% thing,

Don't do it.

But it's going to happen occasionally.

And we might catch ourselves in the midst of doing it.

And rather than blame ourselves or punish ourselves,

You know,

With some criticism,

It's like,

Oh well,

That's what I did.

I touched my face.

I'll try not to do it again.

But we're going to go through some exercises to help you with this because it helps me a lot.

This helped me a lot in my process of learning how to not touch my face.

So the first thing we're going to do,

The first thing I'd like to ask you to do is hold out your hands.

Hold out your hands in front of you and take a look.

Look at both sides.

They're pretty amazing instruments.

I have no understanding of how all the intricacies of the hand and the fingers and the knuckles and the wrists.

Just incredible workmanship.

And you can look at your palms and you can see the lines on your palms.

Perhaps you can see veins in there.

And you can see your fingerprints.

And you can grip your hands.

Isn't that amazing?

Like we can grip our hands and the skin can stretch over the knuckles.

And then we open our hands back up and the skin goes right back into place.

These things are built for action.

And move your fingers around.

Just move them around in space.

And notice that dexterity.

They are truly built for action.

It's so easy for us to pick something up or to hold on to something.

Or to move something with our hands.

These are incredibly beneficial instruments that we have attached to us.

You can look at the back of your hands and you can see the.

.

.

If you stretch out your fingers you can see the tendons under the skin.

You can see the hair in the back of your hands and the fingernails.

And there's your thumb and your fingers.

Isn't that incredible?

We have this thumb and fingers.

The combination of both allow us to grip things.

We're the animals that were blessed with that ability.

It's incredible.

So this is what we're doing.

We're becoming more hand aware.

Because like I was saying before,

Our hands are constantly moving even though we're not aware of them.

Our hands are like dogs' tails.

Dogs' tails are always wagging,

Wagging,

Wagging.

Back and forth,

Back and forth.

Our hands are always moving around.

Touching things.

And like I was saying before,

Sometimes it's touching our face.

It's interesting,

When I was told I have to be more aware of my hands and my face and trying not to touch my face,

I would notice other people touching their face.

Because I was thinking about it,

You know.

So I'd be at the grocery store and someone would be ahead of me and they would put their debit card in or their credit card and they'd punch in their password.

And then right after that they would touch their face.

Sometimes put their hand right on their mouth.

And touch their nose,

Touch their eyes.

And then it's just,

They're constantly moving around.

It's incredible.

And you know,

That can be really unhealthy in a situation like that.

Especially in a store,

You know.

But again,

We don't realize it.

Until today,

It's become very important.

And so that's why we're talking about this.

So there's our hands.

And now I'd like you to put your attention on your face.

And not looking in your mirror or not touching your face.

But just considering your face.

Thinking about your face.

About your nose,

Your chin,

In your mouth,

In your eyes.

And you can move your jaw around.

You can feel the skin stretch in your face.

Or you can smile and feel the skin stretching across your face.

You can furrow your forehead or your eyebrows.

Move those around.

You can blink.

You can feel the skin close over your eyes and then open them.

You know,

It's amazing all the muscles in our face.

All the expressions that come from the muscles.

Around our eyes,

Our forehead,

Around our mouth.

It's nice to become face aware in this moment.

Just considering our face.

Putting awareness on our face.

And the face is a pretty active area.

There's a lot of senses going on there.

There's our two eyes,

Our two nostrils,

Our mouth,

Our lips,

Our tongue,

Our ears.

It's a pretty intense area.

A lot of the,

It's like the headquarters of the senses in a way.

Like there's just so many powerful senses packed in one place.

And maybe sometimes we put our hands up to our face to protect our face because we want to protect our senses.

But right now we're just thinking about the face and it's amazingness.

So now I'd like you to consider your hands and your face.

And without touching your face just hold your hands out.

And then put them maybe like a foot away from your face and imagine there's a force field there.

And you can't get past it.

You can pat the force field with your hands around your face.

But you can't go through it.

So it's like a protective air bubble.

And so your hands move around your face feeling that force field.

And then your hands drop down.

So there's this feeling there's my hands and there's my face.

They're two different places.

And they don't need to interact.

Now that doesn't mean you're not going to touch your face just by our talking about this.

You may have already touched your face a couple times just during this talk without even noticing or maybe you noticed it.

But by becoming aware of our hands and our face in this kind of curious way we become more conscious of both.

And chances are we're going to touch our face less.

And this is this is generally this is basically learning to not touch your face.

It's a new skill and there's major benefits to it.

And let me tell you like I was saying it's almost seven years since I had my double lung transplant.

And I've hardly gotten sick during that time.

Maybe they had a few colds you know just a handful.

And before I got my transplant I was sick for like two years before I got the transplant.

But before that getting sick I would get I would get a temperature.

I would get like regular colds like much more often.

Flu now and then.

It's just because I had these habits of touching my face or not washing my hands that often.

And the great thing about washing your hands is it makes you more hand aware too.

So there's a benefit in washing your hands in this whole process.

And like I was saying before it this extra attention makes us grateful for these hands that we have.

That was so easy to take for granted.

And our face which again is easy to take for granted.

So there's a lot of a lot of great things that come from this.

So I wish you the best.

And I hope you stay healthy.

And if you do catch yourself touching your face like I said just go oh well.

Actually it's a good sign if you catch yourself doing that because that means you're becoming more aware of your hands and your face.

It's like oh I'm touching my face.

Because it's the unconscious aspect of it's falling away.

And you come to the forefront of your noticing.

So if it happens you can take that as a good sign that you're learning.

So I wish you the best.

And take care.

Reviews

Thank you for this timely meditation. The image of the force field between my hands and face is good!

thank you for this podcast! I appreciate it!

Thank you for this timely piece of advice how no get more aware of our face, our hands and to avoid touching our face. I like the visualization of the force field!

Helpful! I like the force field part!

Lovely mix of practical and gratitude. Thank you

I love how you approach the subject with curiosity ! I’m going to try that on some other things I’d like to change my life too. Namaste🙏🏻

A good reminder. Thank you.Namaste

Thank you so much for taking the time to talk about this! For years I've been trying to get rid of this habit, so hopefully I can finally make a progress!

Thank you for sharing.

So helpful, thank you!! 🙏🏻😊

Thanks, Brooks! Very helpful. 😊❤

Thank you for sharing🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻I know I touch my face a lot, with allergies: itchy nose, sticky eyes etc. I hope the idea of a shield around my face, where my hands can not get through, will help. Good luck on your journey!