Touch Into Yoga

A conversation between Charlotte Watts and Leonie Taylor on what it is to bring touch into our practices, bringing our capacity to nourish ourselves through our hands and that presence with ourselves.

Transcript

Hello,

Today I'm having a conversation with my good friend and colleague,

Leonie Taylor,

On what it is to bring touch in to our practice,

Our movement practices.

Could be a still but slightly moving practice.

It could be still,

It could be the movement within still,

It could be doing something that's much more of a moving from the center out.

But however we look at it,

It's actually bringing our capacity to nourish ourselves through our hands and that presence with ourselves into our bodily presence,

However we're finding it at any point in time.

So Leo,

How did that kind of that introduction kind of land with you in terms of what you bring in to your practice?

Absolutely.

Well,

I think,

You know,

This is particularly evolved.

It's something I've been interested in for a long time because I'm,

As well as being a yoga teacher,

I'm a therapeutic time massage practitioner.

For a long time I've been bringing touch into my classes and workshops because what I find is quite often if you get people who are a little bit sort of out of body,

Actually touching the tissue first before you start moving wakes it up.

So in time massage,

The theory is,

You know,

Similar to yoga in a way that there's layers,

You know,

So if we touch the skin first and,

You know,

And that can be really,

Really gentle,

Soft touch,

We always have the agency within class,

Especially when we're doing self massage to determine that as well,

Which is really important.

But,

You know,

We can just start to get a sense of our external boundaries,

Like where we end,

Where we meet the world.

And then as is appropriate,

Start to move in a little bit deeper.

So you know,

When you're receiving a massage,

Obviously you're giving that authority to somebody hopefully who knows what they're doing,

You know,

But when you massage yourself,

You know,

You have that real autonomy to be able to go,

Actually today,

I just need to be still and just feel that there wherever that is,

And just maybe hold my shoulder or hold my belly,

You know,

And then maybe as that starts to feel okay,

We can move into a deeper touch.

And,

You know,

And I can explore lots of different tools that come from that discipline of therapeutic massage to be able to sort of bring some specific techniques,

You know,

That really help,

You know,

With specific issues,

As well as just a general sense of greater nourishment and well being,

As you were saying.

And even if often,

And it's quite common in our world that we feel we need to know stuff and like you said,

Kind of specific techniques,

But we can also just simply bring touch in in a very organic,

Natural,

Visceral way that leads us into somewhere where our body might need to have a little awakening or reassurance or,

Like you said,

Meeting our boundaries.

So often our stresses or even traumas laid down into tissues can dissociate ourselves from where we find ourselves physically in the here and now.

And actually this orientation,

And we can orient in many ways to help us bring back to the present,

It can be the breath,

The midline,

The ground,

But touching our outside edges,

Like you said,

Where we are in a world meets the outside world,

Can be incredibly helpful for us to map,

To orient exactly where we are,

The size and shape we are in any given moment.

And that's very much the kind of definition of grounding.

Yes,

And absolutely,

And in terms of yoga practice as well,

Or a somatic practice,

Actually bringing our attention to where sensation is or isn't in the body as well is so important.

Like so often we're so caught up and so busy with doing that we suppress something niggling in the shoulder or the neck,

For instance,

For sometimes years.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

People come to me who pay less attention to their body than they do to their boiler or their bicycle for service.

And they go,

Oh yeah,

Actually,

Yeah.

And you say,

When did that first start?

And they go,

Yeah,

Actually it was when I was about 15.

So often we've been living with something just bubbling under the surface for a really long time.

And by starting to bring self-touch into practice at the beginning,

Sometimes at the end,

Sometimes interwoven throughout,

We can start to really acknowledge what it is we've been holding in terms of patterns that then affect everything,

Affect our movement,

Affect our mood,

Our sleep,

Our digestion,

Our interactions with others.

And it might be because you've just been holding your shoulder in a particular way for the last 15 years.

And just by touching it,

You start to have a more honest conversation with that part of the body that can be profoundly releasing.

Yeah.

And it's really interesting you use the word conversation there because that's the nature of touching ourselves rather than someone else touching us or us using something like a prop in the same way,

For instance,

In an asana or any kind of physical practice.

In that when we place our hands on ourselves,

We are both giving and receiving both the hand being touched and the body.

And that communication back two-way really can be that conversation,

Particularly if we're offering ourselves kindness,

Compassion in the listening in of that conversation and give ourselves,

Like we might do in a conversation with another person,

Give that time and space for another to be heard.

It's fascinating where we can also coax something out that,

Like you said,

And it's very common in shoulders that we have that,

What can be referred to as sensory motor amnesia,

Where we don't even know that we've been holding intention here or the jaw,

For instance.

We're not even registering anymore.

It's become so normalized or familiar to just be held in tension patterns that it can be quite a curious thing,

A surprising thing,

To bring that kind of attention that starts to offer the possibility of release there.

And that in and of itself,

Then the hand is there as a nurturing resource within that.

It's so multifaceted,

Isn't it?

And then our ability as well to hold ourselves in the world,

Isn't it?

Because very often,

There are,

Of course,

Some wonderful and very worthwhile experts in lots of different fields who it's great to refer to when we don't understand something,

But coming back to that sense that we are the greatest expert on our own body,

Having lived in it our whole lives.

No one else can feel what we feel.

Bringing that agency to people,

Again,

Can have really huge transformative effects way beyond that practice on the mat at that time.

Yeah.

And it's actually that which really fosters awareness,

Which is the basis of feeling safe.

The potential of safety must come from that level of our own awareness rather than feeling things come from an external perspective.

And that also really keys into the fact that often we can notice throughout a day or throughout something where something difficult comes up,

How we might naturally resource ourselves.

I'm actually doing it now.

I always do this kind of resourcing gesture.

I interlink my fingers in a cup,

A ball shape,

Or I place my right hand onto my heart.

It's a very specific place.

I lay the bottom of my thumb into a very specific place into my breastbone.

That's where I go.

It's a very resourcing gesture.

So if we can notice those things we do,

These resourcing gestures we have for ourselves,

We can recognize we're already having those conversations with ourselves and we can just follow those in.

Absolutely.

I mean,

I obviously notice a lot within my clinic when I'm treating people one to one that when I'm doing a consultation,

I'm really observant of where people put their hands when they're talking about a specific feeling.

So they might put their hands on their diaphragm or maybe on their belly or if you say your heart.

Sometimes people will be pulling their ear or there'll be really interesting things that come up when you have those conversations with yourself.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

Similarly,

I've done formative embodiment work with Jim File,

Who's a student of Stanley Kellerman's body psychotherapy,

Which is very much about it takes it more into an animated communicative space outside the body.

So you ask someone to tell some of their story and then you watch where the hands are going and they can mimic our internal processes,

Emotions,

Associations with something in the way that we gesture and we tell stories.

So there's an inroad there just to follow that,

To see how it might want to play itself out.

And when we recognize our hands are kind of agents of the brain,

If you like,

They're expressing our inner world and they're what we do with,

What we express with,

What we ask for or create a boundary with.

This is really rich stuff that we're both bringing from the inside out.

And then we can bring that back in to process inwards by placing our hands upon ourselves in kind,

Supportive ways.

Absolutely.

Brilliant.

Thank you so much,

Leo,

As ever a wonderful exploration,

Really making practice not just something about what we do or where we're putting a particular part of our body,

But the richness that that really ripples through in terms of our whole psyche and physicality,

Which are,

Of course,

Part of a whole,

Completely intertwined.