👨‍🏫 Guest Masterclass: Increase Body Awareness Through Self Touch w/ Tessa Carolyn

Cool.

Yeah. And then in practicing self touch and also in some of the body work that I do, I became interested in cultivating this attitude of what I call like the listening hand. So listening with your hand, using your hand to. Yeah, just have an attitude of receiving sensation, like receiving input from your body. And then another aspect of this is the attitude of a talking hand. So becoming aware of the fact that touch conveys intention. And so you can touch yourself in a way that is soothing, you can touch yourself in a way that is activating. So you can actually use touch to communicate an intention. And this is something that, it's like a form of communication that's very like primal or precognitive in a way. I think that people have this intuitive like body wisdom or body sense of. Sorry, one sec, this one fuzzy. There we go. Of just like being able to feel the intention that is in somebody's touch. And so you can, you can do this for yourself. And this. One of the practical use cases of this tool in terms of nervous system regulation is that I found that there's certain areas of the body that placing my hand there can be very, very calming. And other places where placing my hand there or using some movement or motion can be really activating and can kind of like kick up my energy when I'm wanting or needing that.

So.

Yeah, that's my little explanation. Is there any questions or any points of clarification that would be useful?

Just one question is, are these consistent for most people or do they differ from person to person?

That is such a good question. I think that the point of the practice for me is to notice what effect it's having in your own body. So the primary work is to become, to just be like, oh, I noticed that having my hand here makes me feel X, Y and Z. And so like for myself I have a kind of template of like, oh, I think this is going to be coming and this is going to be activating. But I would be very tentative to say that that's universal. And I think another part of it is that for some people there's parts of their bodies that almost never receive touch. And so just the novelty aspect of having proprioception. Proprioceptive input in that area can be activating at first but then ultimately coming. So I know that's kind of a non answer, but yeah, that's a great question. Cool. Anything else? Sweet. So I would invite you to find a position where you can be comfortable for the next, I would say 10 to 20 minutes and you'll have the option to have your eyes open or your eyes closed during this. I would say that being in stillness and closing your eyes tends to drop you more into sensation if you're looking to increase the subtlety in your awareness and that opening eyes or shifting position can alleviate intensity if you start feeling overwhelmed. So both are options. And you can also take off your, like, turn off your camera if you feel more comfortable with that. I will be demonstrating as we go along. So if you're kind of confused about my directions, you can open your eyes and just see what I'm doing and, and follow that. So, yeah, just starting off by turning your attention inwards again, allowing your eyes to close if that feels comfortable. And again, we're going to bring our awareness to the sensations that are present in your hands. And then slowly, mindfully staying present to how your hands feel. Bring them up and place them on your chest, over your heart space the center of your chest. Notice what you can feel in this area of your body, perhaps your heart beating, perhaps the temperature of your chest. And notice what effect that receiving touch in this area of your body has on your physiology. And when you're ready to move on, bring your hands down your body to somewhere that is comfortable for you to touch your rib.

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Notice what is available for you to feel in this area of your body. You may be able to feel your rib cage moving as you breathe. And notice what it's like to receive touch in this area. Now bring your hands down to somewhere on your hips. Notice the texture and the shape of this area of your body.

It.

Notice what it is like for your hands to touch your hips. And notice what it is like for your hips to be touched by your hands.

It.

Now bring your hands to somewhere on your lower belly, anywhere on the area that is below your belly button. And notice what there is to notice in this part of your body, perhaps areas of tension, perhaps softness or suppleness. Now bring your hands to rest somewhere on your upper legs, on your thighs. And as you do this, allow your hands to take the shape of your legs for your fingertips to just soften over this area, kind of like your hands are melting over your legs. And notice what sensations are present within your thighs, inside your body. So for this next one, we're going to be placing our hands on the top of our feet. And so to do this, you can lean over and touch your feet if that feels comfortable, or you can kind of curl up into a ball, bring your knees into your chest so that you can rest your feet more Comfortably on the top of your feet. Feel what it's like for your feet to be receiving touch and feel what it's like for your hands to be feeling the skin of your feet. These are both areas of the body that spend a lot of time in interaction with the external world. And in this moment, we're bringing them together. All right, you can let go of that position, perhaps rearranging yourself to be a little bit more upright. And we're going to be bringing our hands up to touch a few points on and near our face. So we'll start by bringing your fingertips to your eyebrows and then just allowing your hands to drape over your eyes and your cheeks. Feel the texture of your eyebrows. Perhaps you can feel the temperature of your hands. And now bring your hands to cup this. Your cheeks, the sides of your face. I would encourage you to do this as delicately as you can and experience what it is like to be receiving tender touch from yourself. Now move your hands to. There's a specific point that's behind your ears at the very bottom where your earlobe is attaching to your skull and your jaw. And you can just press with one fingertip on each side into this area. And this can be really nice to relieve any pressure that might be built up from clenching your jaw. So just press in slowly if it feels good to you. And now bring your hands to rest on the top of your head. Feel the texture of your hair. And also what it is like to be receiving pressure in this area of your body. It's likely that the top of your head doesn't receive much touch. And now we'll bring our hands to the back of your neck and really softly cradle the back of your neck, allowing the tension to melt out of your neck. And you can do this by allowing your hands to become increasingly soft. And so for the next couple of minutes, I would invite you to allow your hands to travel back to any of the points that we covered that felt good to you, or to just go exploring and find new places that are desiring touch. Keep bringing your attention back to listening as attentively as you can with your hands. You can increase the subtlety by moving more slowly and by softening your hands. You can also notice how your hands are speaking to your body and communicating an intention. Notice what that intention is and notice where your hands are drawn, where in your body is most craving the support of your touch.

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And as you drop into the subtlety of the sensations that are present, I would invite you to amplify any sensations that you experience as pleasant or pleasurable. Notice that you can use your hands to intensify these pleasant sensations and give yourself permission to fully experience what it's like to feel good in your body. In order to complete this experience, bring your hands back to your heart space when you feel ready, the place where we started, and notice what's different now, any somatic shifts that may have taken place over the course of this experience. And when you feel ready, slowly open your eyes, reorienting to the space around you and connecting to this zoom room with others who have just gone on a similar exploration. Sorry, Ocean, I just saw your question about sitting up or laying down. I would say for this series, sitting up is better, but you can definitely, if you're wanting to become more relaxed, laying down is really nice, but you might fall asleep. And then in response to Scott's question about sore or injured areas of the body, I would say that if there is somewhere that is feeling sore or painful, I notice that my attention tends to be drawn in that direction anyway, so that I find it more useful to purposefully direct towards places that wouldn't be catching my attention anyway. I think that the tendency would be to kind of like fixate on the places that don't feel good. And I find it much more beneficial to intentionally drop into the places that do feel good because that's not where our awareness tends to go by default. So, yeah, great question. Anyway, I would love to hear from you all what that was like. Any reflections?

Yeah, for me it was like give calling in and providing yourself some. It felt like parental love. One prominent example was when I was doing this. So like I'm a kid being held. And also what I noticed was in the beginning, my. My hands were colder. And then as we went on with the exercise, my hands became warmer. And then the. The feeling of being touched those body parts, it felt better with the warmth. And the last thought was it's definitely not too natural to take on the object perspective like the receiver end. So like at first there was some. There was a little bit of effort and then it became more natural. Yeah.

Cool. Yeah, thanks for sharing. That's so interesting. Like, one of the reasons that I answered Rit's question the way that I did is that I find that often doing stuff like this can evoke memory. What you were saying about like feeling like a little kid, like, it's possible that that was like a memory of being touched in that way. That was. That was being you were being reminded of by being touched in that way. Again, so that's really cool. You noticed that.

Well, that one kicked me straight into quite an emotional response, actually. That one, so. Which I was not expecting at all. So that's. That's pretty cool. And I. And I really thought that a bit that you kind of teed this up by saying, you know, pay attention to the being the object of being the subject. I think that's incredibly helpful because then you can actually flip between the two of them and actually experience both. But of course, the being the object is actually, you know, particularly powerful. And the other interesting thing is I'm much like Will. I notice the. The warm hands. So my hands are really warm for some reason. And actually, you know, obviously being on the receiving end feels very, very good if the hands aren't cold. And then finally, I think the. The thing that I've noticed, this is kind of a she gong thing, Lisa, is the heart space thing I noticed is something I automatically do sometimes.

Yeah.

So I'll just automatically put my hands there, which I. Which I thought was very, very interesting. That was one of the. Probably the most of. The most comfortable of all of the positions and one that has kind of been there for a long time, but I didn't actually really notice until we did it today.

Cool.

Yeah, that's interesting. Like, which ones feel familiar and which ones don't feel familiar.

Yeah, I'll jump in. Yeah. I had the same reaction as. As Will did to. To this positioning and really just noticing the whole point of the exercise, which is placing your hands in different places. Touch feels. Evokes very different things in different places. I had the problem I often have, which is that it was often very difficult for me to just attend to the sensation without turning it into sort of a dialogue with myself or words. And.

So.

I think that's partly a hazard of my profession. But. But that. That was challenging in places where there wasn't much sensation. So it was pretty. Like nothing was really happening. Then the thoughts would sort of go exploring, like, what is this? What it feel like? And that. Yeah.

So that.

That was interesting for me.

Yeah. Yeah. I would recommend also, if there's a place that it feels like there's not much going on, sometimes increasing pressure can be helpful. I know I. I know I was emphasizing softness, but I. But it can also. It's like. I think of it as, like, meeting the area where it's at. So, like, at the point where they're. Where you do start feeling a lot and then backing off to get more subtle. So that might be something to explore with.

Great. I'll try that. Thanks.

I think the thing for me that was most interesting was the subtlety of it. And I think, like, I started kind of in this expectation of something really profound was going to happen and I was going to suddenly have this, like, surge of sensation or emotion or something really, like, significant would happen, and it. It didn't. And then the more I kind of lent into that and was just kind of feeling the experience of it, the more it kind of like. There was a moment where towards the end, like, while we're doing the just, you know, freestyle exploration, my hands went back to my legs and I. It was a completely different sensation from obviously the first time that you guided this round. And it was at that moment I was like, oh, wow, this is. This has shifted something. But it was so subtle and like, I just hadn't. I wouldn't have been able to point that out until I felt it. I was like, oh, I can feel my legs, feeling my hands, and I can feel all the kind of. I think before it was like more like a gross sensation, like my hand is on my leg. Whereas the second time it was like I felt all the, like, micro sensations within that. And then going back to the heart at the end, I noticed how much more relaxed I was and, like, my breath was up here to start, and then it was just down in my diaphragm and my heart was like, so much slower, so.

Wow.

Yeah, it's really interesting.

That's so cool. I'm so glad you had that experience. That is like, the target for sure.

Yeah.

It's interesting too, with the legs. That was. That's one of my personal kind of like, cues as to if I'm dissociating or becoming overwhelmed is that I lose, like, all sensation in my legs, specifically. Yeah. And it's only pretty recently that I have been able to start, like, really feeling my legs. And it's super exciting to me. I'm like, I have legs.

Yeah, cool.

Did any of you guys get a sigh response? Because I had. That was quite an interesting one. So early on when you grounded us, I had it then, but then after that there, you know, it was just a deepening. It wasn't. There wasn't a. A flip over from, you know, sympathetic or dorsal into ventral. So maybe it's just because we were just all in ventral at that point, but no additional sigh responses. But my heart was slowing and my breathing was slowing throughout the whole thing. Same same as oceans.

Yeah. I can't think of any specific s response that I had to think it was just that sort of gradual softening.

All right, well, I think we're pretty much wrapping up, but, yeah, thank you so much for joining and playing with this. It's cool to get to share one of the things that I just kind of nerd out on in my life. So, yeah, thanks for showing up.

So you mentioned giving yourself a little bit of an energy boost. How do you do that?

I'll show you. There's a really effective one. I'm going to take off my sweatshirt so I can show you properly. So if you start, like, right here, and you go down your chest like this, and then, like, under your rib cage, and then sometimes I'll, like, even sort of rub my rib cage. And that, like, really is pretty activating for me. And you can. If you do this laying down on your back as well, it can be even more intense because this area is just like. I don't know, there's a lot of. A lot of stuff going on in that part of the body. So, yeah, I was gonna say I feel that. I can feel that kind of going. Energizing and saying hello. Yeah, same with the point. But, like, this point here, you can just be a little bit more aggressive with it. And then another thing is, like, rubbing your ears.

I love these.

That's literally my favorite thing to do. Like to pull the ears down and, like, stretch the inside of the ear canal. It feels so good.

Yeah, yeah.

The ones you just mentioned still remind me of being a kid. Like being tickled in the ribcage area.

Yeah.

In the years.

Totally. Yeah. Another one that is. Feels really good to me, but it's sort of challenging to get into. The right spot is, like, the very base of the skull. Haven't quite figured out how to do that properly, but, yeah, it's like, kind of where it's, like, hard and then it goes soft. And if you can get right in that soft spot, like.

Oh, cool.

Well, I am signing off.

Thank you so much. This has been great.

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, everyone.