filamentosmovimentos

"The next time you hug someone notice how much of yourself you make accessible. How much do you soften your boundaries, and how much do people extend this openness to you? 
(...)
Is it not always appropriate to give such intimate embraces, but by learning to distinguish the level at which you are engaging you will be more aware of the intensity of boundaries for the given situation. 
(...)

The Inner Body Embrace: 

Stand up in front of your partner, take time to perceive the space you share and to look at each other for a moment. 
Stand apart with your eyes closed and take a moment to feel the outer layer of your body and the tensegrity of its structure: your skin, your muscles, and your bones. Feel how you stand up and how the outer layer gives you separation and containment. 

As you hug your partner, embrace him_her with the superficial layers. Feel your own body as well as the other person's body. Notice when you touch and where you don't. Feel the other person's skin, muscles, skeleton. When you hug let only these main boundaries of yourself come into contact with your partner. It's quite likely that your bellies won't even touch and that you move your hips back, away from the other person. Also notice the quality of your breathing: your own and your partner's breathing.  
Now stand apart and take a moment for your perceptions to come through. 

Take a moment to sense the soft inner organs in your body. Your beating heart, the lungs inflating and deflating, your stomach and your guts and your sex organs.
Feel your breath moving through the soft contents of your body - expanding from the core to the skin.

Now embrace your partner from these deeper structures. Feel the inner contents of your body making contact with your partner_lover. 
Feel your breath making contact with his_her body. 
Take a moment to sense the soft inner organs in your partner's body. His_her beating heart, the lungs inflating and deflating, his_her stomach, his_her guts and the sex organs.
Notice how much more of your body makes contact with the other person. Also, can you feel where your partner yields to you, where you open and surrender to her_him and where you hold back?

Did this embrace feel more intimate? more satisfying? 
What did you feel your partner was communicating to you through her_his body? 
Maybe it becomes much easier to communicate what you receive and what you need from your partner:  what quality of touch and connection you can make yourselves available to share and feel. 

(...)
When we touch each other in a relationship we often touch with our physical bodies but we do not touch each other from the feeling part of ourselves. It is not unusual for people to feel, even during the very intimate contact of sexual intercourse, that they remain untouched and disconnected from their lover. This superficial way of relating is hard to quantify in words, and no doubt has been the subject of endless futile and painful discussions that give neither partner much help. We can enhance our awareness to the availability and intensity of the connection and to how it translates to a sense of alienation or to the quality of intimacy."



Donna Farhi in "The Breathing Book"