CHAPTER 9
Touching and Being “in Touch”
The Healing Touch Versus the Fixing Touch
This chapter, too, speaks primarily to Chi Nei Tsang practitioners. But clients, or potential clients, can certainly benefit from the guidelines here.
As soon as our touch carries the message of “fixing” or correcting something, it conveys the emotional message that whatever is being touched is “wrong” or “in need of repair.” Remember that every part of the human body is human; therefore, it will react as humanly as we would in the same situation. When we are made to feel wrong, our first reflexes are understandably protest, defense, and denial. We are not intentionally wrong just for the sake of being wrong. The worst reaction can always be justified by lack of information, misinterpretation, misguidance, fear, or other negative emotions, and generally comes out of the best of intentions, which is the intention of “fixing.” We have to understand that there is no such thing as a “wrong” emotion. As far as the emotional self is concerned, there is no need to fix because there is nothing broken. Generally, the body is trying to do the best it can with a painful situation. Correction would add insult to injury.
In fact, any reaction from “negative” emotions will automatically create a chain reaction leading to poor behavior. To deal with the emotional response of any part of ourselves, we need to address it the same way we ought to address the emotions of infants and children (or any living being, for that matter)—validating the emotions instead of ignoring, minimizing, or contradicting them. I believe that the problems the modern world experiences in both education and relationship are because of its lack of emotional intelligence and its callousness when confronted with emotional responses.
The therapeutic or healing touch has to come from a place of unconditional support where there is no room for misinterpretation. Practitioners have to learn to be aware of their space and boundaries at the physical, mental, and emotional levels, to not create an adverse reaction in their clients. Awareness of our own space and boundaries also allows us to better perceive where these boundaries are in our clients. Practitioners need to integrate their Space and Boundaries Chi-Kung, as taught at the Chi Nei Tsang Institute, to provide safety through their touch. If their touch doesn’t feel safe to their clients, practitioners have to touch through the clients’ hands until safety is established. If we are seeking healing, we usually come from having suffered violence and we have already suffered very intrusive allopathic procedures and need to know mentally and emotionally that we won’t be insulted again. The emotional body doesn’t speak English, or French, or Mandarin. It speaks the universal language of feelings. Like a baby, the only language it speaks is smiling when happy and crying when uncomfortable, but it communicates very accurately through touch. When we are in emotional distress, a compassionate hug, a pat on the shoulder, or a caring hand-hold carries more information than long discourses. This is Chi at work.
The body is already designed to be addressed through a touch that provides no resistance and requires no effort from practitioners other than to learn to relax and open to the flow of Chi, with nonverbal communication. It is extremely simple but apparently very difficult to do because of the severity of conditioning and judgment about touch. Touching is generally considered taboo in this culture and mostly banned from psychotherapy. The banning of touch is understandable to prevent abuse and violence in a context of ignorance. However, in terms of therapy, in my opinion, there is no healing possible without touch. To be able to touch in the right way with absolute nonviolence is at the root of all teachings at the Chi Nei Tsang Institute. From beginning to graduation, after students have been trained in the highest practices of the Fusion of the Five Elemental Forces meditation, the Healing Buddha Palms Chi-Kung, and in Space and Boundaries Chi-Kung, the main training focuses on developing the ability to touch. Touching has to be done peacefully in such a way that clients don’t feel the practitioner, but rather feel themselves. Practitioners learn to disappear behind their own touch to let clients discover themselves. This takes years to master and a lifetime to cultivate. It is a skill indispensable to the evolution and preservation of the human race.
The Power of Gentleness: The Power Touch, Listening Touch, and Peace Touch
Three types of gentle touching are utilized in Chi Nei Tsang healing sessions, as described below.
Figure 13. The healing touch
Power Touch is the ability to touch powerfully with neither muscle tension nor threat. Nonviolence doesn’t mean not using force; nonviolence means not abusing force. To make sure that the message of nonviolence is received, touch has to convey the least flexion possible, using mostly extensor muscles and extending the Chi. The hands and fingers never grab, and the fingers are in full extension, bending backward like a paintbrush (see Figure 13). The softer the fingers, the more deeply we are able to reach into the body without inflicting pain. By relaxing our shoulders and bending our fingers and hands backward like brush hairs all the way to the wrists, we accomplish several things:
• We send a message of nonaggression. Because we can’t contract our fingers in this position, it feels like we could never hurt anyone.
• We have to wait until we are invited in, so we can’t force our way and intrude.
• Even though we can’t use muscular power in this position, we are structurally stronger.
• Because we wait and don’t force, we can feel the quality and listen to the subtle movements of the tissues.
• Because this is done with gentleness, there is no limit to the amount of power that can be used this way.
This can only be fully understood through practice. It is an esoteric practice using the same power of martial arts such as Karate, Judo, and Aikido; it is the Way of the Empty Hand (Karate), the Way of Suppleness (Judo), and the Way of Harmony (Aikido).
Listening Touch is a firm and supportive touch that repeats everything that is felt by extending the Chi throughout the whole body with a gentle vibration or a gentle rocking. It is an active listening, which validates that the voice of the tissues is being heard throughout the entire person. Listening Touch is constantly asking the body, “Do you feel this? Are you saying that? Is that what you feel?” Using the rule of Yin perseverance, it follows with absolute flexibility, never correcting or directing. It is an emotionally supportive touch, as when listening to a friend tell you her problems, not expecting to be helped, but just asking to be heard and be emotionally validated.
Peace Touch is the next technical step to bring clients to the core of their being. Peace Touch is utilized to help clients connect with their core issues when they are unable to keep their awareness on the physical location of the emotional charge. It uses the fundamental Aikido concept of nonopposition of forces, blending and drawing the partner into a vacuum created by his or her own movement. It consists of applying Power Touch to make contact with the location where awareness has been withdrawn, and then creating a vacuum by withdrawing our Chi, while still maintaining physical contact. This vacuum literally draws the clients’ breath and consciousness down to the area being touched, filling this space with their awareness. By maintaining the Peace Touch, we create a space where clients feel safe and supported enough to be with their localized issues. Without Peace Touch, clients would most likely never be able to bring their awareness to this part of themselves on their own, and the emotional charges would remain trapped and undigested.
Case Study: The Body Is Stronger than Drugs
I had a client who, after recovering from an accident, was still in so much pain that he was contemplating suicide. He had taken all the painkillers possible. Doctors had succeeded at first, by numbing the pain or making him so dull that he put less focus on his suffering, but the pain was still there. Over time, he required larger and larger doses of drugs until he finally reached the point where he no longer experienced any relief. His body had outgrown the drugs. When I put my fingers on his back, using the gentlest of touches, the muscles started to relax and tensions melted away. After barely twenty minutes of a combination of Listening Touch and Peace Touch, he experienced the first relief from pain in eight months. That night he slept peacefully for the first time since his accident.
Conclusion—Healing, Critical Mass, and the Evolution of Human Consciousness
Why is it so difficult to meditate, to pray, to do Chi-Kung, yoga, dance, exercise, and other activities that would make our life so much better? Because, unfortunately, such practices are not common enough. And yet, it is so easy to waste time in front of the TV screen or a video game, even when we don’t really feel like it, because it is so common to so many people. It is a problem of critical mass. Every time someone gathers the courage to change and go through the healing process, every time someone decides to meditate with the sincere intention to grow as a person, to improve, and to outgrow his or her condition, it makes it easier for anyone else to do so. The time has come when meditation and Chi-Kung need to be part of everyday life, like some form of internal hygiene. Once the number of people practicing reaches a certain number, attaining and surpassing the critical mass, it will feel natural to anyone and become an ordinary event like taking meals at regular times, attending to personal hygiene, cleaning, and recycling. Healing will become ordinary.
Unfortunately, healing is still considered extraordinary. The ordinary reaction when facing pain and disease is either to hide or fight—the same responses we have to emotional aggression, and even though no satisfying resolve ever came from such reactions but more suffering. We are caught in a system of reflexes, of habits, of traditions, of things always being done that way, and being caught up with competitiveness, scapegoating, vindictiveness, revenge, and other atavistic reactions reminiscent of vendettas and clan wars, unfinished business from a time long gone. It is thus quite extraordinary to face insult and emotional pain with understanding and compassion—for oneself as well as for others—and to let go of preconditioned reflexes that throw us into a fighting mode. Such extraordinary reactions characterize what it is to be truly human: to respond from a place of respect and compassion, to take care of the poor, the sick, and the weak, and to contribute to the evolution of the human race by actively participating in our own betterment as well as others’.
Healing, at the individual level, is synonymous to evolving and fulfilling one’s life purpose. At the community level, healing means integrating and harmonizing a personal level of interaction into better-functioning relationships, evolving into a more significant level of participation for the good of all. At the society level, healing is about being able to take care of a society’s members at all levels of existence. All spiritual leaders from the beginning of recorded history, from all creeds, have taught love and compassion as the saving grace for suffering and the healthy growth of the human soul. Isn’t it about time that we integrate these principles into the fabric of our social life, especially in the care of the sick and weak, of children and the elderly, of the disenfranchised and disabled. And shouldn’t we have such integration be fully reflected in a comprehensive health care system that would include healing?
The whole universe is in a perpetual state of expansion; so are our consciousness and our capacity to evolve and become more human. Nothing can stop that evolution. In the past few years, centers for yoga, meditation, and healing have become a more common sight. Indeed, we nowadays commonly have access to alternative or complementary medical modalities. There are now laws that recognize and protect practitioners of such modalities, as in the states of California and Minnesota where unlicensed practitioners are free to practice their art under the Health Freedom State Bill.15 These practitioners are now able to work with medical doctors to provide clients with optimal care. Insurance companies are more willing to cover massage therapy, acupuncture, naturopathy, and other popular modalities, as they realize how much money they can save avoiding more expensive allopathic procedures. Also, and especially where access to health freedom is more restricted, informed people adopt to go abroad to seek the care they need—they practice medical tourism, filling classes and workshops in holistic modalities around the world.
To provide healing is an art. Practitioners have studied, trained, and gone through their own healing process. It is much easier to work on someone else than to work on oneself, and once a procedure works on oneself, it has an even greater chance of working on someone else. Healing, like many forms of art, is simple, yet not easy. To be able to differentiate within a health condition the different personal factors involved in making the development of a disease possible, to be able to recognize a meaning and an emotional charge hidden behind the malfunction of a body system according to its location and particular manifestation, takes wisdom and emotional maturity. That maturity is part of the natural evolution of a humanity that will eventually be making medicine more human and healing more ordinary.
There are no sects,
No others,
No you.
Buddha-past,
Buddha-present
Buddha-future,
Are all the same.
LY THAI TONG (999–1054)16