Episode 53: Is Touching Yourself Wrong?

Hi, everyone. Welcome to today's episode. I am so excited you are here. I apologize if I sound a little different. I went on vacation with my amazing sisters, and I ended up getting a cold. Imagine that. So it was worth it, though. Definitely worth it.

I wanted to do today's episode on the importance of physical touch. Physical touch, I believe, is lacking in our society now. I believe that because of the pandemic, we lost out a lot on the last two years. And we're just getting back to the groove of things, normal things, where people weren't touching as much as they were able to. Like, no hugs, no handshakes. And when we miss out on these opportunities, we are missing out on the love hormone. When we are touched, oxytocin is released within our brain, in our being.

I'm not a scientist. I don't know exactly how that works, but oxytocin is released, and oxytocin is considered the love hormone. It increases our feeling of being loved. It reduces our stress, reduces depression, reduces anxiety. It brings a sense of calm.

And when we have physical touch in our life, it allows us to feel nurtured. And it is such an amazing thing to experience. I know anytime I'm feeling down or sad or needing, just like, my love tank feels low, I'll literally just go up to my husband's like, "I need a hug. My love tank feels low." And it's such an amazing way to just feel the surge of oxytocin.

And I'm not, like, going, "Oh, I feel oxytocin releasing in my brain right now." No, I feel a surge of peace and surrender and safety and calm. And when we have the opportunity to touch others and even pets, we allow that love to increase within our being.

Now, not everybody has someone that they feel safe enough to touch, and not everybody's comfort zone is open to being touched. I know, for me, I did not grow up where my parents were touchy-feely. Like, when I had a boyfriend in high school and his parents always hugged, and we'd walk in the house and they would hug me, I found it very awkward and strange because it's just not something I grew up with.

So I just didn't understand what that was like. And as I get older, I realized, like, physical touch is one-third of my love language. I want to be touched. I want someone to touch me. And I don't have that always at my fingertips. Even though I have a romantic partner, we're not always in the same room at the same time or available for each other when that is necessary.

So today I want to talk about how you can bring physical touch into your life. So you can get that increase of that love hormone, the oxytocin and you don't need someone else or another animal to bring that to you. You can actually bring it to yourself. And I believe that when you have daily physical touch as a part of your spiritual practices where you're touching yourself, and this doesn't mean that you're sexually touching yourself, you're touching yourself in a way that allows you to feel safe.

I think that so often people don't feel safe and they don't even have that wording available to them. But I think that when you give yourself permission to fill your love tank up, this will create that safety, reduces stress, reduces anxiety, and brings more peace, more hope, more calm in. You get clarity, you start receiving and understanding messages from the universe that are available to you. But if you're so stressed out, you're not open to receiving them or you might just be missing them, but most importantly, you're going to feel better. Like the more you do this, you're going to feel better.

So one of the ways that you can incorporate physical self-touch is by giving yourself an oil massage. Now, whenever I take a shower, I love oil. Like I'm a Vata person in Ayurveda. That just means my main dosha is air, so I'm just dry. And so I love bringing oil into my daily self-care regimen. Our skin is our largest organ in our body, so it's really important for us to take care of our skin. And so if you find something, either oil or lotion that allows you to take care of your skin, you can bring this self-touch in. But the key is to be very present with and when you are applying whatever it is that you're applying, either lotion or oil, and do it very slowly and to be very present with it. Like I'm gently moving my fingers over my arms. I'm feeling love as I'm doing it.

You can even repeat the word, "love, love, love." You can feel the smoothness of your skin. You can feel like even like the little wrinkles and divots and different textures that your skin has. And you move very, very slowly and very, very presently with this practice. And you want to breathe as you're doing it. And you can also envision or imagine your love meter filling up, your love tank filling up. And so the more you just slowly caress your body, you're going to increase that love hormone.

You might even stay in a particular spot where you just really gently rub or hold the hand down on that space. I know for me even like just pausing. And this is another way to do self-touch. It's like pausing in the middle of the day and just putting your hand on your heart and one hand on your belly and just breathing and feeling the weight of your hand. The key is to be present when you're incorporating this act of self-love. And the more that you're present with it, the easier it will become for you over time to incorporate this into your practice.

Another practice that you can do for self-touch is to just give yourself a nice big hug, like stop and pause and just say, "I'm just feeling so safe. I am so loved. I know I'm protected, and I'm just embracing myself at this moment in time. The universe is embracing me, God is embracing me." And then just breathe and feel the love enter into your body and being.

You can also incorporate self-touch with other healing modalities. Like in my Light Language course, we bring Light Language in. Or if you're a Reiki practitioner, you can bring Reiki in. If you like working with crystals, you can take a crystal and rub it gently on your body. Maybe you just have it placed gently on your chest, or you have it gently on your lap. Just that little bit of weight will allow that touch to feel like it's there.

So energetically, we're being touched by things all day. I'm a big believer in if I don't like the fabric on my skin, I don't want that. But your clothing can be a part of your physical touch. It's like, "How do these clothes feel on my skin?" I'm a big texture person. I'm laughing before I even say it, but there are certain fabrics that give me the heebie-jeebies, and one of those fabrics is velvet. I know some people love it, but for me, the second I touch it, it just makes my skin crawl. So, like, for me, velvets an out.

But if I have something soft or plush, I'm like, "Ooooh, give me some more of that", and I instantly can just feel my skin, my body wanting to caress onto that fabric to allow that oxytocin to come forward. So you can also incorporate different fabrics into your self-touch that allows you to really be present.

You can also just gently comb your body with your hands, where you're just gently rubbing down your legs or gently rubbing down your arms so it doesn't have to be even with lotion or oil. You can just take a moment throughout the day and just sit there and gently caress your arms, caress your legs, or even just gently fold your cheeks, your hands to your cheeks. That's really, really helpful.

The other thing that I really like doing too, with incorporating touch is you can take something like a feather and just kind of gently move it across the skin, and that might create excitement. It might create a sense of curiosity. Whatever it is, we can use these different tools to assist with it. You can also use a hand massager too. I do think that having your body touch other parts of your body is really, really important.

If you're not able to use your hands to touch your body, you can also do this in your mind's eye. You can use other tools as well to bring it forward. So even though I'm saying physical touch might feel good, if maybe you can touch your foot to your leg, or if you can just feel the weight of your body on the chair and that creates the sensation of feeling touched.

So then if you could feel the weight of your body on the chair, can you then feel a chair touching the back of your legs? And it's again, a sense, feel, see, or imagine type of thing. You don't have to actually physically be doing it. So if you have any sort of impairment or disability, I want you to know that this can still work. It's about allowing ourselves to get curious about the feedback that our body is receiving and getting.

And then you can imagine... Let's use a chair for example. Imagine just the pressure of the chair gently pulsating to the back of your legs and cradling supporting you, holding you, cupping you. It's really neat when you think about it. The other thing that you can use for physical touch as well is a weighted blanket. Now, I know some people really love weighted blankets.

It feels really good to them. I know like one of our dogs, when she was alive, she had really bad anxiety and there was a thing called a thunder jacket where we wrap it around her and it put some pressure and weight on her and it made her feel really safe. It made her feel like she was being held. And so you can also use a weighted blanket if that's something you're interested in, that you like. That's going to also help with the oxytocin.

The main thing is to just be curious. Add a daily regimen of physical touch into your body. This can be a spiritual practice. Does it have to be a super long practice? No, it can be 1 minute out of the day. It can be 1 minute of presence with physical touch. If you take a daily shower, when you're done taking the shower and you're putting your lotion or your oils on, take the time to really be present with the touch. Also, if you have a daily face routine, you're touching your face on a daily basis.

If you're putting moisturizer on it or what have you, be present with that touch. Showers are a great routine with being present with the touch as you wash your body. Also, if you're combing your hair, if you comb your hair, how present can you be? Which is feeling the bristles of the brush or the comb? If you are bald and you're just putting some oil on your head, how can you allow your fingertips to massage the head? If you have hair on your head, how can you sit there and massage your head so it feels really good?

Another little practice that I love to do daily is massage my ears. Like, "Oh, my God, this feels so good." So the key is touch. Touch yourself. And touch yourself in a way that allows you to feel love, to feel safe. You deserve to feel safe. You deserve to feel love. And you have the tools at your fingertips to allow yourself to reduce your stress, to feel calm, and to feel peace.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Make sure you, like, subscribe, and share it with a friend. Thank you so much. Bye, guys.