A couple came to me, both certain they knew exactly what was wrong.
Fighting, bickering, each of them presenting the other's faults like evidence they'd been building for years.
I walked up to him. Close, closer than a stranger normally stands to a man they've just met.
I looked him in the eyes and said, “Stop.”
He looked back, surprised, one eyebrow raised, daring me to say more. I held it. He didn't say anything.
“May I?” I asked. He nodded.
I put my hands on his hips. His breath was hollow, short, sitting high in his chest, the way it does in a body that's been holding for a long time.
“Breathe in to my hands,” I said. Nothing changed.
“Big inhale through your nose. Exhale through your mouth. Now breathe into where I'm holding you.”
He found it that time.
“Good. Now feel your feet on the floor. Imagine zippers in the soles.”
“Unzip them, breathe in the same way, and move all that energy down, out through the floor.”
He followed that too, and the room went quiet in a way it hadn't been since they'd walked in.
I looked at his wife. She had the expression of someone watching something she didn't quite believe was happening.
She started to say something, and I shook my head at her. “No, wait.”
I told her: “We're going to do one thing. I'm going to teach him how to touch you. And I'm going to teach you how to receive it.”
Part One: A Body Cannot Open And Brace At The Same Time
That's the actual shape of the work, before either of them said another word about who started the fight.
His breath, when I first put my hands on his hips, told me everything. Hollow, short, sitting high in his chest. That's what years of bracing sound like from the inside.
Here's the mechanism, because it isn't mysterious once you see it. Speed and height read as intention to a nervous system before a single thought forms about it.
Hands that arrive high and fast are read as reaching for something. Hands that arrive low and slow are read as staying.
A body that's bracing for someone reaching cannot, at the same time, open for someone staying. It's not a preference, and it's not her being difficult.
What closes her is the speed. His was the same speed, just wearing a different shape. Held breath instead of held shoulders.
Part Two: Teaching Him How To Touch Her
His hands land high and fast, on her stomach. Her body holds.
Not dramatically, nothing anyone watching would clock unless they knew what to look for. A held breath, shoulders that don't quite drop.
I move his hands. Down, to her hips, without a word. He looks at me enquiring. He slows down and matches my pace.
I nod and look at his feet. He remembers, and takes a moment to ground and flush himself.
He tries again, and moves his hands slower this time, and her shoulders drop. He sees it too.
Two seconds of the wrong thing, one small correction, and a completely different body on the other side of it.
High and fast, she holds. Low and slow, she opens.
Part Three: Teaching Her How To Receive It
I get her to slow down. I tell her to inhale and close her eyes and trust. I tell her, “we've got you.”
After that first slowing down she trusts it, and her jaw relaxes ever so slightly.
You have been taught that being loved means letting him. So you let him touch in the way he is used to, and your body goes quiet, or worse it braces or recoils.
Your body was never tired. It was in the wrong hands at the wrong speed, and you stopped trusting him or yourself enough to do something about it.
Now, back to the couple. We continued on a bit.
I showed him how to stand behind her, how to not touch her but let her sense his presence, how to become aware of it.
I guided her breath and told them both, safely, to use Touch Base. Thumb to forefinger for 2 minutes.
You are safe here, nothing here will hurt you. Say it out loud.
They both utter “I am safe here,” again and again and again.
I see the short intake of her breath and go stand behind her. I ask, “May I touch you on your shoulders for a moment?”
She nods her head, and I put my forearms on her shoulders.
I ground her with my weight, and it looks like twenty kilos have physically come off her right there and then.
I get him to hold her shoulders and squeeze her arms slightly, so she can feel where her body starts and the room ends. She was surprised at how that felt.
I asked if she was ready to continue, to have a different kind of touch. I led them through another fifteen minutes of guided touch.
Most people who come to me want long, intense sessions, and then are surprised when their bodies actually can not handle the time of that, and start checking out.
This is why the actual touch part of a session needs to be built out. Structure, I know, not very sexy, until it creates the safety for the body to be able to open and let sensation all the way in.
So next time your partner reaches for you and you feel yourself stiffen:
Move his hands, slowly, exactly to where you want them. That is the bravest action. Not explain, not soften it into a conversation about your day, just move them.
Watch what happens when you do. The breath drops. The shoulders come down.
You come back into the room.
Tonight, when he touches you, give it one silent word, to yourself, nothing he needs to hear.
Warm. Weight. Where.
That word is your body telling you the truth, and you get to follow it, be that specific.
Part Four: The Rest Of What I'd Say To Him
You have been taught that wanting her means reaching for her. So you reach, and she goes somewhere you cannot follow, and you start to think it is you.
It's the speed, it's the not being completely grounded, and it shows.
She is guarding a nervous system that never gets to stand down, not once, not even in her sleep. Most men read that as her withholding, when it is closer to bone-tired.
So the move is the moment she flinches, because she will. Do not pull your hand back, and do not push it on.
Leave it soft and still, and say, no rush, I am not going anywhere.
You have just handed her body the one thing it never gets. Permission to take its time.
Let her arrive before you move. She sets the pace. You keep it.
Still following the breadcrumbs.
Juliette