Togetherness is always part of the antidote.
Join us for our next Practitioner Circle - Monday 2nd June 6pm BST / 10am PST / 1pm EST
Dear one,
You are receiving this email as a supporter of the School for Ethical Touch. Thank you for being here with us (us being Em and Pam - in the image above).
As a small, two-person organization and creation, please know that it brings us joy to know that your eyes, heart, and hands are receiving these words on the other side of their journey through the virtual ether.
It’s Em here, writing to you on a cloudy summer’s day. It’s half-term; my child is with his dad today, and I’ve just returned home from a session swap - with a wondrous practitioner who was introduced to me by someone I met years ago through my work with Kimberly Johnson (the web does weave us). This person worked with me in complete quiet (usually session work I’m familiar with involves at least some dialogue) and yet I felt deeply listened to and responded to. I am softer, breathing more deeply, once again reminded of how utterly essential it is to receive touch from other human beings and what a gift when they also have excellent bodywork chops.
There has never been a time when we existed outside of relationship.
Our origin story is relational.
My heart aches perceiving a future where human beings relate via increasingly worn grooves of virtual circles and echo chambers - where life is more depleted of touch, of togetherness, of being alongside those we love in the flesh, and of getting to rub up against those we think and politicize differently from.
We require proximity for so many reasons - so that love and care are known through our skin and our tissues, so that we continue to collectively nurture palpation skills (just like traditions of oral storytelling - touch cannot be written down; it is transmitted) so that we carry the collective remembering that healing is possible through touch and hands and bodies. In proximity with one another we also live the reality that disagreement and respect don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
It is with this in mind that I write to ask you to join us to come together as colleagues, friends, space holders, touch practitioners, for Practitioner Circle.
Monday 2nd June at 6pm BST / 10am PST / 1pm EST.
Pam wrote in her last email…
‘We are social animals, and when isolation is a central part of the poison, togetherness is always part of the antidote. Being witnessed and witnessing others in the spirit of mutual support is a profound act of repair. In this way we build culture, with power, as we intend.’
I don’t think I can word it better than that.
So, in the spirit of tending to repairing culture, come and be with us in a circle that spans oceans and place.
Practitioner circles are:
free to all paid subscribers
Free to first timers
If you’re a first timer and keen to join for free, drop us a line. The link will be sent out on Monday! We would love to see you.
Much love,
Em (and Pam)
xx
P.S Our friends A’magine and Renee Co-produced the film ‘At Your Cervix’ - a groundbreaking documentary about consent. The film shines a light on the use of unconscious patients by medical students for practice. They will be screening the film online for a week from 26th May until 2nd June. It is an important watch if you are a care provider or know those that are. You can get your tickets here.