I’ve recently shared some pieces that I’ve written about men, male sexuality, male sensuality.
These come out of the work I share with men, the conversations, the workshops and experiences.
As beautiful, as interesting, as powerful, as emotional, as challenging, as thought-provoking as these conversations are, and as important as they are, there’s something more.
Touch.
So much of this journey, this healing, this discovery, this exploration of ourselves as men, is about connection.
Connecting with the parts of ourselves that we’ve disconnected, and been disconnected, from.
Connecting with our bodies.
Connecting with our hearts.
Connecting with our Lingams.
Connecting with what links heart and sex.
Connecting with our anger, our grief, our shame, our fears.
Connecting with our softness, our openness, our vulnerability.
Connecting with our fire, our passion, our desire.
Connecting with each other.
I sat with a couple the other day and an element of the conversation epitomized this.
She said that when she goes out with friends they talk deeply, about emotions, about feelings, about relationships, about life.
He said that when he’s out with friends it’s about sport, work, maybe politics.
So much of our lives as men is about competition, is about separation, is about being strong, walled, alone.
So much of our lives as men is about not needing help, not asking for anything.
So much of our lives as men is having to know how to do it, which is everything, and feeling less when we can’t, retreating, blocking it out.
So much of our lives as men is longing, for connection.
This longing creates something inside of us that we’ve hidden so well for so long.
And so much of our anger, our frustration, our violence, our shutting-off comes from this longing.
To connect.
And as important as the conversations are, there is a deep connection in touch.
In your touch, in your hands on my body, I am reflected, I am held, in a way that’s different to the touch of a women. And even though I’m writing this from a heterosexual perspective, the touch of a lover, a sexual partner, has a different quality, a different intention.
The touch of a man is the touch of myself.
I experience my sensuality in your body. Not the sensuality connected to sex, the sensuality of being.
The sensuality of my skin, my muscles, my nerves, my bones, my hair.
The sensuality that’s not connected to sexual desire, the sensuality of the strength of a man that allows me to take a breath and let go into feeling.
Much of our healing as men is in this touch, and the way it connects us.
Much of our freedom as men is in this touch, and the way it opens us.
The Men’s Movement in all its expressions is growing.
More of us are coming to do our work.
And yet over the past months I’ve been on many massage and touch workshops where the vast majority of people attending are women. And the question is asked continuously, Where are the men?
There’s an invitation here, the invitation of the body.
Words, as challenging as they sometimes are, are of the mind.
They have filters, can be used in many ways, hidden, turned this way and that, twisted.
Our words can create separation, the beliefs we have, the differences they express.
The body connects.
The body doesn’t hide.
It feels.
It’s present when we allow ourselves the sensations, the feelings, the emotions that touch brings.
When we allow ourselves to be held, to be touched, to be seen, felt, acknowledged beyond words.
There’s a knowing in this, an intrinsic knowing that what we’ve been longing for, is here.
And we can let go into this, drop our armouring, drop our masks, drop our pretence.
In touch, with touch, through touch.
We find ourselves, we find each other, we free ourselves, in this touch of possibility.
I dedicate this to my friend Charlie, who took this picture at a shoot we did of male massage. He couldn’t reach out, and took his life. So many of us have done that, and live with so much inside of us.
