Contact (touch)

I notice my temples aching as I watch; my brows furrowed in an attempt to shepherd my attention to the words being spoken. I can sense a lassooing between them, the more I furrow, the more constricted my focus. It's as if my brows believe they can rope knowledge into submission. From this place, I notice more tension ~ eyes, jaw, neck, traps; bracing as one, forming a chain, steely and strong. My body readying for the defensiveness coming through the screen. The detail of this familiarity surfs my sigh of exasperation. I'm watching yet another debate about manual therapy - whether it's evidence-based, whether it works, whether we should be doing it at all.

~

Instead of inhabiting the familiar, I stay with my sigh;

my attention moving to what might reside in it's collapse,

letting myself lean into the whitewash.

Movement; and stillness, movement and stillness; movement and stillness.

The quality at odds with the wave itself.

It's lower;

it spreads up and out and down and in,

it spreads in all directions like groundcover;

velvety smoothness.

It has an availability that feels alive and possible

~ an omnidirectional expansion, willing.

Curiosity arrives, gliding;

What if we paid attention to the quality of contact?

What if what we included as contact was more than touch itself?

What if contact (touch) encompassed how we contact the other;

their words,

their assumptions,

their beliefs,

their fear,

their worry,

their understanding?

What if contact (touch) encompasses how we contact ourselves;

our words,

our assumptions,

our beliefs,

our fear, our worry,

our not-knowing?

What if contact (touch) encompassed how their world contacts ours?

What if contact (touch) is about so much more than how we organise around manual therapy and evidence and binary views?

What if we paid attention to what we pay attention.

This is where my attention feels alive ~ how about yours?