A Quiet Time - an irreverent response :)

[Karen Sella]

Guess it's hard for some folks not to be Tree-huggers [grin]. I know, I
know. couldn't help myself!  
 
Thanks for sharing another point of view, Tree.  There are so many
different ways to express ourselves and sometimes we get into our own
well-worn, little grooves without fully attending to the preferences of
others.
 
Warm regards,
Karen
 
------------------------------------------
 

Karen Sella
Managing Partner
www.luminacoaching.com
Phone: 206.780.2998
Skype: luminasella
 
lumina fr. L., light, air, opening
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Tree
Fitzpatrick
Sent: Friday, March 03, 2006 5:19 PM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Re: A Quiet Time
 
A small contribution about touching, just my individual perspective. . .
I am not offering suggestions for anyone else.

I am a high empath, deeply intuitive and sometimes I think I am a gifted
psychic, although I don't foresee the future.  But I am highly, highly
sensitive.  I feel all kinds of energy.  Before I fully realized on I
feel many different kinds of energy that not everyone feels (certainly I
am by no means special).

I have always resisted a lot of physical contact with other people.  I
have been told, countless times, that my resistance to being touched was
somehow a 'wrong' choice or, at least, a less than 'optimal' one.  I
can't tell you how many times wonderful, loving leaders of one variant
or another has tried to persuade me that I needed to push myself into
accepting hugs, that I didn't know what I was missing, that I needed
what I was missing.

And I have yearned to be able to get over this resistance-to-touch
thing.  I hate it when people, be they people I love and trust or people
I have just met at a gathering, take notice of my resistance to touch.
I hate it even more when people impose touch on me without asking.

I have sat with this situation for a long, long time.  Over the years, I
have grown more confident of my ability to trust myself.  Gradually I
realized that I could be me.  I can trust my Self to know when I need to
be touched and I could block out all the well-meaning and, I am certain,
wonderful people who wanted to 'fix' my resistance to a lot of touching.
Hey, I realized with happiness, maybe I am okay just the way I am.

Giving myself this permission led me to what has been, for me, an
exciting new/next realization:  I found out that I don't like to be
touched a lot because I am already feeling so much energy.  At special
events, especially events where I am holding space, I am picking up
many, many streams of energy with the finely attuned instrument that is
me.  It is real work to stay tuned.  And it is perfectly reasonable to
do what I need to do to feel okay.  Hugging people shifts my energy.
Hugging three people in a row shifts my energy three times in a row.  It
is sort of like moving a satellite dish on your roof and changing your
television's ability to receive programming.

As I said as i began, this is just about me and touching other people.
I do not propose that what is true for me is true in the same way for
one another.  

I am just voicing, with the above explanation to give my message some
context, that there are all kinds of things going on when two or more
people are gathered and none of us can really ever know what all the
other people need to be doing to feel just right.  I always feel highly
anxious when people standing up in front of groups of people, leading,
start asking people to touch, touch, touch.  I have a deep, visceral
resistance, sometimes, even, revulsion.  I feel faintly panicky.  I lose
my sense of centeredness.

Well, I used to.  Now I remember that I get to be me all the time, no
matter what.
-- 
Warmly,
Tree Fitzpatrick
Hearthkeeper
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