SECOND THOUGHTS, SECOND FEELINGS AND SECOND SKINS

“My second thoughts are the true ones, those that await me in those depths down to which I do not go.” – Jacques Rivière

Often we are aware only of our first thoughts or the “first” feelings that occur to us. When we commonly notice an emotion, anger for instance, we stop there. In our culture there is little education about what happens when we go to another depth and how to get there. Something special can happen when we sink deeper. There is often a second feeling under the first. It might be fear, grief, desire or something yet to be named. There is a second voice, second thoughts and feelings if we listen to the murmurs below the surfaces of the mind, heart and body.

I’ve been thinking more about my childhood and realizing that often I didn’t quite know what I felt at the time, though I know I “sensed” it. Now I’m seeing, as an adult, I can go below and explore the second thoughts and deeper feelings that I certainly wasn't conscious of at the time.

In bodywork, there is a similar place to which we can go - what might be called the second skin of our clients. The first level of touch is when the client feels that we are contacting their “outsides.” They experience just the fact of that touch – they are being touched. Just being touched is wonderful, but what happens when the experience of being touched gives rise to a new experience within the person? There is certainly a quality of touch with which therapists can engage the person a bit more.

It can simply be a matter of allowing more time for the client to experience the touch within themselves. When we pause, it’s like being in a “silent room” in which we soon start to hear other sounds we ordinarily wouldn’t – our heartbeat, our breathing, the low creakings of the wood, the air circulating through the room.

Touching the second skin can also involve working with just a slight bit more pressure or energy, encouraging the client non-verbally to feel what transpires inside them with a deeper level of sensation.

“Not the first thoughts alone are thinking in me; in the very depths of myself there is a low, continual meditation about which I know nothing and about which I shall know nothing unless I make an effort: this is my soul.” - Rivière

So in what I call “Deep Massage” and Zero Balancing, we are looking for the ways in which bodily touch becomes soul touch as well. That is the point at which self-discovery begins and transformation becomes possible.

Perhaps quality of touch calls for a kind of second sight as well. There is looking the person on our table, and then there is really seeing them.

Man has no Body distinct from his soul; for that called Body is a portion of a Soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age. – William Blake

What happens when we see that person and their body as that “portion of a soul”?

Our touch may then become something that turns into a profound inner experience for the client, the touch of their second skin being in touch with their soul. This is conjoined with our seeing the person – our second sight that keeps on informing us about who we are touching at any given moment. We can even note that we and our clients are always changing. Heraclitus said you can’t step into the same river twice. Because life within is always flowing, maybe you can’t really step into the “same” river even once. It’s ever new.

Sometimes I will be working with the person face up, my hands under their thorax and allowing that second “skin” touch with the ribs and I will also look at their heart area with my eyes.  It feels like my eyes are a third hand on the heart. Whether this is palpable by the client or not, I do have faith that when I change the focus of my attention, it changes my touch.

So may you be intrigued as well with the practice of exploring your own second thoughts and second feelings with a kind of second sight. That respect and curiosity for what’s deep inside us, may also give your clients an invitation to explore their second nature as well as their first.

The first writings were done on skins – calf, goat or sheep – on “parchment”. So it is that in these second skins within us and our clients, we find stories, “writings”, “inscriptions”. The right touch will empower the stories within, memories, dreams, reflections, helping us unearth and tell new stories and sing new songs. These are not just genetic inheritance, they are the seed stories, the existential melodies we ride in with and those we create along the lifetime of our journey. It is these to which I want to contribute as a bodyworker, and as a researcher into what is most affective and positive in our work.