Naked Nurturing

One of the most effective therapies for me with regard to feeling better regarding my body was what I call “Naked Nurturing”.

Previously I mentioned how as a child we look to our parents for approval of our bodies when we are naked before them. I believe Children love to show their bodies off. I think they do this because they naturally know the beauty and sacred nature of their bodies and are excited to show others and also because they are looking for validation. Children look for validation that they (which they do not distinguish from their bodies) are OK, are beautiful and are desirable.

I once was doing an assignment for my church. I went to a house in my neighborhood to speak to a member regarding a church matter. When I got to the door it was not closed but was ajar. I rang the doorbell and soon heard the sound of little bare feet heading toward the door. Two completely naked little girls about 3 and 5 years old appeared at the door. They had just come from a bath. They looked at me giggling and then ran off. It is obvious to me that children naturally love to be naked and love to show their bodies.

My belief is that many of us were not blessed with parents that freely felt physical affection for our bodies as children. When we ran around the room naked feeling wonderfully free our parents may have unwittingly stifled our freedom and gave us the feeling that there was something wrong with being naked and perhaps even instilled a feeling of shame or disgust regarding our naked bodies.

Around the time I was divorced a friend of mine who had many health problems had, at the advice of another friend, gotten a massage. I thought I might like getting a massage so I asked her who the therapist was and made an appointment. In the past I might not have had the nerve to get a massage but through my Holosync® therapy (mentioned in a previous post) I had become more confident and less fearful about being close to others. I even looked forward to it with a degree of excitement.

The massage therapist was a woman in her forties. She was friendly and pleasant. She left the room while I got completely undressed and lay down under a sheet. Her touch was delicious. She showed gentleness, firmness and affection in her touch. I came out of that first massage session floating on a cloud. It was not just the physical stimulation of having my body worked on but it was an emotional stimulation. I was being nurtured in a way that had never happened before. I felt emotionally whole immediately after the massage.

I have found that good massage therapists love their jobs. They have special regard for the human body. They would not stay in the profession if they did not enjoy what they do; if they did not enjoy working on naked bodies.

What I felt was a warm nurturing feeling. I felt accepted. I went to this therapist several times and she told me she enjoyed working on me. This made me feel even better about my own body. My body wasn’t an ugly thing. I am in my fifties and I am not much to look at but I felt I was desirable. I got emotional benefit as well as physical benefit from her nurturing touch.

I have since gone to many different therapists. I always ask them if they like what they do. As I have said, the best therapists are the ones that enjoy their work the most. They are also the ones whose strokes have an affectionate feel to them. They are not just rubbing your muscles in a cold medicinal way. They touch you like your mother or father should have touched you. They touch you with the feelings that your mother or father should have had for you and your body when they bathed you, dried you off or gave you a back rub. I believe a good massage therapist is not only technically knowledgeable and skilled but also feels physical affection for the person’s body as they work on them.

An affectionate massage is “naked nurturing”.

Holosync®

I would like to make mention here of the most powerful tool I have found for emotional change. This is a little off the subject but it is important that I mention it here.

I had gone through life consistently feeling anxiety and depression. Therapists provided interesting ideas but I was aware of most of them already from reading all the self help books. Ultimately traditional therapies were of little help. I had success with antidepressants but never felt quite normal because of side affects and never liked the idea of being dependant on drugs for an extended period of time.

At the time of my divorce the level of my anxiety increased to the point that I was unproductive at work. My family practitioner prescribed the drug Celexa. This seemed to help with the anxiety and the depression to a degree but life was still miserable.

A friend of mine introduced me to a technology called Holosync® that changed my life completely. Within a few days of listening to the Holosync® CDs I was experiencing changes in my sleeping and in my emotional state. In about a year I cut my Celexa dosage in half. After another six months I eliminated the Celexa altogether. I had become anxiety free!

I still feel down at times but it is more of a normal sadness because my life wasn’t going the way I would like or some other negative event in my life has occurred. I do not stay sad for long and am not incapacitated as I was in the past. I have had no need for any kind of drug to control anxiety or depression for the past six years and do not believe I will ever need any drug again for depression or anxiety.

I think more rationally and find myself freely conversing with people where before I always felt uncomfortable with strangers or in groups of people. Holosync® did all of this. I am now hearing of therapists using this technology for their clients with mental issues and also that the therapists are using it themselves.

This has helped me in many ways with regard to regaining affections as well as giving me consistent peace of mind unlike anything I have ever had in my entire life. The web site to find out more about this is http://www.centerpointe.com/. I am not trying to sell this product but only offer it as one of the best methods for reducing anxiety and depression.

Passion

This is a review and the addition of one more element, the emotion generated when the need for union is being satisfied.

1. Affection is the emotion you feel when you perceive someone or something of value, beauty or meaning to you.

2. This affection causes the need for union (Eros) to kick in and to produce desire. Desire is simply the urge to unite. I have mentioned “erotic” desire but I am thinking that erotic desire and desire are the same thing. Is there are desire that is not the urge to unite; the urge for greater intimacy?

3. We then engage in activities to accomplish union (greater intimacy) such as talking, listening, kissing, reading, thinking, eating, smelling, touching, etc. which produces pleasure.

Pleasure is the emotion we feel as we accomplish union with something of value to us or in other words, as we satisfy the primary need. Passion is the emotion we feel when we are accomplishing union with something of great value to us. Just a side note: the things that are greatest in value are things that are sacred to us.

Because of misunderstanding we think we are obtaining fulfillment from the nature of the thing valued when it is simply that we have put into the object of our affection the need for union or in other words we have allowed our need for union to be satisfied by the object of value. The pleasure isn’t really in the thing itself but rather in the fulfilling of our need for union.

We think that the pleasure we receive from eating something that tastes good is from the taste itself, but this is not true. The pleasure comes from the accomplishment of union with a food that we value highly because of the taste. We have allowed ourselves to be satisfied (our need for union to be satisfied) by the particular food. The better the taste the more we allow our need for union to be satisfied and it follows that we feel greater pleasure.

The nature of the fulfillment (pleasure/passion) is colored by what is valued but the pleasure is actually generated by the satisfaction of the need for union.