Naked Faces, Illegal Hugs, and Connecting to Your Inner Guidance
I took this selfie last summer, when I was experimenting with wearing a face mask due to a troublesome allergy reaction. How eerily prophetic that less than a year later, we are all wearing face masks.
I have come to take a lot for granted. I believe we’re all waking up to that fact.
I’ve taken safety for granted. I’ve taken healthy air for granted. And I’m realizing that I’ve taken faces for granted. Beautiful, bare faces — but no longer! Faces reveal so much about us. We are actually quite vulnerable when people see our faces, and I don’t mean just vulnerable to the virus. And how about eyes? How fascinating and expressive eyes are when they are peeking over masks! Have you noticed?
There’s another thing that many folks take for granted; Some of us single-living folks are not being touched much these days. Typically, we get hugs, handshakes, and so many other pats or platonic touches in our daily life. But now those precious connections are paused. We don’t even accidentally bump into anyone. We’re not being massaged, or routinely getting chiropractic treatments either, unless it’s really essential. We’re not getting our hair washed, cut and fluffed. Touch-hunger is a real thing, and the body registers lack of touch on physical, spiritual, and psychological levels.
My sister, who lives abroad, told me last week that her young grand-kids finally came over to visit their beloved granny. In their country, there have been very strict rules about traveling outside the immediate home area. But they’d all been missing each other something awful. So they donned their masks, and as the country’s rules relaxed a bit, they decided to try to safely visit outside. However, in the end, neither my sister nor the kids could resist hugging each other. At least they kept their masks on. “Illegal” it may have been, and hopefully not too risky since they’d all been practicing sheltering-at-home, but the joy felt from it was immeasurable.
Being touched is a crucial need for humans. It soothes anxiety and helps our nervous, digestive, and immune systems.
Going without being touched has some big drawbacks. I had to ask myself, as I contemplated my own situation of living alone, what can help mitigate this really fundamental need of humans to feel connection through touch?
I did a little internet searching and found an interesting article in Time Magazine on ways to try to compensate for the lack of skin contact now, in light of Covid-19:
https://time.com/5817453/coronavirus-human-touch/
The article describes how online video chatting, virtual dance parties and online group yoga or exercise classes can aid connection and stimulate hormones being released that are similar to the hormonal stimulation of touch. It’s so valuable to connect with others at this unprecedented time, and thank goodness for online access to other humans.
This is also an incredibly great time to connect deeply, not only with others, but also with your own soul.
It’s important to feel compassion for ourselves and for what we’re going through. Don’t isolate from others, and also don’t turn away from the life of your soul. The soul hungers too. The soul cultivates courage. The nourishment we’re seeking now for courage can’t come from cookies, chocolate, alcohol or drugs that might be tempting as we try to escape the current reality. That escapism is human, and let’s be realistic, probably necessary at times, but ultimately, it’s only a temporary band-aid. It can’t be a steady, pandemic diet because it won’t nourish the courage we all need.
It’s such a blessing to connect spiritually with whatever is sacred to you – whether you call it Spirit, the Universe, God, Higher Power, Higher Self…whatever that is to you. So meditate, chant, pray…do whatever you’re called to do spiritually. Especially sweet is to connect with others who are on a spiritual path, which truly feeds that connection and courage hunger in a deeply nourishing way.
Shamanic soul retrieval and extraction, and Akashic Record readings are deeply personal journeys into your soul and what is sacred to you.
