Embodiment

All of the therapies offered by the Aurora Collective members work in different ways to support embodiment. Be it through mindfulness, processing experiences and trauma that sits in the body, through developmental support with children, helping them to take hold of their body so that it is available and on call to support them in what they want to do, through working directly with the body in the supportive nursing, reflexology and Bowen therapy, all these interventions support people feeling grounded, able to be present in the here and now, and able to go forward into their future.

Being embodied is a big part of developing resilience. Being able to bounce back when life puts obstacles in our way.

We have different sense systems that support us in being embodied, knowing where our body is in space and time: body geography, orientating from it: spatial awareness, being the master of it when we move, and feeling our body: proprioception and interoception.

Today we will look at one of those senses that helps us to know where the boundary of our body is.

The Sense of Touch

The organ for the sense of touch is the millions of nerve endings around the hair follicles and below the surface of the outer layer of the skin. It is distributed over the whole surface of the body, and it is our largest sense organ. Those nerve endings give us constant information from every part of our body that is in contact with something: clothes, earth, tools, air etc.

We also have sensors deeper in our bodies, in our joints, ligaments and tendons which give us proprioception: proprio = self, -ception = sensing.

In the traditional way of understanding, the sense of touch is described as telling us about the qualities of the objects we touch, is something hard, cold, alive, dead, wood, plastic etc… When we know if something is soft or hard, warm or cold… we have also moved, applied pressure. We have used other senses, like movement, warmth etc to know what it is we have touched. Our attention has been drawn out of ourselves into the world around us.

Looking purely at the sense of touch, when something touches us or we touch it, we inwardly experience it as touching us from the outside and pressing into us. This pressure we feel inwardly and is deeply personal. Nobody else can feel what we sense inwardly by being touched or touching something. The stronger the touch, the deeper we sense ourselves inwardly. Light touch, which can be as light as a breeze moving the hairs on our face, takes us to the surface of our skin, deep touch takes us to the sensors deeper into the body, in the muscles, ligaments and tendons.

Touch is connection and separation: While we sense ourselves inwardly, when we touch something or someone, we also make a connection with what is outside of us. We know this to be different from us, to be foreign to us.

Touch, together with taste and smell, are the first senses in the baby’s life to soothe and connect, to express and feel love.

Touch is an essential aspect of being human, it is as important as breathing and sunlight. It tells me where my boundaries are, what belongs to me, and what is outside of me. Healthy and loving touch is reassuring and confirming of the Self in the body. Without touch and the sense of safety and trust in the world that it gives, learning and development is severely hindered, as we know from the orphans in understaffed homes whose development slowed right down without that touch sense being fulfilled. Skin on skin with premature babies also comes out of this understanding of the vital importance of touch for development.

That trusted, safe touch gives us our sense of Self, our Self-awareness, through it we can become aware of ourselves. Our Self permeates our physical body more or less, we sense ourselves depending on how well we are connected to our physical body, which differs at different times of the day and our activities: sleep, waking up, excited, tired etc.

Meeting another person can be in sympathy and open when we are strong within ourselves and we don’t have to meet the other with anxiety, in a defensive way. If our skin and sense of touch is mostly needed to protect ourselves from the world, it is very hard to meet another, understand them, see them for who they are, without judgement.

The saying that someone or something can ‘get under my skin’ is often used when we feel invaded, or our boundaries are not respected by someone or something coming too close. 

The vital importance of touch is also part of the reason that unwanted touch and violations of intimate touch are so traumatising. It is a direct attack on the sense of Self and the sacredness of that boundary where the Self can feel safe.

An oversensitive sense of touch can show as tactile defensiveness: irritation from labels in clothes, certain materials, pressures on the body from a belt etc. Someone described that feeling “like nails going over a chalkboard, but then on your skin.” It can show as not liking to be touched, needing a large personal space around us, or not knowing how hard we touch someone.

Irritation from lumpy food in the mouth and difficulties with bowel movements can also be signs of touch sensitivity. Our food only becomes a true part of ourselves once it has gone through the lining of the intestines into the bloodstream. Our digestive tract is still part of the boundary that separates us from our environment.

I am within this boundary, what is within my skin is me.

My touch tells me where the boundary of my body is. The sense of touch in my skin is where I become aware of that boundary: everything within that skin belongs to me, everything outside that skin belongs to the world and is foreign to me. My Self, ‘I’ become aware of my own boundary when I come into contact with the physical world around me either through being touched or actively touching.

A healthy sense of touch gives a feeling of safety, feeling secure. It means I can feel sure that the world and all that it has in it, will stay outside of me. I will stay inside of my boundary and won’t lose myself if my skin gives me the secure sense of where I end. This not only gives me a sense of boundary surrounding myself, but also my ability for awareness of the other.

Adam Blanning in his book Raising Sound Sleepers, gives this list of some important sensing activities as they happen in a child’s development.

Some of these can be used to nurture and post-nurture the sense of touch:

-            The natural birthing process with the contractions and going through the birthing canal

-            Holding

-            Swaddling

-            Patting

-            Rubbing

-            Hugging, squeezing

-            Floor time

-            Rolling

-            Crawling

-            Carrying and lifting

-            Pushing and pulling

-            Drawing as a pushing and pulling activity

-            Building

-            Tickling

-            Digging

-            Working with clay

-            Massage

-            Sponges, dry skin brushing

-            Wrestling

-            Big pillows in the bed to lean against

-            A bed against a wall, with headboard and footboard

-            Weighted blankets

-            Blanket wraps tightly around the body

-            Hammocks

-            Face painting, henna tattoos

References:

Blanning Adam MD, Raising Sound Sleepers, Helping Children Use their Senses to Rest and Self-Soothe, Floris Books 2023

Linden David J., Touch, The Science of the Sense that Makes us Human, Penguin Books 2015

Ritchie Robyn, The Twelve Senses and Sensory Integration, 2024

Schoorel Edmond, The First Seven Years, Physiology of Childhood, Rudolf Steiner College Press 2004

Lut Hermans, June 2026