We invite you to explore some of these resources more on your own. You might do this before or after our meeting.
In order to explore some of these mindfulness of touch and self-compassion practices, you might explore one or two of the following resources. Make it easy for yourself and choose what seems the most natural and intuitive fit for you. The majority of these resources are online, and most will only take a few minutes to do or watch. Mike is also including a book chapter on touch that he used to examine how touch might contribute to more skillful and compassionate care for persons with dementia that tunes into their needs. The book chapter is the longest of all the resources that we include here, but it also the piece that talks in the most direct way about our topic today. What Mike did to make the book chapter his own in practice is to combine the knowledge it covers with mindfulness practices that he learned from his work with meditation teachers and in his spiritual care work at hospice. Mindfulness encourages us to pay greater attention to the experiences happening in our bodies and to make choices about how we use our attention to get in touch with what is going on in us. When we practice mindfulness of touch, we pay attention on purpose and with openness and curiosity to what we touch with our hands, feet, or interior nervous system structures. We get in touch with what we hold in our hands, how we feel in our hearts, or what kinds of intuitions arise from our gut. The chapter spells out some of the neurological underpinnings of why this might be possible for us when we practice mindfulness. May you have joy in getting in touch with yourself and your inner wisdom.
Books and Chapters
Field, Tiffany. “Touch Messages of the Brain,” In Touch 2nd Edition. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014.
Kitwood, Tom. Dementia Reconsidered: The Person Comes First. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1997.
Web Resources
Greater Good in Action, Self-Compassion Break, https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/self_compassion_break
Debora Grassman, Soul Injury,
Roshi Joan Halifax, GRACE Model of Compassion:
Kristin Neff, “Supportive Touch,” https://self-compassion.org/exercise-4-supportive-touch/
Kristin Neff, “Self-Compassion for Caregivers”
