Connecting Through Touch

Description

There are more than 40,000 nerve endings in the human hand. With a little good advice and a lot of loving, sensual practice, readers of this book can learn to turn each one of these sensitive points into a powerful tool for improving communication, deepening intimacy, and sharing love. Author Peggy Horan was one of the founders and longest-serving practitioners in the Massage Department at the world-renowned Esalen Institute. Now readers can learn her secrets of Esalen Massage.Starting with a simple setting that can easily be accomplished with few special preparations, readers will learn, step-by-step, how to make a deep and meaningful connection with their partner's body. Using a combination of strokes from the most time-honoured massage traditions, they will learn to be mindful of where their partner holds stress and tension. As the massage continues, readers will enter into a profound nonverbal dialogue with their partner, learning much from the simple act of contact with another body. All of the techniques are illustrated with black-and-white photographs. Elegant and refined, this book is a perfect gift for a special someone or a friend in love.

Peggy Morrison Horan is a thirty-five-year practitioner and teacher of Esalen Massage, student of yoga and movement, and retired midwife. She coproduced the Esalen Massage video in 1996 and was one of the founders of the Esalen Massaage School. She managed the Massage Department at Esalen for many years before retiring from management in 2004. She still practices and teaches there.

"Some aspects of a relationship lie deeper than words. Peggy Horan rolls together our human needs for pleasure, communication, and well-being in this practical guide for couples massage. Couples can strengthen their partnerships as well as get rid of those achy back pains by giving each other massages with these principles in mind. Our divorce rate could plummet!" --Brita Orstrom, LMFT, a founder of the Esalen Massage School and family therapist with a background in somatic, body-based psychotherapy "For many in the Esalen Community, touch was the first door to self-discovery. In this book, Peggy Horan leads us into the wonderful world of touch. You couldn't find a better guide." --Christine Price, teacher at and long-time resident of the Esalen Institute "Don't miss this sophisticated, accurate, delightful approach to bodywork." --Jack Lee Rosenberg, DDS, Ph.D., founder and director of Integrative Body Psycho therapy in Venice, CA "Touch is its own, unique form of communication, which can foster genuine understanding between partners in ways that words alone cannot. For more than thirty years, I have been dazzled by Peggy Horan's extraordinary talents and sensitivities. She is truly one of the great living masters of the art of massage. In Connecting Through Touch, she does a superb job of capturing all of the ways in which touch can comfort, stimulate, bridge gaps, and heal. I have every confidence that this book will enrich the relationships of anyone who reads it." --Ken Dychtwald, Ph.D., author of Bodymind, The Age Wave, and The Power Years "In Peggy Horan's inspired hands, Esalen massage becomes a true practice in the spiritual sense, based on intimate connections between people. Read this book for both the "how" and the deeper "why" behind the techniques, and experience the wonder for yourself." --Gordon Wheeler, Ph.D., president and CEO of the Esalen Institute and author of Beyond Individualism: A New Perspective on Self, Relationship, and Experience