Finding our way back Together

Once, in a wave of grief during a break-up talk, I cried on the couch of my small Victorian apartment in San Francisco. My partner at the time didn't have words of comfort. He just sat beside me and put his hand on my back. I felt his love radiate all the way to my heart, and that was the medicine I needed. My tears slowly subsided, with the acceptance of what was. That moment stayed with me for the rest of my life.

When our relationship ended, my body began to ache. After a while I realized that ache carried what science now calls "touch hunger." It was a longing for nourishing touch and for closeness that wasn't even romantic or sexual - just the simple intimacy of feeling seen and held. While I missed our daily heart-to-heart sharing of life, what I missed the most were the hugs that quietly told me: I love you. We are here together. You are not alone.

This longing lives in all of us - the longing for togetherness, for belonging, just as we are. Yet, in today's world, we often find ourselves alone - behind screens, behind closed doors, in separate homes.

Villages and collectives, once woven into a web of life, got fragmented by the Industrial era into nuclear families dispersed in cities. Many of us stopped opening our hearts and doors to each other. Instead, we gradually became efficient little machines of productivity. Our attention scattered through the internet, as our bodies longed for connection that said, "I see you. I'm here with you."

We learned to value independence and self-sufficiency above all in Western culture. We learned to "carry on" and to fix our problems with quick solutions - often bypassing the tender wisdom of our hearts. But most of us crave real human connection, without veils. We need safe touch. To be together sharing a moment of truth - be it joy, pain, or confusion - in the field of belonging.

Growing up in the former Soviet Union, I was taught to think as a "we." Like a bee. Touch was our basic language, at least among the working class - holding arms as we walked, a hand on another's shoulder as we talked. Coming to the U.S. at eighteen felt like a shock. I learned that Puritan values of modesty and restraint had, over centuries, bound the human body away from others. We became separated from the mycelium network of embodied connection, like potted plants.

In a world starved for connection, we learned to improvise. We found what comfort we can - in therapy, romantic partnerships, friendly hugs, contact improvisation, cuddle gatherings. And yet many of us still feel untouched - in our hearts and bodies.

Modern research confirms what our bodies already know. "Touch hunger” - chronic deprivation of safe, attuned contact - affects our immune function, emotional regulation, and longevity. And then there is emotional loneliness, too. A 2023 report from the U.S. Surgeon General called loneliness a national epidemic, showing that isolation carries health risks comparable to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.

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As a healer, I once sat with a client who cried, in deep grief. I wanted to sit next to them and put my hand on their shoulder. And then I felt my hesitation - aware of the professional and cultural boundaries, and the worry of crossing a line. In that moment, I felt the gap between what we long for and what feels natural, and what we allow ourselves to give and receive.

For over a decade, I held space for others while feeling the separateness of the healer-client dynamic. Maintaining professional distance and holding back my own humanity didn't feel entirely authentic. And then I found a modality called Relational Somatic Healing (RSH) that changed everything. RSH was founded by Shirley Dvir as a therapeutic modality intended towards restoring healthy, authentic, loving relationships. 

RSH draws from earlier lineages, such as Body-mind centering, Craniosacral therapy, Hakomi, and Feminist psychology. In this approach, the therapist isn’t fixing the client, but is rather present in a loving way that says, “I’m here with you. I care. You belong.” It allows for the experience to be felt deeply, and to unfold in a field of togetherness.

This modality takes a fresh, non-hierarchical approach to healing, making space for consensual, mindful therapeutic touch. In this work, both the practitioner and the client meet as two human beings, and both are nourished by the field of loving presence. Giving becomes receiving, just like in nature. Through RSH, I learned a term: Mwe, which was coined by Dan Siegel. A word that holds both "me" and "we" together. Mwe dissolves the illusion of separation our culture built around us. It shows that autonomy and connection can coexist - “I can remain fully myself and still belong."

Mwe mirrors a way of life that the Indigenous people have always known. In The Spirit of Healing, Lewis Mehl-Madrona writes that in Lakota tradition, there is no "I" separate from "we" in the indigenous worldview. Identity is inherently relational, and existence itself is a web of relationships with all beings. Indigenous wisdom has always emerged from nature itself, where every part of an ecosystem gives and receives in reciprocity - trees exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide, fungi and roots share nutrients, bees pollinate flowers. Why should human connection be any different? The notion of Mwe reconnects our nervous systems into the collective mycelium of co-regulation, belonging, and interdependence.

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What I've come to understand is that how we meet each other becomes how we meet all of life. When we practice loving, attuned presence with one another - without fixing, manipulating, or expecting - we’re learning a way of relating that naturally extends to the Earth itself.

The same consciousness that says "I love you. I feel you. I'm here with you" can say it to a forest, a river, or a mountain. And then it is no longer possible to exploit or pollute nature. When we practice loving reciprocity and respect in our human relationships, we're learning to bring that same quality of attention to all forms of life.

If we could learn to meet one another the way nature meets itself - attuned, respectful, without manipulation - we might begin to restore our inner ecosystems, our communities, and even the planet. In a world where technology grows more dominant and loneliness continues to rise, we each have the power to choose differently - to remember that we are the medicine for one another.

Perhaps healing begins with the simplest acts: putting down our phones, offering genuine attention to another being, and asking, "How do you feel?" or "Would you like a hug?" We can choose vulnerability over efficiency, authenticity over politeness, and presence over productivity.

Can we then restore the sense of village and belonging that we've lost? Can we move from independence to interdependence, weaving ourselves once again into the mycelium of connection? If we can meet ourselves and one another in the field of Mwe—recognizing that "I" and "we" are not opposites but interconnected - then maybe we can begin to heal not only our own hearts, but the heart of the world.

That is my prayer.