Or maybe it includes connection that's more intimate.Īdrienne maree brown, the author of Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, spent three months of the pandemic alone.

Maybe it's a walk on the beach, or a long hot bath. That is why it is important to consider the broad continuum of what brings us pleasure. And it's also the most intimate,' Kahn says. 'The relationship that we have with ourselves is primary, one that we're going to have for our entire lives. Life Kit What Makes A Good Partner - And How to Cultivate Connection Get curious about happiness That is why it is important to remember that we have a far greater capacity to bring the comfort of touch to ourselves than we might realize.Ĭelebrating our bodies, and the pleasure they can give us, can be the starting point for an extraordinary relationship with ourselves and the world. The absence of it, he says, can manifest as 'depression or anxiety or a feeling of loneliness or stress.'

Jesse Kahn, a licensed psychotherapist and sex therapist based in New York City, explains touch releases oxytocin, reduces stress, and calms our nervous system. And it is essential, a need deeply rooted in our biology.

This sense of connection is what many of us have missed in the last year: a hug from a friend, a kiss from a lover, the casual brush past a stranger on a crowded street. 'The world touches us in so many ways,' poet David Whyte reminds us in his book Consolations, 'through the trials of love, through pain, through happiness, through our simple everyday movement through the world.'

Men dont get touched