I write about, teach and practice intimacy and vulnerability in my healing practices. I’m a Licensed Massage Therapist, a Certified Traumatic Incident Reduction Trainer and Facilitator, a Breath work Facilitator, and a Shamanic Bodywork Practitioner.

I’ve learned through experience in both giving and receiving, that the greatest healing arises in connection.

Osho tells us that, to be a healer means simply to connect, to be a connection to source for someone who has become disconnected. I find that the more fully I connect, the more open and unguarded I am, the less I hold back, the greater the vulnerability, openness and trust I meet in my client. If I don’t hold anything back, if I don’t limit the connection between us, prodigious volumes of healing energy move between us.

I’ve learned so much about the nature of this connection and about surrendering to it. For example, it is much, much harder to be this open and vulnerable with someone who is close, or important to us.

I’ve learned to love people I’ve never met before, instantly, fully and unconditionally. Love is an action verb. It’s like any other action: running, pitching, batting, skating, singing, dancing. The more you practice, the more facile you become. The more easily, quickly and automatically you can perform that action. Love is like that.

Most of us have loved, many, often and much. But transactional love, and unconditional love, are not merely nuanced variations of the same thing, they are completely different acts. That they often occur simultaneously is like being able to sing and dance at the same time. In healing, it is the unconditional love that opens the connection to the energy of life.

Today, after many years on this path, I find that if I look at someone, hug them, sit with them, give them massage or shamanic bodywork, scratch their back, hold their hand, kiss them, that automatically, without thinking or forming a separate intention, we are deeply connected, and they take notice.

I also know that I am still holding back. I don’t want to. I seldom know, until suddenly, I do. A couple years ago, in a breath work intensive, I discovered that sometimes I don’t even know I’m holding back until I stop.

Today, as I thought about my intention of several months to submit an article to Elephant Journal, I realized I was holding back.

I write. I write a lot. As in my teaching and my practice, I am often able to wrap my head around subtle, illusive and esoteric phenomena. Frequently I can then articulate my understanding in a way that many can easily recognize. I am often told that I am an excellent writer. Writing is a very important part of who I am. It defines me.

I hold it back. Oh, you can find it, there’s plenty of it posted on the internet, on my website blog, on social media. But it lies hidden in plain sight. You kind of have to be looking for it. Posting to a publication, with an audience? That meets with procrastination, delay.

So today, I recognize that as a holding back, as a way that I limit my vulnerability, and thus, my love. I am blessed to mean a great deal to a lot of amazing people. How much more could I be for them, if I just stop holding back? How much more of you could the world embrace, if you just stop holding back?