Find the "resilient edge of resistance"

It always amazes me that men do not know how to touch women. When we practice resilient touch in my sessions, it is almost never a pleasurable touch for me. And it is not only men, I have had couples in my sessions as well, and their inability to touch each other sensually is far more the rule than the exception.

In Urban Tantra, author Barbara Carrellas says: “When we touch someone, we don’t just want to make any old kind of contact. We want to feel like we become the touch…When you touch the body, you want to touch deeply enough that the body pushes back just a little. If a muscle becomes rigid under your touch, you’ve gone too far. If the muscle feels flaccid, you haven’t gone far enough.”

This is how she defines the “resilient edge of resistance.”

Here are a few exercises to help you find it and store it in your muscle memory.

Hug someone. What’s the fine line between tepid and smothering?

Set the temperature of your bath or shower at the hottest or coldest you can take it. Stay there a while.

Test your resilient edge by doing a self-massage. Go slowly and work on each part of your body to see what you can take.

Next-level: If you want to explore this concept with a partner, Carrellas says, “Stillness is extremely powerful. Put your hands on someone so that you can feel both resilience and resistance. Embrace them with your hands.” Explain the concept of the "resilient edge of resistance" to your partner and get feedback.

Giving or receiving a hand massage is another simple way to test your edge. You can also give or get a full-body massage. Carrellas recommends slowing down and trying “three strokes for thirty.” She says it’s better to make three delicious strokes on the body precisely at the resilient edge of resistance than thirty strokes that are sloppy and unconscious