Somebody Hold Me: The Single Person's Guide to Nurturing Human Touch

by Epiphany Miriam Jordan

Overview

Nearly 50% of Americans checked the "single" box in the 2010 census. Because we equate touch with sex, many of us suffer alone when we crave physical comfort and tenderness. Somebody Hold Me: The Single Person’s Guide to Nurturing Human Touch takes a simple, radical approach to health and relationships by teaching you how to get more platonic touch. Somebody Hold Me walks you through the increasingly fraught physical space between humans, and allows for more connection and closeness through giving and receiving structured touch in your existing relationships.

Designed for people in alternative communities (Burners, pagans, polyamorists, kinksters, asexuals, furries, ren festers, cosplayers) who have large circles of friends, Somebody Hold Me gives you a step-by-step guide to share touch with people you already know. Enjoy better health, feel happier, and deepen your friendships. Get off your phone, out of your head, and into your body with the simple practice of nurturing human touch.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781732879201
Publisher:	Significant Otter Publishing
Publication date:	01/29/2019
Pages:	202
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.46(d)

About the Author

Epiphany Jordan is a social artist whose mission is to reconfigure human relationships for a better world. For the past five years, she has witnessed firsthand the benefits of nurturing human touch with her business, Karuna Sessions. She has pondered why this aspect of our biology has been ignored in medicine, how lack of touch negatively affects our health and relationships, and what the world might look like if we deliberately shared consensual touch. Somebody Hold Me is the result of those ruminations. Epiphany has been a journalist, a legal assistant, an event planner, a professional tarot reader, a cigarette girl, and a gig economy serf. She found her home when she discovered Burning Man in 1994 while living in San Francisco, and experienced a feeling of belonging for the first time. In the ensuing 25 years, she has dipped into many alternative communities and movements. Epiphany also runs the Blue Star Temple, Karuna Sessions' sister business. She lives in a magic, art-filled cottage in East Austin, and thinks breakfast tacos are one of the finest culinary inventions in our universe.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part 1: The Importance of Touch

Chapter 1: Who is this book for?

Chapter 2: What is touch hunger?

Top 10 Cultural Myths that Discourage Nurturing Human Touch

Chapter 3: The Culture Surrounding Touch

Top 10 Reasons to Engage in Nurturing Human Touch

Chapter 4: The Health Benefits of Touch

Chapter 5: How Much Touch?

Chapter 6: Consent

Amma

Chapter 7: Philosophy of Nurturing Human Touch

Whitney

Chapter 8: Touch Basics

Sasha and Taylor

Chapter 9: Designing Nurturing Human Touch Relationships

Part 2: The Step-by-Step Guide

Top 10 Reasons to Share Touch with Your Friends

Chapter 10: Assembling your tribe

Chapter 11: Preparing for your first encounter

Chapter 12: Boundaries 101

Chapter 13: Sharing Touch with Your Friends

Chapter 14: Aftercare

Part 3: The Real World

Hunter

Chapter 15: What’s next?

Chapter 16: Touch with strangers

Chapter 17: Don't Touch Me!

Conclusion

Endnotes

Resource Guide

Acknowledgements

Editorial Reviews

Somebody Hold Me is the textbook for the touch we need. Jordan clarifies the lines of sexuality, health, and well-being, and shows a path for healthy human touch that might save us from our isolated, screen-dominated future. - John Halcyon Styn, Hug Nation

Somebody Hold Me is a smart, practical, and empowering guide for anyone who could benefit from more nurturing touch in their 21st century lives, which, Jordan helped me realize, is pretty much all of us. - Kim Corbin, founder, iskip.com

If you’re not getting touched, then this is the book for you. Somebody Hold Me is the how-to manual about touch that the world has been waiting for – without knowing it. Warning! Following these instructions could positively change your health, uplift your attitude, and brighten your world. - Bella LaVey, Fetish Girl: A Memoir of Sex,Domination, and Motherhood

Funny, engaging, and down to earth, Somebody Hold Me helps readers defeat touch deprivation with an often-untapped resource: the loving support of friends. - Christine Hoff Kraemer, PhD, author of Eros and Touch from a Pagan Perspective and editor of Pagan Consent Culture

Somebody Hold Me is the first book of its kind. Touch is invaluable,accessible, within reach, and worth seeking! - Janet Trevino, ReTouch Rehabilitative Touch Therapy

Somebody Hold Me is a fantastic guide for the single person looking to understand how best to access the kind of touch that feeds the soul without being creepy about it. - Kitty Stryker, Editor of Ask: Building Consent Culture

Somebody Hold Me breaks through the shame of loneliness and desire for physical touch and offers a compassionate guide to getting this need met. - Mo Daviau, Every Anxious Wave

An honest, clever, enjoyable and amazingly radical book. Read it only if you want to live more fully and enjoy feeling alive way more often. - Dr. James Fadiman, The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide

From the Publisher