The Difference Between Being Touched and Being Held

I don't think women are craving more touch. I think they're craving more of the right kind.

At first, those two things sound as though they mean exactly the same thing, but the longer I've done this work, the more I've realised they couldn't be more different. We are touched every day, often without giving it a second thought. A hug goodbye as somebody rushes out of the door, the hairdresser washing your hair, the dentist asking you to turn your head, a stranger brushing past you in the supermarket. Touch is everywhere. Yet despite all of those moments, so many women still arrive saying they feel lonely, overwhelmed or as though they've been carrying everything by themselves.

That's because being touched and being held are not the same experience.

Being held has very little to do with where someone's hands are and everything to do with where their attention is. It's the feeling that another person has arrived fully, without distraction or agenda, and for the next hour or two there is nowhere else they would rather be. You don't have to earn that attention by entertaining them, apologising for yourself or pretending you're coping better than you are. You simply arrive, and somebody quietly meets you there.

I've thought about this a lot over the years because I remember searching for exactly that feeling myself. Before óm existed, I spent a long time lying on treatment couches looking for something I couldn't quite put into words. I wasn't searching for a particular massage or facial, and I certainly wasn't comparing techniques.

What I was really looking for was the feeling that somebody had noticed me. Not the version of me that had turned up smiling and saying, "I'm fine," but the woman underneath who was exhausted and trying desperately to hold everything together.

Sometimes I found it, and sometimes I didn't. The treatments were often okay ish'. The therapists were skilled, kind and professional. But every now and then I would leave thinking, that was lovely, rather than I felt looked after. It took me years to understand that those are two very different things.

When women leave óm, they rarely tell me about a particular massage stroke or the product I've used. More often they say, "I feel lighter," or "I feel like I can breathe again," or my favourite of all, "I feel like myself." Those words have very little to do with muscles or skin. They're describing what happens when another human being gives you permission to stop carrying everything for a while.

I think that's why the little things matter so much to me. Why I never rush you out afterwards. Why we have tea. Why I change a treatment if your body is asking for something different that day. None of those things are extras added around the ritual. They are part of the care. They are the moments that tell your nervous system, often before you've consciously realised it yourself, that you're somewhere safe enough to soften.

Perhaps that's what I've been trying to create all along. Not beautiful treatments, although I hope they are. Not luxury in the traditional sense, although I care deeply about how the space feels. What I've always wanted to create is the feeling I'd spent years looking for myself: somewhere that asks nothing of you except that you arrive. Somewhere you don't have to perform wellness, be interesting, be cheerful or have all the answers. Somewhere you can simply be held for a little while.

I don't think that's a luxury anymore.

I think, in the world we're living in, it's becoming a necessity.

Touch was the first language you ever understood. Perhaps it's time to listen to it again.

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