The Space Between: On the Healing Power of Gaze

For the last three years, many of us have socialized and worked on Zoom, which, while convenient, is simply not the same as in-person, human-to-human contact, particularly in therapeutic contexts, particularly when it comes to affect regulation. This last Sunday at Tikkun Time, wanting to gently introduce a gazing exercise, I drew from Marina Abramovic’s work The Artist is Present as well as classic theater works. Gazing is a powerful, and often very hard, exercise. Trauma-informed bodies and neuro-divergent brains often struggle to sustain eye contact.

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Trauma Healing

It was not that long ago that I was writing here about the treacherous ice on the road near my house that caused my only bike wreck of the winter. I referred to the ice in that blog post as a metaphor for various elements in my life that had been unseen by me and thus caused some recklessness or even damage to others due to my blind sightedness. Well, it’s been a couple months since I let my painful and inflamed wrist go untreated for that time. On Monday I went for an x-ray (finally!) and got the good news that there were no breaks although there was plenty of swelling clearly illuminated. I’ll go back to the hospital in a week to see a hand specialist to see if some of the pain and swelling can be alleviated. So, here’s to not knowing. Continue reading