Our skin is the largest organ of the human body. It protects us from the elements. It keeps us safe from bacteria and most viruses. The skin also acts as a portal to the rest of the world around us.
Can you imagine living in a world where you cannot feel anything? What might that be like? We use our sight, smell, taste, and hearing every day from the moment we wake up, until the moment we sleep. Our minds develop dreams around our experiences of sight, smell, taste, and hearing.
But what about touch? Your skin allows you to feel soft, hard, sharp, dull, cold, hot, pressure, wet and dry. The skin is loaded with millions of tiny things called receptors (detecting
temperature), nociceptor (detects pain) and corpuscles (detecting pressure). Your hair follicles are also very important with the sense of touch acting almost like a miniature antenna sending vibrations into your skin.
Get Naked and Explore
To truly understand your skin and all it is capable of, you must completely expose it. Some of us choose to do this in private, other’s (like myself) don’t care if anyone is watching. Whatever makes you comfortable, it is important to get completely naked and explore. Your body is the only body you will ever have and you should know it better than anyone. Taking your hands and very slowly running them lightly over your arms, then your shoulders and then your torso – you should explore all of it, gently. Pay special attention to the areas you never take the time to touch, perhaps under the arms, around your back, up your back (if you can do that). Explore the crevasses of your legs, your genitals (don’t linger here long, I’ll explain that later), the curve of your bottom and down your legs to your feet. Don’t just run a line along these surfaces, realize that you can run your hands along the entire surface.
Now, notice the smaller elements. Notice how you are more sensitive in some areas and less sensitive in others. Feel your imperfections and realize that they are your imperfections and that they are part of who you are, even if you don’t like them. You can’t get rid of them any more than you can get rid of yourself. Even if you cut out a mole, the scar of the mole will be there. You are who you are and the skin you feel is yours. No one can take it away from you, and no one can take away the right you have to feel every ounce of your body. Touch areas of your skin on your back, on your front and notice how it connects, where hair grows and where it does not. Look at the wrinkles on your hands or your arms or your feet and see how your nails connect into your foot.
Now, look in the mirror and see the skin that makes up your face. The fat and muscle layers beneath it that lay upon your skull and make up the face that you see every day. Think about the fact that the face you see is never the face everyone else sees because you can only see it (live) in reverse from what everyone else sees.
Here’s the really weird part – Take your hands and hold your lips wide open (up and down and side to side), holding your mouth as open as you can. Close your teeth and notice how your gums connect to your teeth, and carry up to your skin, attaching it to your mouth. See the mild shape of your skull beneath the skin.
Feel The Touch
Now, those sensitive areas you found before, concentrate on them. They might be between your thighs, at the top of your butt, under your chin, or you may concentrate on your genitals. It’s all skin. Explore how different pressure or subtleties changing make you feel physical. Perhaps some turn you on, while others turn you off. Maybe some gross you out while others fascinate you.
If you’re male, touch your penis gently, moving your fingers gently down to your scrotum. If you’re female, explore the outside of your vulva and feel how sensitive it is to run your fingers around the top and sides. Spread your vaginal lips and explore how it feels to barely touch inside. Males, get some lubrication and feel how differently the head of your penis feels compared to the base.
Eventually, bring yourself close to orgasm, but not all the way. While you are there – close, concentrate on the things you never do. What does your face look like? What does your hand look like as moves over your body? If you have a mirror nearby, are you flushed from the rise in sexual tension? Are your toes curling? Are your eyes dilated? Once you have fully explored this, then allow yourself to orgasm and notice how all of your skin feels at that point. Is it clammy? Is it warm? Is it numb?
Understanding how critical this organ is and how it is the one thing that we can be most intimate with is crucial for understanding yourself, what you feel (physically) and how you can make the best of it.
