This is a LIVE replay (edits made due to technical difficulties) of A Trauma Survivor Thriver's Podcast which aired Tuesday, June 13th, 2023 at 1130am ET on Fireside Chat. Today’s guest is https://www.holisticresistance.com/about, Co-Founder of https://www.holisticresistance.com/ and https://www.grieftoaction.com/ and Creator of https://www.cutproject.org/. ------------------------------ https://firesidechat.com/lorileebinstock 00:00:43 Welcome. I'm Lorilee Binstock and this is A Trauma Survivor Thriver's Podcast. Thank you so much for joining me live on Fireside Chat, where you can be a part of the conversation as my virtual audience. I'm Lorilee Binstock, your host. Everyone has an opportunity to ask me or our guest questions by requesting to hop on stage or sending a message in the chat box. I will try to get to everybody, but I do ask that everyone be respectful. Today's guest is Aaron Johnson, creator of the chronically under touched project and cofounder of the holistic resistance and grief to action. Aaron, thank you so much for joining me today. Can you hear me okay? https://firesidechat.com/aaronjohnsoncutproject 00:01:50 It's good to https://firesidechat.com/lorileebinstock 00:01:52 Hello, Aaron? https://firesidechat.com/aaronjohnsoncutproject 00:01:52 it's little soft, but I can hear you better now. https://firesidechat.com/lorileebinstock 00:01:54 Oh, you can hear let me make sure you can hear me just fine. Is https://firesidechat.com/aaronjohnsoncutproject 00:01:59 I'll get you now. Yeah. That's great. https://firesidechat.com/lorileebinstock 00:02:00 Oh, good. Good. Good. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it. https://firesidechat.com/aaronjohnsoncutproject 00:02:06 No. It's good to be here. https://firesidechat.com/lorileebinstock 00:02:07 I I know it's it's you typically, we have our shows on Wednesdays, but, you know, it's one of those weeks where if my kids lost last day last day of school tomorrow, and I didn't realize they'll be getting out extra early because they typically get out early on Wednesdays. I am very excited to have you on, and I wanna talk a little bit about the chronically under touch project. Could you talk a little bit about that? https://firesidechat.com/aaronjohnsoncutproject 00:02:32 Yeah. It's probably one of the most ambitious projects I have entered into over the last seven years, and it's a project that's really tracking. Right now, I'm focusing on African heritage men because of their how they're targeted, but we've expanded and worked with a lot of folks, but it's really about tracking the magnitude, the impact of being chronically under touched. And how it bleeds into mental health. It bleeds into complication on the cassette and relationship spaces. It it it impacts folks in that are incarcerated, folks that can be arrested because of their chronic index trauma stories and how it manifest in their lives. And then how oppression kinda doubles down on that. And so the Crokonetouch project is me slowing down in community. What it means to build a comprehensive touch plan for a body in this context in this moment. I'm working heavily with this young black man, how we build a photonic comprehensive touch plan for them, and where where do they go? How do we build it? How do we get ahead of it? How do we even introduce the idea? So it's a it's a big project, but it's it's really profoundly impacting my life and the folks I'm able to work with. https://firesidechat.com/lorileebinstock 00:03:44 Amazing. Well, can you talk what do you mean when you when you say chronically undertouched? https://firesidechat.com/aaronjohnsoncutproject 00:03:51 Yeah. So there's a couple ways we track it. I would say a big portion of population is chronic and in touch, but we with the spectrum that was all extreme, my first kind of birth the phrase and kind of really understood the magnitude of what happens to a body and to individual that is crunching a touch. It was a young man I was working with seven years ago, and he Me and him were in this, like, mentorship. I was mentoring him, and I was trying to bring him to a space of balance. And we were in arguments almost daily. I remember sitting down with him one day trying to find a groundings base. And I said, you know, when was the last time you had thoughtful platonic touch over the last twelve months for three minutes? Hey, Seth there. Now maybe I'm sitting there and going, I can't think of three minutes in the last twelve months that I've received thoughtful, photonic touch. And as extreme as that might actually feel, that was actually pretty normal. For a lot of folks I met thereafter. Is that being under touch on that extreme level? You can't even think of three minutes of thoughtful platonic continuous touch, that would be that would be a pretty heavy level. And I would say, you know, average person would need for just nervous and balance fifteen minutes of thoughtful but tonic touch, and many folks qualify there of not getting that. So there's a way of just tracking the the impact of on different bodies, different demographics, the economic levels, the impact. But the for him, I would say, anyone that's in that level of three minutes a year or less, that's extreme, but that's that's chronic, and that's serious. And we need to get to get ahead of that and build some thinking around it. https://firesidechat.com/lorileebinstock 00:05:33 And do you mean hugging, hand holding? Is it consecutive? https://firesidechat.com/aaronjohnsoncutproject 00:05:39 Yeah. We want I mean, ideally, is consecutive. Right? Ideally, we are dealing with folks that it's it's it's continuous for three minutes. I mean, most hugs are five to eight seconds, and so it would take a lot of hugs to get to the three minute mark. So I think for me being able to realize hand holding is one of our common entry points for a lot of the people I work with, we just practice https://firesidechat.com/lorileebinstock 00:05:49 Mhmm. https://firesidechat.com/aaronjohnsoncutproject 00:06:01 simple hand holding and and holding attention to our bodies in that process. So handhold is a common way. We often have a sit and hold hands because the trauma story of walking and holding hands is black sis, and and the chronic ways is really complicated. My culture is still sitting and dropping to our bodies in more meditative space is the most common way we have been able to build thoughtful touch plan for folks, but it also goes shoulder to shoulder back to back, cuddling all those are advanced, but we we start with the handholding typically in our in our program. https://firesidechat.com/lorileebinstock 00:06:29 I wonder, like, as as an adult, I'm thinking. Am I am I am I touched for three minutes at a time? And and it's interesting when you you talk about touch and how important it is because, you know you know, when your your child is born or when a child is born, they, you know, most I mean, not necessarily hospitals, but, you know, let's say, for me, I worked with Adula, and the first thing they they talk about is putting the child on your body. How important it is to https://firesidechat.com/aaronjohnsoncutproject 00:06:56 Yep. https://firesidechat.com/lorileebinstock 00:06:59 to have that release of oxytocin. And and I guess that's that's the same way as adults, but we don't really think about it that way. https://firesidechat.com/aaronjohnsoncutproject 00:07:07 No. Unfortunately, and and working full time and having bigger trans players can push us out of even though it's in the magnitude of what happens over time. https://firesidechat.com/lorileebinstock 00:07:16 Wow. Well, I wanna get back to that a little bit more, but you are also the cofounder of the holistic resistance and grief to action. https://firesidechat.com/aaronjohnsoncutproject 00:07:25 Yes.
