Said Allie Hoffman, the founder of something called The Feels, quoted in "Extreme Eye Contact and Other Ways of Dating/Forget dinner and a movie: Let’s see if we can gaze into each other’s eyes for three minutes instead" (NYT).
When it was time to touch each other’s “heart space,” some laid their hands directly on the left side of their partner’s chest while others made contact with just the tips of their fingers. Somatic practices like meditation and eye gazing have long been incorporated in relationships.... The innovation here is attaching this mindfulness style to first-time romantic meet-ups....
I can't imagine volunteering (let alone paying) for this kind of thing. Here are the first 2 associations that sprang into my head.
1. In the James Whale movie "The Old Dark House" — which I watched on October 1st, the first day it became available on the Criterion Channel, part of a collection called "Pre-Code Horror" — the owner of the house suddenly lays her hand on her hand on the bare upper chest of the young Gloria Stuart:
"That's fine stuff, but it will rot. That's finer stuff still, but it will rot too, in time!"
2. I remember showing up at college orientation, in 1969, expecting a conversation about the assigned book — "Cat's Cradle" — and finding myself coerced — by the professor — into a session of boko-maru. Except that it wasn't boko-maru, like in the book, where 2 people press the soles of their bare feet together for a long time. We were arranged into concentric circles so that the inner-circle females could share one sole with one outer-circle male and one sole with another outer-circle male, thus connecting us all into what the professor, laughing, called a "daisy chain." In the book, it's a religious belief that "it is impossible to be sole-to-sole with another person without loving the person." But the professor wasn't coercing us to practice religion, thank God.
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Personally, I'd rather be stabbed with an ice pick.
Generally, it's a good idea to move beyond the superficial into what really matters, but you're still advocating intimacy in an artificial setting.
Another flavor is Japanese Reiki massage ("laying hands"):
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/reiki/
Just touch another to send healing energy...perhaps the origin of the placebo effect...
Reminds me of this:
https://youtu.be/IMSd1IbxmFA?si=UG5553ClvQvlJt_p
Jeez, what a creep-out. I trust you avoided that professor's courses.
That's very cringe, as my grandkids, 9 and 11, would say. New use of an old word, but apt in this case.
Extreme eye contact? We used to call those staring contests.
Okay, as relationship therapy I can see it,I suppose. But on a first date? Ew.
OTOH,I do seem to recall staring contests as a form of flirting - that might have been in high school.
We had friends who advised the "ten second kiss" - instead of the typical peck hello or goodbye of the long married (and at that point they had been married for like ten whole years, as had we), kiss your partner for ten seconds. Seemed like a good way to re-spice the day. Of course, we think they're divorced now.
What that professor did and said was super creepy.
My daughter used to have a game, prior to her early teens, that she called 'Brain Power!". She'd yell "Brain Power!" and we'd have to touch foreheads, then start pushing hard to see who wins. Kind of like a full-contact head butt, but without the butting, or like that old-fashioned Indian Wrestling with the legs. I can tell you, even a relatively small kid can make your forehead hurt from pressing on it and turning one way or the other, looking for leverage and advantage.
Can't imagine something as described with a complete stranger, though. Am I detecting the aromas of some fresh New Age fad, come wafting through time from the 80's to fill our heads with 'the Good Nirvana Feelz' once again? Saints preserve us.
Commenting solely on the eye-contact exercise -- and not about the poly stuff.... When a man and a woman stare into each other's eyes for a long time, it would seem to be a tremendous test for the possibility of intimacy. I think the signals going back and forth would suggest that possibility, OR the likelihood that there is no such possibility between the two of you. There is something about the eyes that makes lying harder. Now, possibly what seems to person A a rejection by person B could be a false signal; it might simply be reflecting B's great discomfort with the exercise and his, or her, determined self-protection. But I do imagine that this exercise, done under mutually acceptable circumstances, could be a significant intimacy builder. A lot of unspoken communication -- curiosity; openness; interest -- could occur during such a prolonged exercise.
Conversation after that would be different.
I loved the line, "You rrrrrevel in the joys of fleshly love, do you not?"
Old movies are pretty much a closed book to the present generation, I'm guessing. To be perfectly honest, largely to me too - I've gotten used to the much more naturalistic style. Harder for me to suspend disbelief when I'm noticing that the actor is rolling RS!
There was a social studies teacher that did this shit with 7th graders- I remember walking by his classroom and seeing the kids on knees mirroring each other, fluffing auras or something or other. I was glad I had Mr. Rosa who was a ringer for Phil Donahue and we got to sit at our desks...
---“It felt like someone touched my soul,” one Brooklyn man, who declined to share his name for privacy reasons, said at the end of the night.
After all, his wife didn't need to know he was out touching souls somewhere else.
"Extreme eye contact? We used to call those staring contests."
Check out Pee-Wee Herman and David Letterman in a staring contest.
@Leslie
I genuinely appreciate the moral support — 50+ years after the fact.
I am reminded of the wonderfully progressive elementary school in Aunty Mame, where the kids learned about salmon reproduction by getting naked and crowding up a narrow school hallway, or some such. It is presented almost as a throwaway line, but does great service in establishing Mame's unconventional approach to child rearing. That, and her 9 year old nephew's excellent martini making skill, developed through rigorous daily practice.
She was also big on kisses & hugs.
Space Invaders. An all new dating app.
"Old movies are pretty much a closed book to the present generation, I'm guessing. To be perfectly honest, largely to me too - I've gotten used to the much more naturalistic style. Harder for me to suspend disbelief when I'm noticing that the actor is rolling RS!"
I don't watch many movies, but in the last year, I've almost specialized in the pre-Code Hollywood movies. I love the style and the acting.
Anyway, many movies today are quite unnatural. I'm thinking of Wes Anderson and the Coen Brothers.
I just watched "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar."
Whether God, gods, mortal gods, or professors, religion is a behavioral philosophy or protocol.
Althouse's classroom story reminded me how weird "cool" professors were getting by '69. In '66, it started with the beard and long hair, but by '69 we were seeing out of control experiments in learning. I remember one History final where a pretty girl next to me confided that she had a date that night with the professor, so wasn't too worried about the test. But English and Psych seemed to be the epicenter.
"Old movies are pretty much a closed book to the present generation, I'm guessing. To be perfectly honest, largely to me too - I've gotten used to the much more naturalistic style. Harder for me to suspend disbelief when I'm noticing that the actor is rolling RS!"
IOW, you're just projecting your beliefs onto an entire generation. Pauline Kael used to do that too. She's talk about how "Hip, young people" which might have included Althouse in the 70s, thought this or that, which amazingly always agreed with what she thought.
But that aside, this kind of philistine thinking bores me. Yeah, sorry you cant break free of your narrow rigid narrow tastes formed by the current year.
Too bad for you.
We had groovy profs when I got to campus in '71, particularly in the Humanities. We read Cat's Cradle too, in The Modern Novel class IIRC.
I avoided all handsy (or footsy) activities myself, and still do. Those were even worse than the lazy guys who really just wanted to show old films in history or polisci classes.
“This year you can experience 13TH World like never before! For an additional $5, you can get a Touch of Fear! This will enhance your scare experience by allowing our Monsters to touch you. You will receive a special necklace that identifies you as an extreme lover of fear. If Touch of Fear becomes too intense, simply take the necklace off!”
I watched Portlandia last night for the very first time. Watched for several hours. It's really quite entertaining. I'm pretty sure this was one of the sketches.
"OTOH,I do seem to recall staring contests as a form of flirting"
And here all those years that I was getting ghetto-glared on the 5 bus, I was misunderstanding the underlying motive.
Check out Pee-Wee Herman and David Letterman in a staring contest."
I miss Dave. We were on the road in the early 80s. We brought a VCR with us so we could record Late Night while we were playing and then watched it when we got back to the hotel. Not only was Dave great as a late night talk show host, the musicians in The World's Most Dangerous Band were as good as it gets. They could back absolutely anyone.
Can I have a woman partner with great tits?
Is this like EST?
"Extreme eye contact? We used to call those staring contests."
Larry David includes a staring contest scene in almost every episode of 'Curb...'
I just watched The Old Dark House. It wasn’t very scary (which pleased me), it was more of a character study of people in unfamiliar surroundings and under great stress. There were so many good actors - most interestingly for me - Gloria Stuart, who played old Rose in Titanic. Per Wikipedia, what an interesting life she led. Melvyn Douglas is just perfect as Roger Penderel - enjoyable in every scene he’s in. In fact everyone is very good - the fashions, hairstyles, and behavior very modern. Although it was pre-code, something’s never change. The book on which it’s based has a tragic ending, but test audiences weren’t too keen on it, so a bright sunny ending was added (which I liked). Very enjoyable film, thank you for blogging about it. (Now on to read the book!)
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