‘A vehicle for connection’: Touch-based workshop in Northampton focuses on relationship longevity

In a culture of increasingly “disposable” relationships, performer and movement educator Gabrielle Revlock is offering a slower alternative.

This Valentine’s Day weekend, her “Restorative Contact for Couples” workshop at Sanctuary, a center for personal healing and collective well-being located at Thornes Marketplace in Northampton, invites participants to dive into a mindful practice of “touch education,” designed to settle the nervous system and strengthen interpersonal bonds through presence rather than performance.

Revlock, founder of Restorative Contact, a touch-based mindfulness practice in New York, conceived the idea for this workshop during the COVID-19 pandemic, when she was hosting virtual restorative contact sessions with couples.

“That helped me to realize that for a lot of people, working with an unknown partner, working with a stranger, is just too big of an ask for them. And also for some people, even coming into a yoga space can sometimes be a big ask,” she said. “That got me thinking about the idea of working with a chosen partner so that that was less of a variable: they had someone that they knew, [that] they already had, potentially, a touch relationship with, or at least a relationship that involved a certain amount of trust and care, and I realized that this was something that I had space to learn and grow from.”

With that, Valentine’s Day seemed to be the perfect opportunity to host a touch-based workshop for couples, she said. However, Revlock emphasized that he workshop is about non-sexual touch, so participants do not have to be romantic couples. Friends and family members are also allowed. Throuples can also participate, though some of the choreography — lying perpendicularly on top of one partner’s legs, for example — may not be suited to them, Revlock said, adding that if participants are willing to adapt, it will not a problem.

Each session features an icebreaker and a warmup based on contact improvisation before transitioning into touch with light compression and “a sequence of asana-like positions where they’re inviting slowness, stillness, observation, while, at the same time, adjusting whatever they need to,” Revlock said. Sometimes, during that part of a session, she leads participants in a gratitude exercise. At the end, the group gathers to share and reflect on their experience.

Last March, Revlock hosted an installation in Forbes Library’s Reference Reading Room called “The Apology Nook,” in which participants could read others’ apologies and write anonymous apologies of their own. Though the Apology Nook is very different from the Restorative Contact workshops, the two share a particular throughline.

“I’m very deeply interested in practices that allow us to see the humanity in another person and to strengthen relationships so that they have longevity, as opposed to participating in this culture of disposable relationships,” Revlock said, adding that can happen through acknowledging harm or by “simply sitting quietly in contact with another person and offering them your presence, your physical support.”

“It’s kind of hard to stay mad [at] somebody when you are touching them, when you are dancing with them, when you are co-creating something with them,” she said. “There’s a certain level of trust and vulnerability that’s present there that [makes it so] either you just can’t do it or it really makes that complex start to soften.”

Revlock recalled that after hosting virtual workshops during the pandemic, several couples reached out to thank her, noting that the practice helped them “settle our nervous system” and approach difficult moments with renewed compassion.

If the Restorative Contact workshop sounds like a cuddle party, Revlock clarified that it’s not. A cuddle party is less structured minute-to-minute and usually involves strangers, not established couples.

“I’m not inviting a free-for-all,” she said.

“Touch is a vehicle for connection, but it’s also one for differentiation,” she said. “If we’re sitting side by side, I feel the edges of who I am because you’re giving me that feedback. We’re not just mushy, becoming one. That’s an option to perceive it that way, but another option is to perceive where I end and you begin.”

Instead, Revlock sees these workshops as being about “touch education.”

“Part of what I’m trying to help people with is to listen to what’s happening in their own body, while also tracking what’s happening in their partner’s body,” she said. “So if their partner shifts, if you feel more tone in the body or less, what might that be telling you? So it’s very much about listening to the body, listening to the skin, as opposed to just coming up to somebody and saying, ‘Can I do this thing to you?’”

“I want it to be a really welcoming space,” she added. “People definitely show up sometimes and they’re like, ‘I feel really nervous.’ That happens a lot. And then at the end, they’re like, ‘Wow, I feel so much better.’”

“Restorative Contact for Couples” workshop sessions will take place on Saturday, Feb. 14, from 7 to 8:45 p.m. and Sunday, Feb. 15, from noon to 1:45 p.m.

Tickets are $60 to $90, sliding scale, via yoga-sanctuary.com, and the pass covers two people. For more information, email Revlock at info@restorativecontact.com.