We’ve all experienced love in one form or another. Most remember the romantic love that may have flourished when we were young and felt the longing to receive the touch of love from another person.

Love also appeared in our lives as infants as our loving mother held us, cradling our small bodies with her hand behind the back of our necks. She held the spot where the brain and skull come into contact with the spinal cord, the neck area.

Jaya Herbst, a lecturer certified by the European Association  for Transpersonal psychotherapy – Eurotas, said there can be healing in the touch of one person upon another. But first there must be an intent, a “will” to love to help with the touch, be it to smooth the crying of a child or to hug a grown up who needs the physical contact to know all will be just right in that moment.

Where does this will come from, she asked some 50 people at a workshop on healing in Freiburg, Germany. It comes from the back of the heart, explaining the heart provides two dimensions in the field of love.

No, she wasn’t talking about the physical heart, but the one where the chakra point exists in the center of the breast. The front of the heart enables each of use to receive and to send love, she said. But is the back of the heart, she retorts with a smile, that provides the will to love.

“When you touch the little baby, what is your intent?” she asked. “We want to protect, to console, to give security. It is an act of love. The will of love.”

“Not to love perfectly. But to move into the direction of love.”

To demonstrate at the symposium sponsored by the International Institute for Consciousness Exploration and Psychotherapy, the lecturer requested audience members to touch the shoulder of the person sitting next them. She said to place their hands onto neck region and to share a will of healing, of nurturing, of love. If need be, call on Mother Earth to help in enveloping the part of the body the hand came into contact with another.

And then seek help from Father Sky, the body psychotherapist continued.The forces of the world will help the body take care of another to keep it healthy and to heal.

“The more you will it to come about, the more love and energy you’ll begin to notice.”

I personally experienced a calming action from the touch of another person. There was nothing invasive about it. On the contrary, I felt comforted and more relaxed. And dare I say “more loved.”

Intend love. Set an intent to love and apply the loving touch, she instructed us during the the 90-minute workshop.

I realized that all of us can have that magic touch.

The touch of love.