What your body learned about love before you could talk: Healing attachment wounds with Dr. Aline LaPierre

Why does your body shut down during intimacy even when your mind wants connection? Why does rejection trigger panic that feels way bigger than the situation? The answer might have nothing to do with your current relationship—and everything to do with attachment wounds living in your nervous system.

In this episode, Laura talks with Dr. Aline LaPierre, creator of NeuroAffective Touch, about how our earliest experiences with touch shape everything about adult intimacy, sexuality, and connection.

You'll learn:

• Why touch is our "first language" and how it creates our blueprint for relationships
• How attachment wounds from childhood show up differently for higher-desire and lower-desire partners
• Why neglect and abuse create different patterns in the body—and how to recognize them
• The difference between therapeutic touch and massage (and why it matters)
• How partners can support each other's nervous system healing without becoming therapists
• Why the body remembers what the mind has forgotten—and how to help it tell its story
• Real examples of how couples use attuned touch for deep healing

Dr. LaPierre explains why traditional talk therapy often can't reach body-based trauma, and shares the vision behind bringing NeuroAffective Touch into intimate partnerships for the first time.

Whether you're dealing with desire differences, struggling with touch aversion, or sensing that old wounds are affecting your intimacy, this conversation offers a completely different lens for understanding what's happening in your body.

About Dr. Aline LaPierre: Creator of NeuroAffective Touch, President of the United States Association of Body Psychotherapy, and co-author of the bestselling book Healing Developmental Trauma (available in 14 languages). Find her at https://neuroaffectivetouch.com/

Plus: Learn about the groundbreaking couples course "Thriving Together" launching February 2026—the first systematic training for couples to support each other's attachment healing through touch.

APPLY for the course "Thriving Together: Couples Healing Attachment Patterns Through Touch" here: https://neuroaffectivetouch.com/thriving-together-application/

Perfect for anyone curious about somatic approaches to healing, body-based trauma work, and how our earliest experiences continue to shape us.

Get my free guide: 5 Steps to Start Solving Desire Differences
(Without Blame or Shame), A Practical Starting Point for Individuals and Couples, at https://laurajurgens.com/libido

Find out more about me at https://laurajurgens.com/

Transcript

Welcome to the desire gap podcast. I'm your host, Dr Laura Jurgens, and whether you want more sex than your partner or less, you are not wrong, and your relationship isn't doomed. You just need better tools to solve the struggles of mismatched libidos. That's what we do here, so welcome and let's dive in. Hey everyone. Welcome back to the desire gap Podcast. Today, we are diving into something that could really be a complete game changer for your relationship and potentially for your desire differences too. And this actually might all come as a surprise. The reason I'm doing this is because I constantly see in my practice, couples dealing with mismatched libidos often have deeper attachment wounds driving the disconnect, and I know this from my own experience being on both sides of the desire gap,

1:00  
if and from working with lots and lots of couples, if we don't work with those attachment wounds and heal them, whatever band aids we put over the top, toys, hormones, whatever, they just fail. And that can be really demoralizing and frustrating. But the thing is, when you do actually understand and start healing your attachment wounds. The thing is that actually will make the whole rest of your life so much better, not just your sexual connection, which matters a lot, your sexual connection does matter a lot. Your relationship matters a lot to your happiness, but also just living your deepest joy in life is absolutely what I want for you. And maybe you're the higher desire partner who's feeling constantly rejected and you're really struggling to understand why you go into this like state of intense panic or shut down, or get incredibly angry when your partner says no,

2:04  
or maybe you're the lower desire partner right now who just shuts down sexually and can't figure out why your body won't cooperate, even when your head is saying, I like think I want to have sex, or your mind wants to connect. And in both of those cases, and there's also lots of other examples in all those cases, these are not just sex problems. These are attachment wounds, and it is manifesting in your sexual connection. And attachment wounds don't just show up in desire differences. They show up everywhere you know. Maybe your mind tells you that you're fine, that you're in a good relationship, that you trust your partner, but your emotions just feel really volatile, or you notice yourself getting extremely anxious when your partner is having a bad day, or they feel distant. Maybe you go into avoidance mode when things get too close. Maybe you're struggling to ask for help or support or actually saying what you feel, or you find it really hard deep down, to believe that you're 100% worthy of love, which side note I promise you are. You may have trouble saying no without feeling guilty. Or you may have trouble, like when your partner comes home and you feel like you have to sort of jump out of everything that you've been doing, and kind of cater to them trouble fully trusting others, even when they've proven themselves trustworthy. All of those are examples of attachment wounds, and they all impact our sexual connection.

3:36  
And you know what's what's kind of wild is, I think if we really tune in, many of us can feel that some of this stuff is really old in our bodies. We can feel that it's been there for a long time, maybe since early childhood. In some cases, some of us, we're not sure. We just sort of feel like this is always how we've operated, and we don't know how to get out of it,

4:03  
and this stuff that lives in our nervous system from childhood, from maybe even pre verbal, and I'm not saying that your parents are horrible beings or anything at all. Even the best parents in the world can sometimes have misattunements to their kids, or they're passing along, doing the best they can based on what they know from how they were raised. And it may not have worked great for you in all circumstances. Maybe it worked great for most things. Or maybe you're somebody like me who knows darn well that you were more than misattuned to that you actually had abuse, right? But you don't have to have had abuse to have real deep attachment wounds that are affecting you in your life. And you may know, you may be able to tell that some of this stuff is really old. Even though it's old, it's still affecting your present and still affecting your sex life, whether you realize it or not. So.

5:00  
So most of you know that I'm really pro somatic healing. I feel like the big I've made huge leaps and bounds gains in my life from working on my mind and from a cognitive perspective. And I will always encourage you to work with the mind also. But I really also believe in body up healing, and in fact, both together, complementarily, are the most powerful thing you can do. And so we've talked about embodiment, we've talked about how your nervous system holds the key to better sex and relationships, better intimacy. And today, we are going even deeper with that into something called neuro effective touch. This isn't massage. It's not traditional couples therapy. It's definitely not another technique to sort of, quote, unquote, fix your relationship. It is about creating the kind of nervous system safety that allows your body to truly relax into trust and receiving. It's about addressing those invisible barriers that so many of us carry from our early experiences, the stuff that lives in our body and not just our mind. And this is an attachment, trauma release method that I do with clients, and then I've received a lot of myself. It is incredibly powerful. It is also really gentle and very effective. It is my go to when I'm struggling with something. But it is unusual, and it's really just starting to gain traction with the more conservative therapy crowd. And it's going to be huge. It's going to be huge because it is so incredibly beautiful and effective. And I've brought for you here today, Dr Aileen Lapierre, the founder of neuro effective touch, to talk to us about it and to give you a sense of why you might want to understand more about your body's relationship to touch your own and your partner's attachment patterns, and how you might be able to use this powerful modality actually in your partnership and with your kids too. I'm so glad to bring this interview to you. So without further ado, let's get at it. Well, I am so glad to be talking today with Dr Aileen Lapierre, who is one of the most brilliant minds in the world when it comes to understanding how our bodies hold, our stories, our relational traumas, and how attuned, consensual touch can be critical to healing so dr Lapierre Aileen is the founder of, yeah, we'll call you Aileen today, because we're pretty casual here. Yes, thank you. Aileen is the founder of neuro effective touch, and has spent which we'll talk a lot more about today. That's what we're going to do. And she has spent decades developing this approach that bridges psychology and the body, especially the relational trauma that's stored in the body in ways that traditional talk therapy simply can't reach. She's a clinical psychologist. She's trained what I think is probably 1000s of practitioners at this point worldwide, in some way, shape or form, and she's my co creator for a groundbreaking new course that we are launching for couples that we will talk a little bit more about later soon. But I just want you to know that this is, I mean, Aileen is also the co author of one of the most important books that I've ever read on healing developmental trauma, called Healing developmental trauma, how trauma affects self regulation, self image and the capacity for relationship. And so we are just very, very fortunate to have her here. And I am also thrilled because I love talking with Aileen. So all of us are very lucky, and I want to give you a big welcome, Aileen, for being here.

8:54  
Oh, thank you, Laura. You're so generous, so generous. But it is true, we have really great conversations together. Yeah, it's so fun. So I want to start at the beginning, because I know when most people hear Therapeutic Touch, it can be a little confusing, because they either think about massage or then there we sort of, at least in the US, often have a sort of blank in our mind about what else it might be, where we get a little nervous about boundaries. So would you give us a little background on what exactly is neuro effective touch and why people should care about it? Yes. Well, the first thing to know is that touch is our first language before we open our eyes, before we can speak. We are babies and we are held and we are touched and we are cared for through touch in our little baby bodies and how.

10:00  
How we're touched starts to inform us of what the world we're in is going to be like. So our the imprint of life on our little baby blueprint starts really early. Actually. It starts in the womb. But for today, we're going to start at birth. And so the way that we're touched actually starts to tell us, is this a loving world? Is this a harsh world? Is this a scary world? Is this world going to welcome me? Am I wanted all of these basic pieces that are part of our identity start in the way that we're touched by our caregivers. In the beginning, absolutely so you know, saying I love thinking about this is so true that touches our first language. And as someone who spent myself a lot of time and many years getting back into my body, and then more years now, helping other people get back into theirs. It really resonates with me. And what do you think it means practically for couples? Why should couples? Why do you think couples should care about touch?

11:19  
Well, let's jump right in. Well, because, because when those imprints are there, and then we mature to want intimacy and sexuality, if our body learned that touch is going to be harsh or misattuned, or mostly misattuned, then it starts to create problem with how we receive our partners touch. Yeah, absolutely. And most of us didn't get taught how to touch in an attuned way, right, right? And if we didn't receive it, we might not have sort of intuited it right or right, yeah. And you know, when couples come for therapy, one of the first questions I ask them is, do you like how your partner touches you? And there's often this kind of little look, this embarrassed, like, how can I possibly say this clearly in front of my partner? But often it will revolve around a misattunement. You know, it's like, it doesn't feel like there's like, like, I'm like, the person is present, or it's too there's too much pressure and not enough. Or if somehow it misses the mark in some way, yep, I get a lot of that too, or repetitive touch. Or, yes, definitely a lot of the sort of energy behind the touch or the groundedness might be missing, and people don't have words for it, necessarily, right, right? Because it's a world that doesn't have explicit verbal language. And also it very often when someone asks, Would you touch me in, you know, a particular way that feels good to me, the other person receives it as a criticism,

13:12  
and we also, oftentimes, then think that we need to tolerate whatever touch we're offered. Yes, absolutely, and so it's not okay to give feedback or to sort of workshop it together. And that is something we're going to talk about more. I think today, for sure, I wonder, just going back to neuro effective touch as a modality,

13:37  
could you tell us a little bit more about the origin story, or exactly what, how should people understand what it is and where it came from?

13:49  
Well, I can start by talking about where it came from. And of course, these things you know that we develop always come from our own personal experience. And so, you know, I have always been interested in psychotherapy and psychology. I started as a painter, as an artist, and what I could see show up on the canvas. At one point, I understood that it was my body energy that the gestures I made with my paintbrush, all of that. It's like it was coming from the patterns of energy in my own body. So in my own sort of,

14:29  
I don't want to say narcissistic way, but in my own way, it's like, if I'm going to put my work out there, I don't really want to put out my own limitations. So I started getting bodywork and working with my body and and to sort of clean up these restrictions or that were showing up. And at the same time, I was also studying psychology, because I wanted to know about the psyche, what.

15:00  
Where do images come from? What are they expressing? So I had these two things going on, and I realized that in the world of therapy, these are two separate worlds, they do not come together, of course, as I was painting, I realized they were together, you know, but in the world of healing, and that it was like psychotherapists do not tread on the landscape of the body worker. Body workers do, do not dare go into the psychotherapy. And that these were ethical taboos in a way. You know, it's like the these two worlds were not supposed to come together. But then here I was studying psychology, studying body work, because I thought it will help me be a better artist. And and it was like, Well, I have to go to my therapist over here, and I'm going to get bodywork over there. They should really come together.

16:02  
And so I started exploring how to how to bring them together. And at that time, which was many years ago, the field of somatic psychotherapy was just beginning, and I read about it, and that's what it was more and more people were seeing why do we have this split between healing the body and healing the mind? And it has to come together. So I found a community of people who were also exploring the same thing, absolutely and then this so neuro effective touch, then is sort of an evolution of all of that, and where this has, where that body of work has landed and and how you have made that ridge a reality for many practitioners, right, right? But you know, one of the things that happened in the early somatic world, because it was very much a reaction to talk therapy being so much mind oriented. They said, let's get the mind out of the way. The body is important. So they actually perpetuated a split of their own of it, you know, the somatic world. And so for many years, somatic therapy was about working with the body and trying to get the mind out of the way. And it was like, well, that doesn't work, you know, because all of the what we know through neuroscience is that all of the signals of the body are sent to the brain in order to synthesize and help the body in its own behavior so there is no split. And so what I started doing more with neuro effective touch is, you know, is, is what I called body mind dialogs. It's like, what is the story of the body, what is the story of the mind, which often are very different stories. And how do they how do they come together? And I started thinking of them as a couple, like, is this a good marriage, or is this a bad marriage? Because divorce is not an option,

18:22  
exactly. Oh. Although some of us, I know I almost like, walk around for many years like a disembodied head. I feel like and we try, but it doesn't mean that it's actually working. We're never really we're never really separate, even when we think we are and even when we're trying not to listen to the body. It's just that we are sort of subtly influenced in ways, and the body's carrying a lot of things for us. So that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, so, and this is a really, I think it's a really beautifully gentle but also incredibly powerful way of really integrating the stories of a whole person

19:06  
and touching things that we can't always touch or can't even remember with the mind. Sometimes the body holds those stories, and through touch, we can release some of them and bring them forward so that we can work with them. It seems like so when we think about the application to relationships, intimate partnerships, couples in particular, and families, yes,

19:35  
how do you feel? What do you think? I've found that this is such an important missing piece in helping people with all of the all of the little ways that we have sort of either have accumulated distancing from ourselves and from each other through either actual major attachment traumas or relational traumas, or even just sort.

20:00  
Of cultural disconnections and ways that we we disconnect from each other and from ourselves. Why do you think neuro effective touch is so effective with that type of healing? I think you're circling around the topic of attachment. Yeah, yeah. And, and, let's talk about that. Because really, you know, our bodies just want connection and and, and our hearts just yearn for love and being loved. And so often in families, there's trauma, traumas of various sorts. You know, it's not about blaming anybody, but that that cause disconnection.

20:50  
And every time there's a disconnect in our in our relationship, it causes like a little jolt or a shock to the heart. We feel it in our hearts. And then sometimes we can't show it, you know, we don't want to show that we're having this, this feeling. And so we start to brace. We start to brace around around our jaws and neck. We start to brace around our thoracic inlet. We start to start to hold in those little shocks to the heart, and pretty soon the heart becomes like encased in this in this bracing, so that it's hard for us to even feel our own hearts. And then here we are wanting to be in relationship, but our body is carrying the trauma of of disconnect and broken relationships. So with the touch, which is really an attunement, you know, it's not like a massage or deep tissue work, although one can do that. Those are fine, but specifically neuro effective. The nervous system and the emotional system is neuro effective. It's like touching into those places that carry the story of misattuned, broken, abused, neglected relationships absolutely so that, and that's something that I see all the time in my practice with people, and even in my own relationships and myself, where we hold these sort of in what seem to us almost invisible because we've carried them for so long We might not notice the tension or the bracing, but there are these sort of invisible barriers that we carry forward that live in our nervous systems, from childhood, oftentimes childhood, but sometimes later in life too, misattunements or relational traumas, and whether we're In a great relationship now, or we're struggling with connection, we can still feel blocked, yeah, in some ways, and we might not understand that it, a lot of it is related to those little accumulated, accumulated wounds that have caused some of that bracing. So even if you're listening to this thinking, we don't have attachment issues,

23:25  
or you may be some somebody else who knows that you're dealing with attachment issues and or there's some other disconnections that are happening to you, sexual disconnections, communication breakdowns, and Just getting curious about whether there might be some ties to the past and that you maybe carried forward into some bracing, is something I think listeners might be curious about as we kind of continue having this conversation, right? Well, the fact is that the mind may not remember or may not know, but the body remembers, and that when we begin a dialog where mind is really interested in, what is that bracing pattern? Why do I feel intimidated by, by intimacy, for example, then we invite the body to tell its story, and the body remembers those early stories that shut us down. And so it's really giving the body like the center stage, so to speak, and saying to mind, would you step back for a moment and be a witness and become curious? Because the body has something really interesting to tell us about. What happened to you that that you mind may not remember, but the body remembers Absolutely.

25:00  
Absolutely so sometimes the mind doesn't remember at all, or the mind has minimized it, yes, and said, Oh, it can't be that big of a deal, or I shouldn't worry about it. Or it was a long time ago, and it still might be affecting us today. Yes, yeah. People will say, you know, oh, that was the past. I've moved on, you know, and and mind may well have moved on, but the body doesn't until it we hear its story, and that's true even even, you know, with friends and stuff, sometimes there are things we hold back, and it affects our capacity to trust the other person or to be open. And so this is like the body is waiting. The body is very patient. It will wait and wait and wait, sometimes 3040, years, until somebody says, you know, there may be something you haven't been able to express yet. And so we want the part of the touch is to support the body in telling its story. Absolutely so when we think about adult relationships, intimate relationships and sexuality, can you give us any maybe an example of something that you've seen about how childhood or historical attachment wounds might have affected somebody? Is there any example that you can give that you'd feel comfortable with?

26:33  
There's so many examples, but I think one of the well, two examples I can get one is is related to neglect families that don't touch, and one is related to abuse, which is actually a huge one, where touch is used in what like sexual abuse or physical abuse, where really you have dysfunctions of touch, and touch is used to invade or abuse or use another person. And so the body in itself, like especially with children who cannot fight back, who cannot run away, who have to just kind of grin and bear it and hold until it's over, there's like a numbness that starts to happen in the body, so that when you when someone comes to touch the body, the person will automatically go into these, these protective patterns against invasion, you know, or intrusion and and not be able to really feel the loving intention of a partner, for example. Yeah, absolutely. What? What about neglect? How does, how do you see that mostly show well, with neglect, you know, the sensors in our skin develop by how we're touched. So if we're not touched, there's like a whole layer of sensory receptivity that doesn't develop. So somebody touches you, it's like, so what? Nothing. It's like. Nothing happens because the receptors for the touch didn't develop. They weren't needed. And the body actually is, is develops very much in contingency with the life we're leading

28:32  
absolutely and I've had some clients that have had a lot of early neglect in their life and really enjoy a lot firmer or a lot sharper touch than their partners know how to give or feel comfortable with. So we have to help everybody practice learning how to sort of do that and that it's okay, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And that is what we would call attuned touch. It's like, what is it that happened to my partner? And we don't have to be our partners therapists for that. You know? Yeah, it's absolutely better not to

29:12  
be but, but it's like, what happened to you, and I love you, and I want to help you gain back this wonderful experience of being connected, and so it's a tremendous gift that a partner can give to their loved one to say, I will take the time to explore with you what your body needs in order to heal what didn't happen, and in order for us to truly connect absolutely I think that is the perfect segue to just to thinking about how what this idea is about moving this work into couples, about thinking about the vision for bringing neuro effective touch into couples.

30:00  
Goals? Do you want to say anything about what your vision is for that Sure? Or do you want to go first? Well, I mean, I think for me, I would I could go first. I would say that the adult relationships were already typically touching each other in a romantic relationship, we hope and we sometimes more or less right. Sometimes it could be better. It could be more attuned. But there's already someone there who you have a consensual relationship with around touch, and someone who hopefully has your best intentions at heart and wants to be there with you and wants to deepen your connection, right? So it's just such a beautiful playground for how we can support each other in a little bit of just getting what we want right, getting what we what our bodies actually really need, in order to be most lit up and to have the most aliveness going through us that we can and to use that to reinforce our connection. I think that's just such a beautiful thing. I also am really excited about the possibility that, you know, you don't have to be a therapist or a body worker in order to help your partner. And we don't want to be our therapist, you know, our partner's therapist, we don't want to be their psychoanalyst, no, but we could still really be playing such a pivotal role in supporting healing from misattunements or relational wounds of the past, and so I'm very excited about it for that reason, totally in alignment with you, Laura on that, and this is why we're doing it, because we really are in alignment in how we think about that. I will add a few things to that wonderful which, which actually this is what came to mind as you were talking is that if we have some form of trauma around touch, and we go to a therapist who does neuro affective touch or massage, we get an hour of touch, and then we go home, and maybe home there's not the knowledge, the attunement, whatever. So get an hour a week, if we're lucky, two hours a week. But with our partners, we're together all the time. We sleep together. Our bodies are together. So it's such an opportunity for deep healing, because what we do know about the body is that the body learns through repetition. The more we practice something, the more we do something, the more we spoon and cuddle up, the more the more our body learns to trust and love being in connection Absolutely. So that's just such a perfect way to release more of that deep bracing, to have more sort of flow of our life force energy is through all that repetition, right that we get. And I'll throw out a really short, little brief story about this too in my practice, which is was a wonderful application of neuro effective touch in a couple where one of my clients had a really horrible incident happen when she was a baby, where one of her parents accidentally ran over her with a vehicle,

33:40  
and She was severely injured, but she was in a field. It was good that she was in a field, because it seems like it pushed, pushed her down enough into the ground that she wasn't killed. So she but that her parent had to go drive off in order to get help for her, and couldn't move her because she was so injured. And so then she was left there. And while she had done all kinds of psychotherapy and even somatic experiencing and things around the trauma of the injuries, she really had a lot she was really holding a lot of bracing and a lot of relational sort of touch needs around being comforted while she and having been abandoned in her moment of pain.

34:30  
And one of the things that we did was showed her partner what her her body wanted to be held really very tightly

34:40  
in a very sort of, like nurturing, kind of like, almost like a cradle,

34:47  
is what her body wanted. And when I found that, by experimenting with her in her body, I could then teach her partner how to do that, and they changed their nighttime routine so that he would actually speak.

35:00  
Her at night in that position.

35:03  
And so they incorporated that they had been cuddling in a just a different way. It just wasn't what her body needed for the repetition of this particular healing area, healing this particular area. So what they did was they shifted to this particular type of cuddling and sleeping position that was easy for them to do, but they just hadn't known until they had the space to really open it up and listen to her body about what it needed. And so that was just a really great example of what you were just saying about how much the repetition is available with our partners, right, right? And it's a really good feeling as the partner who, who of someone who has a special need to be able to offer that. It's just really heartwarming. Yeah, absolutely. And most people don't have, I mean, Thank gosh. Most people don't have such a harrowing experience, but almost all of us have some ways that our body has been holding on to something over our lifetime. And it may not be so dramatic as that, but it could still really be getting in the way of a little bit of our expansion and in our, our joy and our our freedom in our bodies, right, right? And then, when all of that is healed, then, then the way is open, you know, to to really, like, you say, like, play with each other in an expansive way, in a free way. And so there's, there's there's two parts to this. There's the healing of the trauma, and then as the trauma heals, then there's the PO that what it's called now, post trauma growth, it's like we still need support to continue growing in the joy and in the pleasure of being free of trauma. So there's two pieces to it, and sometimes you get partners who aren't quite in the same place in their development, like one partner who carries a lot of trauma that needs healing, and another partner who doesn't. And so it can create real frictions, because the partner who needs the healing needs that specific attunement, and the other partner is just ready to go, you know, and things like that. Like, there could be a lot of I call it differences in one's development or one's states, and it's important to learn what these are and how to get people to really be in a similar place together, absolutely and there we can heal some of this actually through pleasurable touch is, I think, really exciting for people. And also then at the other side, we get access to more pleasure when our body is not holding all those bracing patterns, we actually do get access to more full body pleasure, which is pretty exciting too. Yes, wonderful. So should we talk a little bit about this workshop? Because we're talking about how neuro effective touch can be used in couples, and what our vision is for it. And you know, because of this, because of the this potential here,

38:31  
Aileen and I have put our heads and our hearts together and come up with this course, and it's called thriving together, couples, healing, attachment, patterns, through touch. I wonder. Aileen, what are you most excited about, about this? Why, like, what? What is jazzing you about it? It's opening the communication. And it's also, you know, a lot of my, some of my experience working with couples is that one of the person in the couple is totally yearning, hungry for a tune touch, and the other person isn't so interested. There's there's often. So that's like, how do we get both people equally interested in being there for each other in those ways. That's one thing that, to me, is a huge challenge to you know, and then just knowing that we were opening up what is called implicit communication, and what that means is that you know, like as you and I are talking, that's an explicit, you know, we're we're saying the words. We're being really clear. But the implicit is like this desire for something, this for this connection, but it doesn't have words. It's in the sensory world.

40:00  
World it's in, and it's so nice, like when somebody is attuned, they develop that intuition of touching in a more implicit, attuned way. And that feels so wonderful. Absolutely not asking people to be mind readers, right? Yeah, but, but there's a way in which we begin to listen to the body, and our body starts to have a conversation directly with our partner's body. Yeah, so this is you can think about it. People could think about it as sort of the way that your non verbals are being communicated with each other, and having those be opened and in alignment, yes, so that it's a kind of full body honesty, in a way, is how I kind of sometimes think about it right, as opposed to I'm holding something back. I'm not saying and I'm not attuning either to myself or to my partner. And that is a really common place to be if you're there, it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you, it just means that you might not have gotten the tools yet. We don't get taught these things in modern society. You know, very early on in life, we're taught to sit still and be quiet and ask if we need to go to the bathroom,

41:21  
pay attention to somebody else on their own timetable, and so we're frequently locking down some of our implicit communication, right? We're going to open that up. So I'm excited about that too, and there's so this is a six week live training meeting Sundays starting in February.

41:45  
And do you want to say anything about what people will learn? Sure, but it's not like a full Sunday, right? Doesn't take the whole Sunday. It's Oh, absolutely yes.

41:58  
Hour and a half, 10am Pacific Time. Pacific us time on Sundays for an hour and a half to two hours.

42:09  
We're gonna have a little Q and A and some practice each time. So it's definitely not a full Sunday. And in that time, I think we're going to cover quite a bit actually, I know I think, do you have in front of you? Because we did do our agenda, I do, right? Or did we? I do actually have it in front of me. So I could, I could say something about that for everyone who's interested. So we are starting module one on attunement, both to yourself and your partner, and attuning to ourselves is foundational, because we can't be present with someone else if we're not connected to our own selves, first, our own bodies. And so we'll learn exercises for tuning into what is true for you, what you actually want and need, and how to maintain that while being present with another person. Right in module two, we're diving into presence, intention and attention around touch. We're going to explore different touch styles work with embodied consent, which is so different than just asking, Is this okay?

43:26  
Talk about embodied consent and actually practice with these things. We'll address some things that are important, that get in the way, like people, pleasing any expectations of mind, reading. Those things can just be road bumps actually to authentic connection, right? Module three is our emphasis on that. One is going to be on an embodied repair process. And what I mean by that is where we're actually going to get into we're going to give you

43:59  
a process for repairing relational rifts when you get into trouble, when you are worried about some sort of conflict, when there might be differences, an embodied process for actually solving those and coming together and actually even being stronger In your connection through through the process of healing. Conflict

44:24  
Module Four is we're going to do a lot of troubleshooting. We're going to look at what gets in our way, bracing patterns, shame, how to receive more easily, and how to give from a whole heart. We're going to start looking at some of the neuro effective touch sort of process, how we create that environment, and what that looks like. And then modules five and six are going to focus on healing and pleasure and just like really playing with awakening, the capacity for more joy and aliveness.

45:00  
Rather than just fixing problems, right? So that's that, that's the plan. And I think the big takeaway, you know, is just that the couples who participate will have real tools in their toolbox to create more nervous system safety together to support each other's healing, any of these deep bracing patterns, attachment wounds and just access deeper levels of trust and intimacy. So it's not about being therapists for each other. It's about becoming secure bases, I think, for each other's healing, right? Because that that does that is the basis for secure attachment and for trust. I trust that my partner really wants to find the way where I will feel and be able to receive the love. You know, it's about growing the love. Absolutely, I love that it is absolutely about growing the love. Is there anything you want to add about what you see as sort of what people will learn or what they're going to walk away with? Well, for one, it is for couples who you know. This isn't for repairing relationships that are in deep trouble. This is for couples who wish to grow together. I mean, of course, all couples will will wish to grow together, but this is, you know, it's like they're not a crisis.

46:35  
Yeah, there has to be some harmony in the couple that both want to do this work absolutely so it is. The cautionary note is, you know, you may not be ready for this at this time. It will continue to be available in the future. If you are in a couple where your partnership is feeling really sticky right now, you know that there's, you know, some resentments that need to be worked through, need to get attention right and be worked through, and you're not communicating well, or you're not really on the same page, then I would suggest reaching out to me or to another person who works with couples to repair some of those things first before thinking about taking this course, because this we do want some a pretty solid foundation. Even though we're going to build on it, we're going to build on it right now, as you're talking I just remembered one really important piece is the the developmental sequence of our erotic capacity. And you know that that part of why we would go into the babyhood, so to speak, is that our body, as we develop, learns to take in pleasure, like for the little newborn, it's the mouth. It's the mouth going to the breasts, sucking, getting the warm milk. And so there's pleasure in kissing that is a mature aspect of that very beginning. And so many parts of our bodies, like that learn through successful development to take in pleasure. And that's a piece that's often not addressed in a lot of the sexological bodywork. And I don't say that as a criticism, because a lot of sexological body workers have come to me and said, Aileen, when are you going to offer the developmental pieces to growing our body's capacity for pleasure. Yep, and we're starting now,

48:44  
so we're very excited about it.

48:47  
Are there any things that you would say to couples who do feel like they're a good fit for this, but they might be nervous about doing this kind of work, or trying to decide whether they're ready. Call us Yeah. Give us a give us a shout out, reach out, and we can talk to you about it. Yes, yes, absolutely. And then how? So details for everybody, how to register. This is going to be a registration and the application. It's a brief application, just to check, to make sure everybody's the right fit. At this time that's going to open. It'll be open in early October of 2025, so if this is when you're listening to this, watching this, go register now, the link will be available in my show notes, and also we're going to have it available through the neuro effective touch Institute, yeah, absolutely, yes. Maybe, let's say by mid October for sure. Okay, so mid October 2025, and if you have questions, you can reach out to me, or you can reach out to aliens team at the neuro effect.

50:00  
Touch Institute,

50:01  
and we are really excited about this and really looking forward to it, and I think it's just going to be so great, if I'm correct. And you know, the world is a big place, but this may well be the first time this type of learning is that we're making available is happening? I think so. I absolutely think so. So, this is the, this is the groundbreaking course for this. Yes, absolutely. February 2026,

50:35  
yes. So what about if people want to find you and learn more about neuro effective touch. They can go to the website, the website the neuro effective and neuro effective touch.com

50:48  
Great, and I'll put that in the show notes also. And my email is Aileen at neuro effective touch, wonderful. So we can contact and my email is Laura at Laura jurgens.com

51:02  
Okay, easy to remember, easy to remember, and we'll put all of that in the platforms that you're going to see this wonderful. Thanks so much for being here today. Aileen, you're welcome.

51:15  
Hey. So before you go, I have some more free help for you. If you are okay with sharing your email, I will send you my free guide, five steps to start solving desire differences without blame or shame. This is a practical starting point for individuals and couples. You can opt out of my emails at any time, but I think you'll want to stick around. I am not a spammer. Go get it at Laurajurgens.com, backslash libido, make sure to spell my last name right and the link is in the show notes. You.