The capacity to notice bodily sensation and contact closely enough to distinguish what feels welcome, neutral, wanted, absent or too much.
Touch & body connection is the capacity to include physical experience in how you understand contact.
Touch is not one thing. The same gesture can feel affectionate, absent, exciting, obligatory, soothing or invasive depending on context, relationship, timing and your own state.
Sensory self-contact gives you access to details before they become a verdict. Touch discernment adds context: what is happening, what you want, what you do not want, and whether the contact changes as you respond.
The glossary entries on Body awareness, Sensation and Interoception offer language for this first-person information. The Reading Room piece Wanted, Watched, Touched and Still Not Received looks at the difference between being desired and being received.
I Want to Be Touched is the SHJ title most directly concerned with this capacity.
