Room 22 is a welcoming, supportive space designed for queer individuals and couples to explore the art of touch as a pathway to connection, well-being, and healing.
In a world where queer bodies are often misunderstood, oversexualized, or ignored, Room 22 offers something different: a chance to reclaim touch as sacred. Here, we engage in practices that nourish the nervous system, deepen intimacy, and relieve the widespread touch scarcity affecting queer communities.
Whether you're solo or with a partner, Room 22 invites you to:
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Improve communication and relational intimacy
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Rediscover the sacredness of your body and your partner’s through intentional touch
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Explore consent-based, non-sexual tactile practices
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Move, breathe, and connect more deeply—supported by curated music and mindful guidance
What is Touch Starvation?
Touch starvation is a quiet kind of hunger—the longing to be held, to be seen through the body, to feel safe in closeness. For queer people, this longing is often complicated. Many of us have grown up without models of safe, affirming touch. We’ve learned to shrink, to protect, to dissociate from our bodies. The world has not always made space for our tenderness.
Touch starvation shows up in the body and the mind. You might notice tension, restlessness, trouble sleeping, a deep ache for connection, or even numbness. Emotionally, it can feel like loneliness, anxiety, or detachment. Neurologically, it reduces oxytocin—the hormone that supports bonding and regulation—and increases cortisol, the stress hormone. Over time, this impacts our immune system, our sense of safety, and our ability to trust.
But there is a way back through affective touch. Intentional, consensual, non-sexual touch reminds your nervous system that it’s okay to soften. That you’re not alone. That you belong.
When we Accept our longing, Understand its roots, Reflect on what we need, and take loving Action to meet those needs, healing begins. Reclaiming touch as sacred allows us to reconnect—with ourselves, with others, and with the wholeness of our queer bodies.
What is Affective Touch?
Affective touch is a form of gentle, intentional physical contact that communicates care, presence, and emotional safety. It’s not about performance, function, or sexuality—it’s about connection. A soft hand on the shoulder, a slow stroke down the arm, a warm embrace held for a few deep breaths. These simple gestures tell the nervous system, “You’re safe here. You matter.”
This kind of touch is powerful because it speaks directly to your body’s natural rhythms of regulation—especially through the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for calming the body after stress. When you're overwhelmed, afraid, or overworked, your sympathetic nervous system (the “fight, flight, or freeze” response) takes over. Affective touch helps bring your body back into balance by activating the parasympathetic nervous system, often called the “rest and digest” system. This shift slows your heart rate, softens your breathing, reduces cortisol (the stress hormone), and brings you back to a state of calm and connection.
Over time, consistent affective touch can ease anxiety, improve sleep, support immune function, and even deepen trust in yourself and others. It reminds your body and spirit that you deserve to feel safe—not just sometimes, but as a way of being.
+ Affective Touch
In Room 22, music doesn’t just accompany affective touch—it guides it. The melodies, rhythms, and vibrations become a gentle invitation for your hands, your skin, and your breath to move with intention and presence.
Music speaks directly to the heart and nervous system, activating the parasympathetic nervous system—our body’s natural way to rest, restore, and heal. As the music flows, it creates a safe container that encourages the mind to quiet and the body to soften. This gentle surrender allows touch to become more mindful, more attuned, and more healing.
When you let the music guide your touch, your movements become less about control and more about connection. The rhythm offers a shared language between you and your own body or between partners—where every stroke, hold, or caress is woven into the soundscape, creating a dance of presence and care.
Loving Our Bodies
In Room 22, nudity is not mandatory. You will never be asked or expected to disrobe. Instead, you are invited to consider your relationship with your body—not through pressure, but through presence. Nudity here isn’t about exposure. It’s about choice. It’s about unlearning the ways you’ve been taught to see your body—and others’—through filters of judgment, comparison, and control.
You’ve likely lived in a world that centralizes patriarchal, hypermasculine, and white-dominant ideals of what a body should be. Maybe you’ve been told your body is too much, or not enough. Maybe you’ve been unseen, hyper-visible, or objectified. In Room 22, we begin to shift that narrative. Together, we decentralize the gaze that upholds whiteness, muscularity, and convention. You’re not here to be looked at. You’re here to be.
This space honors all bodies: curvy, thin, scarred, stretched, trans, femme, disabled, racialized, aging—bodies that hold trauma, pleasure, complexity, and truth. When you witness nudity here, it isn’t performance—it’s reclamation. It’s someone choosing to be present in their skin, as they are. You’ll always be held with respect and care.
Nudity isn’t the point—Liberation is. You might choose to stay clothed. You might change your mind. What matters most is that you feel emotionally safe, seen, and supported, especially if you live with body dysmorphia, trauma, or discomfort in your skin. You deserve to be here exactly as you are.
In Room 22, you’re invited to soften, to release hierarchy, and to let go of the urge to compare. You’re invited to love your body, even if it’s just for a moment. You’re invited to expand your understanding of beauty, power, and presence—within yourself and others.
This is not a space for perfection. It’s a space for truth. For undoing shame. For honoring difference. For returning to your body with love.