Matthew Tousignant: Here’s The Ticket

Matthew Tousignant and I have been hiking the rocky trails of Valley Forge National Park since we were fifteen.

Tous holds degrees from Harvard University and the California Institute of Integral Studies. As a Breema Practitioner and Instructor, he combines hands-on bodywork with somatic psychology to connect people to their unique potential as human beings.

When Matt moved back East following from Berkeley, California, we began hiking with something of a cadence. We’ve walked, jogged and hiked those trails every few months for the last five years.

Our favorite traverses Mounts Joy and Misery; modest hills named by George Washington’s troops, who knew a thing or two about suffering. When we’re done, we submerge ourselves in Valley Creek and let the cool water rush over us.

Tous and I go deep on those hikes, sharing the stuff only old friends can. And over the course of those long walks, Matt’s helped me find my way back to my authentic self, and to an essential truth: to be in touch with ourselves and with each other, we need to be present in our minds, and our bodies. 

“The next stage for the mind from its intoxicated reverie in itself, its egocentric, narcissistic, binge,” he says, “is to let go of everything it knows, and register body.”

This week, Matt shares how he drove himself to graduate at the top of the class, an All-American, Ivy League, ROTC scholar. And how a year later, he left it all to begin to find his authentic self on tiny island in the Mediterranean.

“Strive and seek and really dig to find a point of reference for life that’s not based on thought, feeling, or sensation, but on the direct experience of life itself,” he reminds us. “Make that your goal and your quest. And don’t give up until you find it because that’s the ticket.”