The Soft Kink Touch Matrix

What Dance Taught Me About Touch

Touch is enigmatic for many. I often get asked whether I am a professional whenever I give massage, bodywork or simply touch someone.

I am not a professional in my own eyes as I don't make money with that. But what I do know is that I am very interested in understanding touch, what works and why.

When I think about what makes my touch unique, one thing stands out: I put a lot of awareness and presence into my hands and fingers and that I follow my intuition.

Explaining a skill we have and that comes natural to us is quite challenging. Like an Italian grandma that tells you to add more water to the dough until it "feels right". What?

Teaching a skill forces us to become precise and understand what we do intellectually. This post is an attempt to explain what I do both to myself and to you, the reader. There is something about pace, rhythm, variation, pressure, intensity, types of touch, where we touch, with what energy, with what intention. And pauses where what was triggered in the body has time to be felt and unfold.

Touch as an interview

I like the metaphor of the interview quite a lot. I see every touch I give as a question to the other person's body. How do they react when I touch their back? Does the answer change if I increase the pressure? What if I pull their hair? Answers can be subtle and are mostly non-verbal. A variation in breath, in movement, in muscle tension.

Let me give you an example of what this can look like:

Imagine the following, you arrive, talking a lot. A clear sign that you are in your head and not in your body. Your energy is high, nervous perhaps. I invite you to lie down on your back. Your head is moving, your eyes are open, you are still talking. I start at your feet, as far away from the head as possible.

I put my warm hands around your feet. I barely move, my focus is on grounding you. Your feet welcome the warmth from my hands. I increase the pressure ever so slightly. There are far fewer words already, and your eyes are closed more often.

I move my hands upwards along your feet, your ankles and lower calves. I sense your muscles, your bones with even pressure. The touch is grounding like a tight, warm blanket. I invite you to breathe more deeply. I can sense that the tension in your legs is easing and introduce some light shaking, moving and stretching. I explore the range of motion of your legs. How far do they bend before you tense? I listen very closely. I move slow, carefully, controlled well within the range of motion of your body. I teach your body that it can trust me, that it is safe to relax.

From this place I start asking braver questions. I grip your skin more firmly, move my hands over your body more freely. I see your breath go deeper, your spine arching, tension and relaxation interchange in accordance with my touch. Sometimes I pause, letting you anticipate what will happen next...

I've always been deeply curious about how I can change someone's state of body and mind simply with the power of my hands.

Curiosity is what drives a good interview

A good journalist listens to the answers they get and lets themselves be guided by them instead of simply rattling off their prepared questions. Good preparation is of course a good thing, but they need to be flexible enough to change directions if new ways open up.

So perhaps the skill I have is that I am a skilled listener and good at taking people into certain states consciously. I have learned how certain ways of touching might impact another person and I play with that a lot!

Okay, now we have explored what I think makes touch unique and interesting. But I promised to talk about dance. So what does dance have to do with touch?

Breaking Patterns: Moving with Laban

A while back I stumbled upon Rudolf Laban who developed a system called Laban Movement Analysis (LMA), and within it a framework called Effort as a way to describe movement.

Effort Factor	Effort element (Fighting polarity)	Effort element (Indulging polarity)
Space	Direct	Indirect (flexible)
Weight	Strong (heavy)	Light
Time	Sudden (quick)	Sustained (slow)

What got me excited about this model was that it opened up a world of creativity when it came to my dancing.

Let me explain the model in a bit more detail before telling you what happened.

The expression of the effort factors can be combined freely, creating different qualities of movement:

Weight	Space	Time	Label (after Laban)
Heavy	Direct	Quick	Punch (Punching a bag)
Heavy	Direct	Slow	Press (Pushing a heavy door)
Heavy	Indirect	Quick	Slash (Swinging an axe)
Heavy	Indirect	Slow	Wring (Wringing out a towel)
Light	Direct	Quick	Dab (Tapping a key)
Light	Direct	Slow	Glide (Smoothing a tablecloth)
Light	Indirect	Quick	Flick (Brushing off a crumb)
Light	Indirect	Slow	Float (A feather drifting)

At a first glance this might look a bit confusing so let me try to show you what I mean. Imagine yourself dancing to a track you love (Monkey Business by Nomadic perhaps?). Your body starts to move to the beat you lose yourself in the song, your arms glide lightly through the air, your feet slowly gliding over the floor as you move through the space in direct lines. You realize that you are in Glide (light, direct, slow)!

"I wonder what happens if I change the weight with which I move..." (you wonder). So you try, instead of your arms floating lightly through the air, they become heavy pulling down and requiring more effort to be kept up. The quality of your dance shifts, it is as if the air had gotten thick, almost like an obstacle to move through. You are now in Press (Heavy, direct, slow).

"This is really awesome, let's try one more thing!" you say as you change the way you move through space as well. Instead of moving in direct lines you start moving indirectly, in meandering lines, spirals, curves through the room. Your movements become less predictable and strained as you enter Wring (heavy, indirect, slow)

This is what happened for me. When dancing I could now explore these different dimensions and challenge myself to dance in ways that might not be intuitive, like how do I dance heavy, direct and quick to a slow piece of music? It felt challenging, playful and exciting!

Exercise: Moving through the Matrix with Laban

I invite you to try it yourself, this is after all an embodied practice. See if you can just dance and map your moves onto the matrix. Then start changing one of the factors. Do it for a couple of times, a few minutes each. It might feel weird and counter intuitive at first, but it is well worth an exploration!

My lightbulb moment: The Soft Kink Touch Matrix

I was developing a workshop called Rediscovering the mystery - Exploring presence through the senses (happening on the 31st of October 2026) where touch was a central element.

This got me thinking about touch in a deeper way. It made me consider what it is that makes touch an interesting/exciting/relaxing experience. I wanted some sort of framework and that's when my brain made the connection to Laban's framework. This is where things got really exciting for me. I figured that this model of movement could easily be adapted to touch as well.

Touch is basically our hands (or other body parts) moving over a space (a body) with varying pressure (weight/pressure) and speed (tempo/time) in more or less predictable patterns (path/space).

As you can perhaps already see touch maps quite nicely onto Laban's matrix. I got excited and wanted to see what that would look like!

Here's what I came up with:

Soft Kink - Touch Matrix
Pressure (Weight)	Path (Space)	Tempo (Time)	Touch action
Firm	Focused	Fast	Knock	A firm, quick contact with a heavy hand, like knocking on a door
Firm	Focused	Slow	Anchor	A firm, steady hand that stays in place, like resting a palm on a shoulder
Firm	Wandering	Fast	Rake	Firm fingers sweeping quickly across the skin, like raking through hair
Firm	Wandering	Slow	Knead	Slow, firm, wandering pressure, like kneading dough
Light	Focused	Fast	Tap	A light, quick touch on one spot, like tapping someone to get their attention
Light	Focused	Slow	Trace	A light fingertip moving slowly along one line, like tracing a collarbone
Light	Wandering	Fast	Flutter	Light, quick, scattered touches, like butterfly wings on the skin
Light	Wandering	Slow	Drift	A light touch wandering slowly with no clear destination, like a feather drifting over skin

Now I had a model and language for describing ways of touching that feels much more granular than what I've seen so far.

It lets you play around with different qualities of touch, helps to break out of patterns and limitations.

By altering one dimension (Light/firm, focused/wandering, fast/slow) the quality of the touch changes drastically.

Variation is what makes touch interesting

Our nervous system moves between two poles: activated/relaxed. When there is too much activation things get too intense, overwhelming and unpleasant. Pushed far enough one might be triggered to fight/flee/freeze or fawn. When we get "too relaxed" (if there even is such a thing) things might get boring, we might even fall asleep.

Moving between those two poles can add a lot of interesting spice to play and touch.

How can this model help with that?

Looking back at the interview

Remember the scene from earlier? Let’s look at it again through the matrix. I started in Anchor: warm, firm hands around your feet, barely moving. Its only job was to ground you and give your nervous system something steady and predictable.

When I moved up your ankles and calves with even pressure, I shifted into Knead: still slow and firm, but now wandering. Both are calming touches, and that was on purpose. A busy mind first needs to feel safe before it can let go.

Only once your breath deepened and your legs softened did I start asking braver questions. Gripping your skin more firmly and moving my hands more freely took me towards Rake, and with it into activating territory.

Your breath deepened, your spine arched, and tension and relaxation began to alternate. Then came the pause. In the matrix there’s no action for it, but it’s where the activation builds: you don’t know whether the next touch will be a soft Drift or a sharp Tap, and that not-knowing is exactly what creates anticipation.

At the time, I didn’t think of any of this in terms of a matrix. I was simply listening and following your answers. But seeing it laid out like this shows the pattern underneath: first calming touch to build trust, then gradually more activating touch, with contrast and pauses to keep the body curious.

Slow touch is generally more calming and brings more relaxation. When what will happen next is predictable it is easier to let go and sink into the body. In other words, slow touch creates safety, it opens up the body and the senses. Anchor, knead, trace and drift fall into that category.

Faster touch on the other hand is generally more activating, exciting, fun, challenging and unpredictable. This type of touch creates tension, anticipation, excitement. Knock, rake, tap and flutter. Think spanking, scratching, tickling, slapping. These kinds of touch activate the nervous system, increase heart rate and blood flow, activate the skin.

Let's get kinky

What happens when we add kink to the equation?

Adding kink makes the whole thing a bit more edgy, as we introduce things like power, pain, pleasure, all under the umbrella of consent.

The distinction between slow = grounding and fast = activating breaks down a bit as a lot hinges on the intensity and intention with which we do something.

So here we start moving between the more kinky flavor of an action and its non-kinky counter-part.

The difference can often be quite subtle: holding someone (anchor) can be a cozy hug or it can be claiming. Both actions might look similar from the outside but feel very different based on the underlying intention.

A Note on Safety and Consent

Consent is paramount in all touch-based interactions, and especially when we move into kink territory. Knowing beforehand what the other person is open to, where they want to be touched and in what ways is just as essential as checking in throughout the interaction. Watching for non-verbal cues and checking in verbally from time to time makes play a lot safer. Body language can tell you a lot, but it can’t replace asking. And remember that consent can be changed or withdrawn at any moment. Tools such as the traffic light method can be really helpful here.

Sticking to things within your competence matters too. Especially when playing with pain, rope or impact tools, you need a certain level of knowledge of both technique and risks. Risk can be minimized, but it’s always present to some degree. Educate yourself, take care, and have fun!

Touch action	Kink connection	Where it shows up
Anchor	Holding, pinning, claiming	Restraint by hand, a dominant hand on the back or shoulder, grounding during intense moments, aftercare
Knead	Firm handling, grabbing, squeezing	Rougher play, building intensity gradually, deep-pressure aftercare
Trace	Teasing, anticipation, marking a target	Tracing where impact will land, sensation toys like a pinwheel or ice, drawing out suspense
Drift	Teasing, slow sensation	Blindfolded play, building anticipation, soft contrast after intensity
Tap	Warm-up, stingy impact	Warming up the skin before impact, light spanking, signals and cues during a scene
Knock	Thuddy impact	Spanking, impact play on fleshy areas
Rake	Scratching, gripping	Nails across the skin, hair grabbing, marking
Flutter	Tickling, overstimulation	Tickle play, feathers and fur, disorienting sensation under a blindfold

What to do from here:

I will use this tool in my workshops to help people access more creativity and playfulness when it comes to touch. It has given me a new way to think about touch and how I use it which I find both useful and exciting, so come by and experience it in my facilitation! I’m also planning to publish some online tool version of this idea that people can use to play with these things at home.

Do you have feedback on this? There might very well be gaps in my writing and thinking and I would love to continue developing this concept. So feel free to reach out and let me know!

Finally: Feel free to use this concept and ideas and please mention my name and link this website if you do!