Touch
Touch is Primordial
Touch is our first sense, both in terms of human evolution and our personal biology. Without frequent caring touch our IQ and EQ atrophy. At its best, touch communicates safety, love and affection — we truly cannot live on bread alone.
Touch is rich and multisensory, giving us a feeling of space, motion, temperature, pressure, dryness as well as the feeling of pleasure and pain. It’s at the center of virtually all experience. Bringing more touch into your life can create a body-mind environment that is calming and rejuvenating.
“Evidence points unequivocally to the fact that no organism can survive very long without externally originating cutaneous stimulation.”
Ashley Montagu, Ph.D.
Practice: Gentle Self-Touch
Sit in a comfortable upright position. Put your palms together and start to gently rub your hands together. Feel the sensations on your palms and fingers (these are particularly sensitive parts of your body). Close your eyes and feel the sensations again.
After 20-30 seconds of rubbing and warming your hands, separate your palms and curl your fingers inward. Use the tips of your fingers to glide over your scalp. Make it feel like a gentle by firm combing with your fingers. Start from your hairline and go back to your upper neck area. As you comb back, change slightly the area of the scalp covered each time, to eventually pass over every part of the scalp, from the top to the sides. Feel the sensations throughout your scalp and the crown of your head. Then feel your hands and scalp together. Go slow. Comb back with your fingers 8-10 times.
Return to rubbing your palms for another 20-30 seconds. Feel the sensations throughout your hands and scalp. Separate your hands and keep all fingers extended. With a very light and gentle touch, glide all fingertips down your face. Start from the top of your forehead and glide down past your temples, upper cheekbones, the sides of your jaws and down to the chin where your hands meet again. Do this gentle gliding 10-15 times. Feel the sensations on your face. Then feel the sensations on your face, scalp and hands all at the same time. End by relaxing your arms and hands, placing them on your lap. With your eyes closed, check the feelings and body sensations in your hands, scalp and face for 10-15 seconds. Savor the feeling.
Why Touch?
Helps maintain and rejuvenate every body-mind system from the endocrine and nervous systems, to the circulatory and respiratory systems. Touch also brings you into your body and so brings you into the present moment. Touch is particularly important for children during early development, where frequent hugs and other affectionate touch by parents and other family members, as well as trusted friends and teachers, can help ensure full physical and emotional growth. And as we grow into old age, touch can be essential to maintaining quality of life.
Free, for basic caring self-touch or gentle affectionate touch from family and friends.
For the gentle self-touch practice, a quick and easy 2-3 minutes per session.
None.
“To touch is to give life.”
Michelangelo
Resources
The importance of touch, foundational to all cultures throughout human history, has been increasingly sidelined in the modern urban environment that relies on workaholism, machine and electronic technology, and social conventions that distance us. Modern researchers such as Ashley Montagu, Tiffany Field, David Linden and others remind us that we build low-touch civilizations at our own peril.
Increased external or social touch can be brought into our lives through more frequent affectionate touch with a romantic partner as well as with our family and friends. Some of this may seem awkward at first, but will pay off dividends over time. Animal companions can also be a rich source of touch. We can participate, too, in team sports or social dance, or get a massage. Each welcomed ‘touch event’ can help increase health and happiness.
“Paradise is attained by touch.”
Helen Keller