on touch

​Touch comes before sight,
before speech. 

It is the first language,
and the last,
and it always tells the truth. 

Margaret Atwood

How often has someone that is not your spouse, child or parent touched you today? Pretty often that number is 0 for people living in the UK. One could argue that we touch each other too little. Touch is being highly underestimated in the Western world and medicine as being therapeutic or even healing.
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However, research in various different areas has shown that touch is very important even necessary for human development and wellbeing. Studies in understaffed orphanages in Romania in the 1980s and 1990s have shown that toddlers that did not receive any touch from a care taker where under developed for their age, their growth was slowed down, they developed compulsive rocking and other self-soothing behaviours. If the children never received hugs or touch in any form the disorders of mood, cognitions and self-control persisted through to adulthood. Such symptoms have not been recognised in children that are blind or deaf.​

As an act to save children from sexual predators adults outside the four walls of the home are now more or less not allowed to touch children. Nurses, teachers, coaches and other care takers should not be touching children anymore even when they are hurt which leads to touch deprivation in children because often hours spent without parents is now higher then with parents.

Touch is not only important for children’s wellbeing and development. Touch also enhances wellbeing and performance of adults. Studies have shown that sports teams for example basketball players that pat each other and touch each other more during a game are more successful because a stronger bond between team mates has been formed due to the physical contact especially when the contact implies a ‘well done’. Teams that touch each other will perform better throughout a season compared to those teams that do not touch each other at all.

In Shiatsu touch is the practitioner’s tool. Shiatsu touch is listening with the hands. One of the main principals in Shiatsu is the unconditional positive regard towards the receiver. Whichever story is behind the receiver’s ailments there is no judgement, every receiver on the Shiatsu matt is treated equal. This brings a very special quality to Shiatsu touch. A quality of indifference and seeing the receiver for who they are.

The Shiatsu touch is one of experiencing what is happening in the receivers body. It is one of the biggest joy’s of giving Shiatsu to feel the reaction of the receivers body to the touch at an acupuncture point that is relevant to them and to feel the energy move again at a blocked meridian passage. It is brilliant to feel the release of tension. Sometimes what we feel is very small but it has a very big effect on the receiver.

As a receiver of Shiatsu for more than 15 years I can vouch for Shiatsu touch. Every practitioner I received Shiatsu from has a special touch. It is a touch that comes from the practitioner’s listening to your body and meditation on the changes that are happening in the body. Shiatsu is less moving your muscles and trying to solve an issues. Shiatsu touch is helping the body to remember how to heal itself. And I believe it is the unconditional positive regard that plays a role in the very special Shiatsu touch.

David J. Linden:Touch: The Science of Hand, Heart and Mind. 2015. p. 4
M.W. Kraus, C. Huang, and D. Keltner: „Tactile communication, cooperation and performance: an ethological study lf the NBA.”, Emotion 10 (2010):745-49. Published by the American Phsychological Association. In: David J. Linden:Touch: The Science of Hand, Heart and Mind. 2015.