When was the last time you touched someone? When was the last time you were touched?
We are wired to need touch. A baby’s growth is limited without it. Your performance is limited without it.
Recently one of my Rolfing clients told me about her tough divorce. A very accomplished woman who could hold her own with anyone, she expressed her sadness about how the divorce played out. I saw the tears well up in her eyes, and my heart sank, feeling her grief. Without much thought, I walked over and hugged her. She immediately allowed herself to cry. It wasn’t that she hadn’t cried before about her divorce, it was that she never allowed those tears to be expressed in front of a man.
She released and softened more from her crying than from her entire session. I grant you, the Rolfing session was a perfect setup for release, but my touch was the catalyst for her release. Your touch says more than any words can say. The risk you take to express your humanity relaxes another person to feel his or hers.
- Image via Wikipedia
NPR did two stories on touch recently. The first was about how physicians are not using the low tech approach of touch to diagnose patients. Physicians, like the rest of us, can hide behind the marvels of technology. I see it regularly in my practice: clients come to me after a battery of tests and no useable diagnosis. The patient knew more than the tests. All the docs needed to do was look and feel and they would have realized the culprit was a soft tissue problem. As the NPR story reports, doctors only recognize a problem as “real” if a test can “prove” it.
The second NPR story reported on new brain and neurotransmitter research linking touch to reduced stress and improved performance. When you touch someone, they relax.
I am Rolfing a Brit now. She was commenting on how she took her American husband to England and he was stressed at how non-expressive the British were. Then they traveled to Italy, where he was ecstatic with all the touching, hugging, and kissing. We Americans are in between the British and the Italians. In our men’s group every week, every man hugs each other when they arrive and when they leave. It’s not our official rule, we just do it. As my men friends will tell you, I started out as a rigid hugger. I grew up in New England, in a time when people simply did not hug. It took me a while to learn to do it.
Give to get. You need to be touched, others need it. So start risking and start touching. In these days of political correctness and appropriate behavior, you might be bucking the status quo – but we all need to loosen up.
Touch someone today.