The Christian Digest Presents AFFECTION--[CD#10]--4/93
(Compiled and edited by the Christian Digest Staff)
This issue of The Christian Digest deals with one of the hallmarks of a true Christian--genuine, Godly love and affection.--One of the commandments which Jesus left us upon His departure, by which men would know we belong to Him. "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another" (John 13:34,35).
The Greek word for "affection" is often translated in the Bible as "love," and it is used in several ways in the New Testament. It is used in the Gospels when Jesus was "moved with compassion" to heal a leper (Mark 1:41) or when He saw the multitudes "fainting and scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd" (Matthew 9:36). Paul uses it in the Epistles when he says, "God is my record how greatly I long after you in the bowels [tender mercies] of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:8). It was a term both for complete caring and deep love.
The articles which follow--from both secular and Christian writers--emphasise the importance of love, affection, touching, hugging and caring for one another, and we pray they will help you as you reach out to others to bear their burdens, "being kindly affectioned one to another," "above all things, having fervent charity among yourselves" (Galatians 6:2; Romans 12:10; 1Peter 4:8).
TOUCH THERAPY--Excerpts from the book by Helen Colton--(New York: Kensington Publishing, 1983)
TOUCH--OUR LOST SENSE
Touch is the most important, and the most needed, of our senses. We can survive without sight; blind people do. We can survive without hearing; deaf people do. We can survive without being able to taste; many of us do. We can survive without our sense of smell; smell is the first of our senses to leave us when we fall asleep and the last to return when we awaken--that's why people often cannot smell smoke from a fire when they are asleep.
But we cannot survive and live with any degree of comfort and mental health when we are not able to feel. A complete loss of our sense of touch can send us into psychotic breakdown.
Every one of us is born with intense "skin hunger." At birth, we derive all sensations and information through the largest organ of our bodies--our skin. The tactile sensations that we receive when we are snuggled up to a warm body, feeling the rhythm of a beating heart as we suckle at a breast or drink from a bottle are vital to our survival. They set up electrical impulses that travel along our neural pathways and help create biochemical reactions that enable our brains to develop and function.
Some of our touch needs are met--but not enough, as we shall see in the next section--when we are fed, diapered, bathed and carried as babies. But when we start getting around on our own, touching too often lessens or ends. Many of us go through life touch-starved. We suffer malnutrition of the senses and rarely experience that glorious feeling of having our touch hunger fully satisfied.
It is ironic that our society, which is uncomfortable with touch and usually does not encourage it, certainly encourages it when the profit motive is involved. Underneath many commercials on television and advertisements in magazines is an appeal to our sense of pleasure through touch. Toilet tissue commercials talk about how "soft, softer, and softest" they are. A man's cheek is more pleasant to touch when he uses a particular brand of shaving cream or lotion. Hair is smoother to touch when it is washed with the advertiser's product. But let people talk about touching for spiritual reasons--"greeting one another with a holy kiss" and Godly hug, for example--and we consider them bizarre, hippie or oversexed.
We have a long way to go to become comfortable with touching. We talk out but do not act out our need for touch. Listen to these common expressions:
Of a sentimental or emotional occasion we say, "It was a touching experience." We tell an inspiring speaker, "Your talk touched me deeply." The poet says, "There is a touch of Spring in the air." Of a kindly or generous person some say, "She's a soft touch." "Don't be so touchy," we tell a grouchy person. (In fact, if a grouch were a touchy person--touching others or being touched--he undoubtedly would be less grouchy.)
Recipes tell us to use a "touch" of oregano or basil or thyme. "I'll `touch it up' with paint," we say of a messy surface. Some of us, unfortunately, may suffer a "touch" of rheumatism. A ship "touches" port when it makes a brief stop.
One of the most frequently spoken sentences in the land is probably "Let's keep in touch," said as we part from a friend, relative, colleague, or acquaintance. How much less alienated we would be if, instead of just mouthing that phrase, we did actually touch.
Why do we have a sense of touch at all? What is God's intention in giving us millions of sense receptors throughout our bodies and embedded in our skin? Above all else, our sense of touch alerts us to danger--through temperature, vibration and pressure. Touch enables the human race to survive.
Your fingers or hands touch a hot pot or stove, and without thinking, your reflexes draw you away from danger. Put your hand into a bucket of ice and you will also draw your hand away in an involuntary action to escape the pain. Your sense receptors find these extreme temperatures unsafe for survival.
You go to climb a ladder, and as you put your hands on its two sides, delicate vibrations tell your sense receptors that it is dangerously wobbly. You're driving your car and you apply the brakes. Instantly you feel nuances of vibration on the sole of your foot, warning you that your brakes are not holding with their customary tightness.
Among the Lord's intentions in giving us touch is to inform and educate us, to help us differentiate surfaces and motions. Run your fingertips lightly across surfaces near you right now. Your sense of touch is capable of discriminating between a smooth pane of glass and etched glass; between sandpaper and slick paper; between a china plate and a paper plate. Your fine discrimination can tell whether you are rolling a grain of rice or a grain of sand between your fingers. There are 1,300 nerve endings per square inch in your fingertips. You don't even have to touch with your whole fingertip; you often get information by touching just with your fingernail.
Touch is so magnificently efficient that even the degree of pressure informs us. Deep pressure stimulates different nerve endings than does light pressure. An airy touch often says something affectionate, nurturing or sexual. A heavy touch to the same part of the body may be a warning, "Cut it out. Stop doing that."
Our touch pressure is a powerful indicator of our stress at any given moment. Talking on the telephone, do you grip the receiver with great tension? Washing a pot, are you using as much pressure as you would need to scrape the paint off a piece of furniture? Become aware of how much unnecessary force you are constantly exerting through a day, transmitting with the intensity of your touch the intensity of your feelings about what you are doing. By lightening your pressure, you help relieve your stress.
When our sense receptors receive the stimuli of touch, what happens? The touch sparks a minor volt of electricity that shoots into a neuron. You have a hundred billion neurons, or nerve cells. Each is separated from every other one by a junction called a synapse. As your electrical charge goes through a neuron, it stimulates a chemical neurotransmitter, which sparks across that synapse and ignites another electrical impulse through the next neuron, which does the same for the next neuron, and so on. It is similar to the Morse code. Your touch or someone's touch on you is the lever that beeps the message. Your brain is the receiver.
Your brain receives the message in its pleasure center if you are being enjoyably caressed, embraced or stroked. It receives the message in a pain center if you step on a tack, stub your toe or accidentally bite your tongue. (Our tongues hurt so much when we accidentally bite them, because they have some of our most sensitive receptors.)
Reaching your brain, the electrical impulses trigger the manufacture of neurochemicals. God has made the human brain the greatest pharmaceutical manufacturer in the World. It creates chemicals and combinations of chemicals that can do nearly everything done by synthetic chemicals that we take in the form of drugs. In fact, the pharmaceutical industry constantly works to create drugs that "mimic" in their effects the chemicals we produce in our brains. These chemicals, combining with hormones and enzymes in our blood, give us our moods, emotions and feelings.
Thus, if you are feeling blue as a result of chemicals in your bloodstream, and you are cuddled by a warm, caring person, that touch can result in your brain discharging chemicals that counteract the chemicals creating your bad mood and make you feel better. This happens in as short a time as one millionth of a second. According to Manfred Eigen, director of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Gttingen, Germany, that's how long it takes for our brains to have a chemical reaction to sensory input like touch.
Stop now and look at those incredible parts of yourself--your hands. A map of the brain shows that your hands occupy the largest territory in your cortex, next to the territory allotted to your face and mouth. The digit occupying most space on that area of your brain is your thumb. Although it is shorter than your fingers, it is your most versatile digit. It can go across your palm, it can wrap around your other fingers when you make a fist, and it can inscribe the biggest circle.
In expressing loving feelings, a touch says more than words do. Let's say you are with a lover. The two of you see something that delights you. You take each other's hand and give what actress Liv Ullmann calls "secret squeezing signals" that say, "I'm sharing this with you, my love. This is something the two of us have together that nobody else is part of."
When lovers quarrel, their first action towards reconciliation is frequently a touch. The warmth and pressure of their skin starts healing their wounds before conversation does.
Saying "I love you" is a combination of sounds spoken into the air. Touching loved ones records your emotions on their bodies; they feel your love. A wife says that she gets weak-kneed with joy when her husband, helping her with her coat, squeezes her shoulder. Another woman told a researcher that "I would rather be held by my husband every day--though not twenty-four hours a day--than have a Cadillac convertible."
Desmond Morris says, "A single intimate body contact will do more than all the beautiful words in the dictionary. The ability that physical feelings have to transmit emotional feelings is truly astonishing."
Although touching was once considered almost taboo by society, times are changing. There are many indications of our changing attitudes toward touch. (Editor: Unfortunately, the decade of the '90s is reversing this trend, partially due to the child abuse hysteria and phobias brought on as "the love of many waxes cold."--Matthew 24:12.) The World Council of Churches sponsors touch workshops at annual meetings. Some churches have rock masses, which close with parishioners and visitors clasping hands or hugging to the beat of joyous music. During a rock mass at an Episcopalian church in Pasadena, strangers swept me into their arms and danced me around the sanctuary. At a Worldwide Marriage Encounter, 15,000 people in the religion-based movement crowded together on the campus of the University of Southern California to create "the World's biggest hug."
BIRTH--FIRST TOUCH EXPERIENCE
To thrive, newborns must be fed touch as much as food. Dr. Ren Spitz, working at a hospital for abandoned babies and babies whose mothers were in prison, became alarmed that even though the infants were well-fed and kept in highly sanitary conditions, they suffered a high death rate from a disease called marasmus, a Greek word meaning "shriveling-up or wasting-away of the flesh without apparent medical cause." Vacationing in Mexico, Spitz visited an orphanage in which conditions were less sanitary but the babies were happier, more robust and alert, and cried less. He observed that women from the village came in every day to rock and fondle the babies, talking and singing to them. Subsequently he observed thousands of babies. Touched babies thrived, while those who were left alone in bassinets tended to become ill, their cells dying of touch starvation.
Testing the effects of touch on premature babies, researchers came up with similar findings. At the University of South Carolina Medical School, it was found that "preemies" who received four fifteen-minute periods of stimulation each day gained weight and grew faster than unstimulated preemies, and with fewer feedings. A nursing student at Emory University, Mary McFall Jankovic, did more research on this. Keeping track of twelve preemies, she showed that those who were "held and stroked showed more signs of relaxation after feedings, had a decrease in post-feeding pulse rate, respiratory rate, muscle-tension rate, neck hypertension and crying behavior."
Babies who are fed enough of the nourishing brain food of touch may crawl, walk and talk at early ages and may develop higher I.Q.s than those not sufficiently touched. The University of Virginia Medical School explored the effect of touching and rocking on ninety-two children. Those whose parents reported a great deal of early stimulation performed significantly higher on language, memory, learning of new information, and problem-solving. Children whose sense receptors make them feel deeply loved find it easy to perform well. (The same applies to adults!)
Tactile stimulation may not only increase infant intelligence, it can also lessen the effects of birth injury. Shirley and Charles Robinson of Los Angeles have thrilling evidence of this. In 1979 Shirley, after difficult labor, gave birth to a son. "When Sterling was about 6 weeks old," she said, "I was stunned to observe that there was a great difference between him and other babies his age. There was a striking difference in the use of his eyes. Sterling wasn't looking at me or anything else!"
Tests showed that the infant was not responding to light flashed in front of his eyes or following the light with eye movements. He had suffered a vein rupture, a stroke. He was diagnosed as "a spastic child with cortical blindness." An opthamologist and a neurologist agreed that Sterling would never see.
When Sterling was 3 months old he began to have seizures. Drugs were prescribed. Shirley, who believes in health foods and no medication, was distraught about giving phenobarbital to her infant. Unwilling to accept the negative prognosis, she constantly sought programs that might help her son. One day she visited Margaret Martin, director of the Pregnancy and Natural Childbirth Center, who had just completed a course at the Institute for the Achievement of Human Potential in Philadelphia, a place noted for helping brain-damaged children. Shirley found there was a waiting period of a year in Philadelphia. She says, "If we waited that long Sterling would lose precious time. Every day that a brain-injured child isn't getting treatment that can help him get better, he is probably getting worse."
Then the Robinsons heard a radio announcement for the Help for Brain-Injured Children Foundation in La Habra, California. There Sterling was given tests, and a program was designed to stimulate his brain. Known as "patterning," the exercises require three people, one person at the child's head, one person at each side. In rapid, synchronized motions, all three move the head, arms and legs in circles, up and down, from side to side. Little Sterling was also spun in a revolving chair, rolled on the floor, massaged, squeezed, tapped and tickled. "The whole process was seasoned with love and a positive attitude," reports Shirley. One month after they started the touch-and-motion program, Sterling could see! Today, despite the doctors' predictions, he has full vision, and while he does not yet have complete muscular coordination for his age level, he is making progress toward crawling and walking.
What might happen to babies who are not fed enough "touch food"? Some scientists believe that babies with undernourished, hungry brain circuits deprived of pleasurable nutrients may become predisposed toward violence. A neuropsychologist, James W. Prescott, formerly with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare, makes a startling statement: "The principal cause of human violence is a lack of bodily pleasure derived from touching and stroking during the formative periods of life." Studying forty-nine societies from the past and present, Prescott found "strong support linking physical violence in a person's adult life to lack of physical affection when he was a child." He concludes: "Those cultures that give a great deal of infant physical affection--a lot of touching, holding and carrying--were rated low in adult physical violence. Conversely, the cultures that rated low on physical affection of children were rated high on adult physical violence."
What can loving, nurturing people do to help every child receive its birthright--the joy of touching? Even if we do not have small children in our lives, each of us, as a matter of self-interest, must encourage a new child-rearing philosophy in which society takes responsibility for providing pleasurable touch experiences for all babies, beginning at birth. We must end a widespread child-rearing notion that "You spoil a crying child by picking it up."
Children cry mostly because of unmet needs, for cuddling, socializing, wanting to be warm, dry and fed. Children are "spoiled"--their tender spirits are damaged--when their needs are not met, not when their needs are too well met. Consider how it is for you as an adult. When your needs are unmet, you are irritable and angry. When your needs are met, you have feelings of well-being; you find it easy to be loving and kindly to others.
Here are other ways to enrich a baby's sensory experiences. Keep in mind that the child enjoys temperature, motion and rocking similar to what it knew in the womb. The most important piece of furniture an infant can have is a rocker, with arms.
If a child screams during a repeated act of caretaking, look for a cause stemming from sensory discomfort. A mother told me her four-month-old son became hysterical every time she diapered him. I asked her to show me what she did. She removed the diaper, wet a washcloth with cold water and wiped the infant's warm crotch. I too would scream if a cold, sopping-wet washcloth were suddenly put on my warm crotch several times a day!
TOUCHING IN FAMILY LIFE
Mothers and fathers may prepare food for us, they may chauffeur us around, they may give us money to buy an ice-cream cone or get a toy, but nothing they do registers as deeply on us as do their squeezes, pats, strokes and embraces. It is not what our families give to us or do for us that makes us feel their love, it is our bodily sensations when they touch us. Tactile sensations become our emotions. We can receive no greater assurance of our worth and our lovability than to be affectionately touched and held in the cradle of family life. Knowing that we are valued sends us into the World with some magical inner strength to deflect life's slings and arrows.
Nothing binds up psychic wounds like the bandage of a hug--a warm clasp around a hurting human being. When I am unusually irritable, flaring up over incidents I would normally take in my stride, snapping in an edgy voice on the telephone, feeling close to tears, I ask myself, "What's wrong? Why are you behaving this way?" And I become aware that I need a "fix." I haven't been held close for a while. My soul needs soothing; loving contact is the only thing that can do it.
We Americans may be prodigal in material goods but we are stingy with little gestures that can bring happiness to those we love. Observing parents and children on beaches, in parks, in playgrounds and in shopping malls, researchers recorded that children initiated and sought affectionate and comforting touch contact to which parents often did not respond. Typically, a small child would touch her mother's cheek and put her arms around her mother's neck, but the mother did not reciprocate. When a child hurt himself, a parent was apt to comfort him by offering crackers, candy or cookies rather than physical comfort. (This is undoubtedly the beginning of obesity for some who, as adults, reach for food for the stomach as a substitute for what they would prefer--food for the skin.) Parents touched children mostly for the purpose of cleaning, such as wiping a running nose; of controlling their behavior, so they wouldn't wander too far; of punishing them for taking another child's toy. A father, "watching" over his child in the playground while reading a newspaper, did not once make physical contact during the hour I observed him. No parent grabbed a child and gave it a joyful hug, cheek rub or back rub, or made any other physical gesture that would express pleasure in being a parent and having a child.
The question of how much pleasure we truly get from parenting is raised by the observations of social scientist Paul Rosenblatt of the University of Minnesota, who recorded behavior in public places of couples with and without children. Childless couples touched more frequently, walking arm in arm, holding hands, kissing and making other affectionate gestures. Couples with children touched, talked and smiled much less. Are we, as myth has it, a child-centered culture? I see us spending a lot more time shopping and buying for children than we do giving them one-to-one contact and caring. We are actually a possession-centered culture; we devote ourselves to what our children possess rather than to the children themselves.
If we asked parents, "How come you don't touch and hug your child?" some would justify their indifference by saying, "Oh, my child hates being touched; she runs whenever I try to grab her to hug her." Grab is the key word. We have all seen parents or other adults forcibly restrain a squirming child with hugs when he wants to be off exploring; squeeze a child so tightly that he yells in protest; pounce on a child absorbed in play to embrace him; force a reluctant child to hug and kiss friends, relatives and even strangers in hellos and goodbyes. John Holt calls this behavior the "cuteness syndrome"; we force kisses and caresses on children because we find them so adorable and cute.
Children are not born disliking to be hugged. Such a response is conditioned into them by grown-ups who hold them too tightly or painfully, at the wrong times and in an annoying manner. To restore children's inborn delight in being touched, parents might post this reminder on a child's bedroom door: "Give us bouncing, not pouncing, tender touching, not tight touching" which also serves as a notice to friends and relatives addicted to "cuteness."
A rationalization of some parents who don't offer physical affection is that "it takes time. Who's got time to hug or touch everybody in the family every day?" Tactile expression of love requires no extra time; it is easily bestowed while other activities are going on. As you walk through the house and pass a family member, it doesn't take extra time to draw an affectionate hand across that person's shoulder. It does not take any more time to cup a child's or spouse's cheek in your hand for an instant as all of you are scattering for work and school in the morning than it does to speak the four words of the goodbye ritual, "Have a nice day." As you place a dish of food on the table with one hand, it takes no extra time to press with your other hand the back of the neck of someone seated at the table. It says, "I'm glad you're here. I'm happy to be providing you with food." There are many sweet ways to show what we mean to one another, without taking extra time to do so. Such small gestures carry large meanings.
Why don't American families take advantage of the "unbeatable attraction" of holding and touching? (When the wife of an American businessman who had lived in France returned to the United States, she was asked, "What was the single greatest difference you experienced in French life?" She answered, "The physical affection French families give each other.")
Our discomfort is a reflection of the still-powerful Puritan heritage that taught us to equate touching with sexuality. Our uneasiness creates distortions in the behavior of families. Living under the same roof, families go for years without ever making physical contact, except for special occasions like a wedding, when daughters might dance with fathers, sons with mothers, or brothers and sisters dance together--all of them doing so self-consciously.
The closeness most of us yearn for in family life is not sexual; it is not directed at eroticized parts. Families who are intimidated by the feel of one another's body bumps and bulges, breasts and genitals, would lose their inhibitions if they acknowledged, "Yes, occasionally we may have erotic feelings. They are a normal part of life. We have no intention of doing anything about them. So let's get on with feeling comfortable being close." In counseling I ask families how they feel about one another's bodies and whether their feelings keep them from physical closeness. They almost always say yes. I ask if they would like to stop fighting the battle of the bulges by embracing right then and there. They start laughing. Often, overcome by the unaccustomed intimacy, parents and children are moved to tears.
Our inhibition makes us a nation of "pelvicphobes," of relatives who greet each other A-frame style, clasping heads and chests, but from the waist down, standing with our bodies apart.
Families seeking psychological help say their most frequent problem is "inadequate communication." We fail because we are using only part of the equipment God gave us to convey our meanings--speech. We need to use another component of communication--the language of our tissues. Our skin, our body warmth, our physical beings speak a rich vocabulary; with it we can make each other feel protected, appreciated and needed; the vocabulary of our tissues can tell us that we are forgiven; it can comfort us; it makes us feel loved and understood.
A common experience, the daily homecoming, provides a good example of how our tissues can speak louder than our tongues. Many of us do not feel like talking the moment we come through the door. We may be exhausted from the pressures of the day. We need time to be quiet and recover from the sensory overload of the outside World. Family members misunderstand this need for quiet as indifference or lack of communication.
Touching is a fine alternative to silence or withdrawal. Tired people can acknowledge one another's presence by a greeting touch that speaks volumes. "Right now I'm over-peopled and talked out. I'll catch up with you when I'm rested." Most of us would be happy to get a squeeze of the hand, a kiss on the back of the neck, a touch around the waist, a tap on the arm. Wives who receive such homecoming strokes stop complaining that their husbands don't communicate. The husbands aren't talking more, they are touching more.
One of the major domestic problems of this nation is getting kids to put dirty socks and underwear in the hamper. Parents shout, punish, cajole, but nothing seems to work. A lot of energy can be saved and more positive attitudes produced if the parents put dirty underwear in the hamper themselves but establish a rule that each time they do it, they are entitled to a five-minute back rub from the child who plays litter-bug. Littered laundry, instead of an exchange of shouts and recriminations, sets off an exchange of kindnesses. A back rub will build more character than any number of pieces of underwear picked up and put in the hamper!
TOUCHING IN BUSINESS
This book began as a magazine article, which was reprinted in The Los Angeles Times, Sunday, November 27, 1977. The article opened with a report on a study at Purdue University in which librarians touched students who were returning books. The students were not aware that they had been touched, but later reported to researchers that they were having good feelings about themselves, the library and the clerks.
The owner of a chain of restaurants read The Times piece and decided, "I'm going to do that in my business." A year later I met him at a party. When he heard that I was the author of that article, he exclaimed joyously, "You don't know it, but you're helping my business to grow!" He told me that he instructs employees to lightly touch customers whenever it's appropriate--giving change, handing out or retrieving menus. While he has not conducted a formal study, he feels certain that the good feelings that customers have about his restaurants, as shown by repeat patronage and a growth in the chain, are partly the result of these pleasant touches.
Increasingly, business people are using the sense of touch to promote sales and to enhance customer relations.
Bell Telephone Systems has a television advertising campaign based on the catchy musical jingle, "Reach out and touch someone far away." That musical line keeps running round in my head--exactly the way Bell hoped it would! A Bell executive told me that these ads, "the most successful ever," have "great emotional appeal." Many people call to ask for the words to the song.
Esoterics Dry Skin Lotion, in a commercial, has a model saying, "I want to be touched, not just looked at." A model for Natural Wonder Cosmetics says, "Being close to people is important to me. So my makeup has to look ... and stay ... fresh and touchable."
Mail-order companies sell us tactile comfort with such items as "Worry Stones," smooth rocks over which we can run our thumbs and fingers to calm us when we are tense. Business journals advertise The Executive Sandbox, a decorative box in wood finishes to match desk decor, containing sand that an executive dribbles through his fingers as he talks on the telephone, dictates to a secretary, or sits ruminating.
For too many of us, a visit to a beauty parlor or barber shop is the only occasion for being touched by another. After reading my article on touch, a hairdresser in a small town in Idaho wrote to me:
"Sometimes when I arrive in the morning, a few elderly women are lined up outside my door looking as if they'd just come from a beauty parlor. Some come twice a week for shampoos and sets they don't need. I know they are there more for physical and human contact than for the hairdo. I feel sympathetic; I let the shampoo go on as I massage their scalps tenderly. I touch them frequently around the shoulders. When I finish combing them out, I give them a light squeeze on the back of the neck."
TOUCHING OURSELVES
In your mind's eye, get a mental image of what you do with your body when you are upset. What are your "stress gestures"? Do you play with your chin? Pull at an ear lobe? Stroke your beard or tug at your mustache? Chew on a fingernail? Do you rub fingers back and forth across a necklace, push and pull a bracelet up and down your wrist and forearm, twirl a button on your jacket, pick lint from your clothes, wipe and wipe and wipe your eyeglasses, pat the back of your head, rub your forehead?
These are typical outlets for tension; we are often not aware that we are doing them. No matter how calm we may think our outward appearance is, we show our inner turmoil by such self-touches. They may be saying, "I'm insecure. I'm uncomfortable. I'm feeling inadequate. I'm irritated. I'm bored. I'm impatient. I'm angry." I wince now, as I remember an early occasion when, as a public speaker, I spent an evening nervously pushing up my eyeglasses to the exhaustion and irritation, I am sure, of the audience.
Our self-touches are of two types--voluntary and involuntary. We choose whether to engage in a voluntary touch, such as applying makeup, smoothing creams and lotions on to our bodies, adjusting our clothes, relaxing parts of our bodies by self-massages, and so on. At this instant I am resting my head on my left hand while my bent left elbow is resting on my desk, my left hand is massaging the back of my neck, and my right hand is writing this sentence. By holding myself this way, I am supporting tired neck muscles as I bend over my work.
Unrefined though it may seem, we even find pleasure in cleaning out debris from our noses, a practice which society frowns upon, at least in public. But our social attitudes toward nose-picking may yet change. Matt Thomas, a teacher of self-defense, goes to colleges to teach women how to ward off would-be attackers or rapists. He advises them that in some situations they should pick their noses. In the Los Angeles Times, a Stanford University coed reported that it worked. While waiting alone at a deserted bus stop at night she was approached by two men. Quickly she began picking her nose. The pair looked disgusted and left.
I decided to try this. As I was driving home alone late one night, a car drew up next to mine at a stoplight on a lonely street. The driver looked over flirtatiously at me. Instantly, I stuck my finger up my nose. The driver, probably revolted, roared off in disgust, and I doubled over with laughter!
TOUCHING FRIENDS
During intermission at a dance recital at UCLA, a friend and I observed the physical contact among friends. Several hundred people stood talking in clusters of two, three, or more, on steps, walkways and the lawn. Astonishingly, in that throng, exactly two groups were touching. A little girl stood with her back snuggled up to a woman's front and the woman, presumably her mother, held the child close with both arms. On the steps a young woman playfully leaned against the back of her escort, with her arms around his shoulders, as he stood on the step below her.
All the others stood at right angles to one another, not looking at one another, making no physical contact, talking into the air. No wonder that we are described as an alienated society! Psychologist Sidney Jourard studied touch among Europeans by sitting in sidewalk cafs and other public places, clocking the number of times friends touched while talking. He reported an average of one hundred touches per hour. After a similar study in the United States, he reported that American friends touched two to three times an hour.
It is ironic. We go to great lengths to show friends we care about them. We send them flowery sentimental greeting cards or write loving letters. We invite them to dinner and devote exquisite care to the food we serve, the dessert we create, the beauty of the table setting, etc. We buy them presents that sometimes cost more than we can afford. We jubilantly share good news and console one another over bad news. We feel joy at the sight of them, especially when we haven't seen them for a while. But we don't touch them.
If, like most of us, you have been holding back because of embarrassment or shyness, when your natural instincts are to embrace and touch friends, how do you free yourself so that you can enjoy the benefits and taste the delicious "flavors" of touch? Here is a step-by-step primer designed to condition you gradually to the agreeable feelings that God meant you to have, instead of the anxious feelings that society conditioned into you. You will literally be making new recordings on your nervous system to help you feel good about touch.
1. Discuss this with friends whom you want to touch.
2. When you are sitting and talking, touch a friend often with a slight pressure on the forearm, upper arm or shoulder.
3. When you are walking, put your arm through a friend's arm or draw her hand under your arm. Hold your arm-in-arm posture a short while, but not so long that it becomes tiring.
4. When a friend appears tired, say so in a nurturing tone of voice and rub his or her upper shoulders, neck and back. Just do it; don't ask, "Would you like me to rub your back?" People sometimes want it and say no out of embarrassment.
5. On an appropriate occasion, put your arm around a friend's waist and walk a while that way. Don't keep your arm there so long that it begins to weigh heavily on your friend's back.
6. On a stroll take a friend's hand and hold it for a little while.
7. Sitting at a table after a meal, dawdling over coffee or dessert, take your friend's hand and hold it a short while.
8. Remember this Nigerian proverb: Hold a true friend with both your hands.
*
THE HEALING POWER OF TOUCH--From Total Health, June, 1990 By Victor M. Parachin
Recently, a 40-year-old man was hospitalized for treatment of advanced leukemia. Because he was receiving massive doses of chemotherapy he had to be put in quarantine for fear that even catching a common cold from family or friends could be potentially lethal.
While in isolation his family could come no closer than his door and then had to stand there separated from him with masks covering their mouths. The only person allowed to touch the patient was a nurse who had been specially cleared as being in good health.
Here is how the patient described the experience of isolation.
"This nurse changed my bedding and kept me clean and all that. But she hated to touch me, or at least it felt that way. Whatever she was doing she did with as little physical contact as possible. I wish I could have told her how important touch was. I craved the feeling of flesh on flesh. I craved it! It wasn't a sexual thing--in my condition it was the last thing on my mind--but I really felt I was losing my will to live without that touch. I mean, I still wanted to live, to get better, but the reason to keep struggling was slipping away from me. I needed the feeling of someone's skin on mine to help me find it again."
The lesson in that experience is this: Touching eases pain, lessens anxiety, softens the blows of life, generates hope and has the power to heal. Those are all factors which mothers have known intuitively.
The Christian practice of laying on of hands is well-known. And today modern psychology and medicine are confirming what Christians and mothers across the centuries have always known, namely, the healing power of touch.
Various studies and experiments show that the simple act of reaching out and touching another person frequently results in physical benefits such as slowing the heart rate, dropping blood pressure and speeding recovery from illness.
For example, Dr. James Lynch, professor at Baltimore's University of Maryland School of Medicine conducts extensive studies on touch and its impact upon the body. His conclusion: "Physical contact has very dramatic effects upon psychological health. It lowers blood pressure. It relaxes you."
In fact, Dr. Lynch conducted an "informal" experiment in his own home. It involved his young daughter and a group of her friends. He placed a blood pressure machine on each of the children and then observed the normal fluctuation of their blood pressure as they sat and talked.
However, when the family dog walked into the room and the girls began to touch the dog, the blood pressure went down in every child. Dr. Lynch observed that along with stroking the pet, the very way they spoke changed as each word was filled with love and affection. In touching and soothing the animal, the children were soothing themselves as well.
In addition, researchers like Dr. Lynch also believe that the benefits of touching are not only physical but psychological and emotional as well.
Stephen Thayer, professor of psychology at the City University of New York, citing various studies, states that "people who are more comfortable with touch are less afraid and suspicious of other people's motives and intentions and have less anxiety and tension in their everyday lives."
Another experiment among nearly 4,000 students at San Diego State University revealed that people who were less comfortable about touching also had difficulty communicating and showed they had a lower sense of self-esteem.
Yet another experiment, this one conducted in restaurants, demonstrated that a fleeting touch actually paid off in hard cash. Waitresses who touched their customers on the hand or shoulder as they returned change received larger tips.
Even earlier research conducted 40 years ago determined that newborns needed handling and touch in order to survive physically. It was discovered that babies who were institutionalized and otherwise well provided for, but who were seldom held and touched, developed an infant depression which led to withdrawal and apathy. Some infants even wasted away, refused to eat and died of malnutrition.
The bottom line is that touching is good for everyone. One touch can soothe, comfort and convey caring in a way that words never can. But what about the many people who simply want to reach out and touch but are uncomfortable with touch? The good news is that anyone can cultivate the ability to touch and be comfortable with touch.
Here are four suggestions for putting a "touch tone" into your life, commonly called the 4 C's for increasing contact: Commit, communicate, connect and comfort.
1. Commit yourself to increasing touch daily. This means simply taking advantage of opportunities which exist. For example, kiss your spouse when leaving for work, embrace your friends when greeting them, hug your children when they return from school, hold hands with your spouse when together. Rather than having children sit beside you when you read a story, have them sit in your lap. In fact, one of the "secrets" enjoyed by almost every strong family unit is their high level of touching and intimacy.
One husband and wife describing an important daily event which strengthens their family shares this: "Each night we go into the children's bedrooms and give each a big hug and kiss. Then we say, `You are really good kids and we love you very much.' We think it's important to leave that message with them at the end of the day."
2. Communicate your need and desire to have more physical contact. Do not assume that others will always sense what you need. Family and friends should not be expected to read minds. The best way to get what you want is to speak up. Ask for a hug. Tell someone, "You deserve a hug for that!"
Here is a lesson from a 4-year-old girl who had a favourite story and requested her father to read it night after night. Her father, weary of reading the same story each evening, tape-recorded it, teaching his little girl how to turn the machine on and off, including playback.
He was pleased with himself and this worked, but only for a few nights, then his daughter asked him to read the story again. Her father said, "Now, Janie, you know how to use the tape recorder." To which she responded, "Yes, but I can't sit on its lap."
3. Connect yourself to others by reaching out and touching them. The best way to be touched is to touch. In 1976, James C. Gardner, then the Mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana, was scheduled to deliver the commencement address at Louisiana State University. He delivered the speech while in a state of shock. Earlier that day a doctor's yearly physical on his wife revealed she had a terminal condition.
When the commencement exercise was completed, Mayor Gardner turned to the Rabbi who had delivered the invocation and began to cry. As he shared with the Rabbi what he and his wife learned that afternoon, the Rabbi simply placed his hand upon the mayor's shoulder. Here is how Mayor Gardner remembers that moment and the impact it had upon his life since:
"I do not know what he (the Rabbi) said; it was not important. What was important was that he let me know he cared. In the months that followed I learned the importance of being cared for and, in that learning, became a more caring person myself. Ten years ago I was not a `toucher.' Today I can hug, put an arm around a shoulder and hold a hand with ease because I have learned that touching is such an important element in the expression of caring."
4. Comfort with a touch. When a friend shares some sad or bad news with you, reach out and touch. Words can fail and verbal communication can be ineffective. One touch can "speak" volumes and convey your love, acceptance and support.
A woman who had been recently widowed tells of being overcome with grief at a Christmas Eve service following her husband's death. Sitting next to her was a 10-year-old girl who noticed the woman's tears. The grieving woman tells what happened next.
"I felt my little neighbour's small hand creep up into my lap. She took my hand and gave it a comforting squeeze. My heart swelled."
Everyone should remember hands were designed to do many different tasks. One of the best uses is to convey love, warmth, caring, understanding and acceptance. So, reach out and touch someone--it's healthy!
*
CURE ALL WITH A CUDDLE--Love Could Be the Key to Good Health--By Denise Winn
Go on ... give your partner a cuddle. It will do you no end of good. That's the sort of message that millions of Americans will soon see splashed across screens, billboards, shopping bags and stickers.
It is part of a nationwide mental health campaign designed to show that being warm and caring and close to others is the surest way to a long and healthy life. And it is a message that many English doctors are also keen to get across.
"Modern medicine has forgotten about the power of love," says Dr. Marsden Wagner, of the World Health Organisation. But now scientists all across the World are re-discovering it.
In Israel, researchers spent 5 years studying 10,000 men to see who developed the heart disorder angina and why. Those who fell ill, they found, had one thing in common: They said their wives didn't openly show them affection.
In California, doctors kept tabs on the whole population of one county to try to discover what prevents people from getting sick. The key to good health, they found, isn't daily jogging, aerobic workouts or avoiding fried foods. The secret is having good close friends and loving partners.
Researchers at Harvard Medical School have now found that when we care for someone who is ill--or are ourselves cared for--there is a sharp increase in our blood of a chemical which helps fight off illness. And a little bit of healthy cuddling even makes people recover more quickly from operations.
In an experiment to test this theory, all the patients in one hospital for the same surgery received a routine visit from the anaesthetist the night before their operations.
With some he asked his routine questions while standing up, but with the rest, he sat on their beds and held their hands as he spoke. Result: The ones who received the personal touch felt far less post-operative pain and were ready for discharge from the hospital at least 3 days earlier than the rest.
Happy family ties are a health bonus too. "A lot of mental and physical illness is directly linked to tensions within a family," says London psychiatrist Dr. Joseph Berke.
Some British heart specialists now believe that lack of love is a bigger "risk factor" in cardiac disease than obesity and smoking. Cancer specialist Dr. Jan de Winter, who runs a Brighton clinic, thinks so too. "Our outlook on life controls the way our body defenses work. And there is no doubt they work best when we are happy and loved," he says.
The prescription for a healthier life that America will be promoting in its campaign is simple:
* Be open with people.
* Don't shut yourself off through shyness.
* Show affection and don't be afraid to touch the people around you.
* Don't bottle up resentments.
* If you have problems, share them.
*
CUDDLING COMES EASY--A Dad Discovers the Sensory Side of Fatherhood.--From Parents' Magazine, May, 1990, by Skip Rozin
About a week before our first child was born, yet another friend asked if I wanted a girl or a boy. As I explained again that the baby's sex made absolutely no difference to me, I suddenly realized I did have a preference. I wanted a girl. I even knew why: Hugging and kissing a daughter would feel perfectly natural; I feared I might be inhibited if we had a son.
Cuddling was one of the things I most looked forward to as a father, probably because I had known so little of it as a child. Not that we were a cold family, only reserved. My parents loved me--they were supportive, kind, and patient--but I needed more.
Love was given freely and openly when I was ill. The most minor illness brought my mother or father to my bedside, to read to me or, best of all, to rub my head. Just the touch of my father's hand on my forehead brought instant relief.
Physical expressions of affection had specific boundaries. For example, I could kiss my mother--though it was really only appropriate at bedtime--but my father was more inaccessible. Hello and goodbye were communicated through handshakes. By the age of seven, I knew something was missing. But I'd also learned to take what I could.
Years later, when my father contracted cancer and I was the one giving comfort, we embraced often. I was even able to kiss his cheek, though he never kissed me. He just couldn't. I recall the first time I reached for him how he stiffened. It took eighteen months for him to take it without wincing.
Would my father have been more affectionate with a daughter? I think so. And I feared I might repeat his pattern. So having a girl would make my life easier. As it turned out, we did have a girl, and cuddling came easy. Rebecca was a baby who loved to be held--and touched and tickled and kissed.
We began early. She had terrible colic, so sometimes I would put her in her carrier and walk with her through our neighborhood late into the winter night. I loved to feel her under my coat, her hands clinging to my sides, her head against my chest.
By the time Rebecca was almost a year old, she was able to tell us when and how she needed comforting. She would take my hand and hug it or climb onto the couch while I was reading and place my hand on the back of her neck, where I sometimes rubbed. And each gesture drew me closer to her.
As a toddler, when taking a break from the swings or the sandbox, she often climbed onto my lap to have her juice, holding her thermos and straw with one hand and rubbing my ear with the other.
By the time she was three, Rebecca was even more direct. Tired from an outing at the park or library, or a hard day at nursery school, she might tug at my pants leg and ask, "Daddy, can we cuddle?" I was always eager to comply. At other times, settled on my lap, just off to one side so I could read to her, Rebecca would fit herself tightly into the crook of my arm, her head flopped sleepily against my shoulder.
I marveled at how these seemingly insignificant moments affected me. I felt happy in a way that was once reserved for important events, for achievements long sought. But now the feeling was routine--and reliable.
Soon after learning that Julie and I were going to have a second child, we were told she was actually carrying triplets--a girl and two boys. Few people are ready for that kind of surprise! But my three years with Rebecca made the prospect less terrifying. Even my fears about expressing affection to sons vanished.
I remember one morning when I found the six-month-old triplets in the nursery all sitting up, looking and smiling at me. How extraordinary! I lay down beside Jacob. He was the largest of the three at birth and the last to crawl. He was also the most affectionate; he leaned over and threw his arms around my head.
Alexandra, the most active, scooted across the floor and onto my stomach. By then Matthew had lunged against my side and was pulling himself up to my chest.
I lay flat on my back, as still as I could. They crawled on me. They tried to stand on me. They pinched my face and pulled my hair and poked their little fingers into my stomach, all the time cooing and laughing, playing Lilliputians to my Gulliver. And I loved it. Rebecca had taught well!
*
TOUCHING, THE LANGUAGE OF LOVE--From Redbook, June, 1990--By Lesley Dormen
Touch--reassuring or passionate, lingering or frantic--is the language of love. According to David Schnarch, Ph.D., director of marital and sexual health at the Westbank Center for Psychotherapy in New Orleans, it is through touch that a couple communicates the entire range of their individual emotions.
Several years ago syndicated columnist Ann Landers asked her female readers, "Would you be content to be held close and treated tenderly and forget about `the act'?" Out of the more than 90,000 readers who responded, 72 percent (40 percent of them under age 40) said yes. The yearning for all-over body touching that's not necessarily sexual is a basic ingredient of physical intimacy for women and one that many find they have to teach their husbands to both give and get.
Thirty-two-year-old Marianna says that she and her husband Jake came to each other with very different ideas about touch. "For Jake, tender hugs and caresses always led to sex. Lots of times I'd make love because it was the only way I'd get the kind of contact I really wanted. Finally I learned to say, `Sweetie, right now I just need to be hugged and held. Later on maybe I'll be more in the mood for sex.' When the mood is right, lots of hugging and caressing and fondling is as thrilling and erotic for me as intercourse is. When we touch each other that way, it feels like we're seducing each other again for the first time."
What's truly vital for Marianna and other women is the powerful emotional connection that touch has the potential to convey, turning a couple's sexual exchange into a mutual courtship in miniature. The wooing and seduction implicit in a partner's patient, loving touch combine the emotional and the erotic aspects of lovemaking--a combination that, for many women, is often a requisite for orgasm.
It's not that men don't appreciate a lingering, loving touch. As psychotherapist Lillian B. Rubin, Ph.D., explains in Intimate Strangers: Men and Women Together, "It's true that men also speak of the need to be held and hugged. But hugging is seldom an end to be desired in and for itself. In fact, it's one of the most common complaints among women that, even in the context of a stable relationship, such tender physical contact from a male becomes too quickly transformed into a prelude to sex."
Why do women and men touch--and respond to touch--so differently? We both need touch to begin with. Writer and sex counselor Michael Castleman, author of Sexual Solutions: A Guide for Men and the Women Who Love Them, explains that touch is the "mother of all senses," the first to develop and the only one humans can't live without. "Infants born blind and deaf can develop normally," says Castleman, "but those deprived of human touch may die." Despite being born with this common need, boys and girls soon begin to invest touch with dramatically different meanings.
As Castleman points out, "Girls are allowed to hug and kiss one another, but society says boys must limit their touching to back-slapping, roughhousing and contact sports. Girls learn that touching another person is all right but that sexual sharing is discouraged, if not forbidden. Boys learn that touching is `sissy' unless it leads to sexual conquest." Since men are often taught to confine their affection to sex, they need to feel freer to express a little tender, loving affection without feeling obliged to "go all the way."
*
TENDER LOVING CARE--From Prevention, by John Yates
Studies have shown that the more contact a mother and a child have with each other after birth, the stronger the ties between them seem to be. Hospitals routinely present the new mother with her baby for only a short time after delivery, before the child is whisked off to the nursery. It's hygienic, mechanical birth for a hygienic, mechanical age.
When departures are made from this sterile routine, the results are significant. In one early study, mothers and babies who received routine treatment were compared with mothers who were given an hour of skin-to-skin contact with their babies at birth and 5 hours of extra contact each day they were in the hospital. At one month after birth, the mothers who had extra contact with their babies showed much more affectionate behaviour toward their babies, and were more likely to look into their eyes. At one year, the extra-contact mothers spent more time at their children's side during a visit to the doctor, and more time soothing their children if they cried during the examination. At two years, these mothers used fewer commands and more questions when talking to their children. At five years, their children had higher IQs and scored better on language tests than the children who had routine births.
The French obstetrician Frederick Leboyer developed a system of birth to eliminate the gleaming-porcelain, bright-lights, slap-on-the-rump shock tactics of most hospital delivery teams. Leboyer birth takes place in a silent, darkened room. The baby rests quietly on his mother's stomach after birth, still attached to her by the umbilical cord, and is gently touched or stroked for 4 or 5 minutes. The umbilical cord is cut only after it has stopped pulsing, and the baby is then immersed in a warm-water bath.
Again, the benefits of touching at birth are evident in later years. Leboyer babies observed in France at ages one, two and three showed advanced psychomotor development. They were particularly adroit with both hands, started walking earlier, and had less trouble with toilet training.
Dr. Leboyer believes that touching between mother and child continues to be important after birth. He recommends to Western mothers techniques of infant massage he observed in India. "The massage involves stimulating and touching the infant with a gentle, firm, slow stroke from the head to the toes, with special attention given to the spine."
Infants should not be massaged until after they are one month old, but there are really no limits on how long the daily routine should continue. Why ever stop something so pleasurable? If it's good for adults, it's good for children.
Unfortunately, most people are not convinced that touching really is good for adults.
"Our culture is just out of touch," a psychologist told Prevention. "There are other countries with the same problem, such as the Scandinavian nations, Germany, America, but in the majority of the World, touching is much more frequent. And it's universal in youngsters, no matter what the culture.
"Touching encourages social relations. It is reassuring. It is stress-reducing."
*
'Tis the human touch in this world that counts,
The touch of your hand and mine,
Which means far more to the fainting heart
Than shelter and bread and wine;
For shelter is gone when the night is o'er,
And bread lasts only a day,
But the touch of the hand and the sound of
the voice
Sing on in the soul alway.
--Spencer Michael Free
Text boxes:
Four Hugs a Day Shoo Blues Away
Toronto (UPI) -- Four hugs a day will help you survive the blues, but a dozen is better, says a social scientist.
Dr. Virginia Satir, speaking to the annual meeting of the American Orthopsychiatric Association, told some 4,000 delegates that more touching would make people happier.
Dr. Satir, who says her "contact" philosophy labelled her a "freak" some 30 years ago, told reporters that four daily hugs were necessary for survival, eight were good for maintenance, and 12 for growth.
"Our pores are places for messages of love," said Dr. Satir, a therapist, author and social worker. "Being able to have physical contact is very important."
The doctor, who has done consulting work for the U.S. Army and universities, says North Americans fall short in bodily contacts. "Most touching done in this country is done on the football field."
From Raising Positive Kids in a Negative World, by Zig Ziglar. (Great Britain: Highland Books, 1985)
Probably the most misunderstood area for most parents, particularly fathers, centers on the amount of affection they should give their children. I cannot begin to tell you the number of men and women, 40, 50 and 60 years old, who have told me during the course of our "Born to Win" Seminars that they cannot ever remember their parents telling them they loved them, and hugging and kissing them, even when they were children. Tragically, this often means that these people are not showing love and affection with their own children and grandchildren, and this is a sad situation.
Fortunately the no-hugging chain can be broken. Although they were never hugged and kissed, many parents recognise the void it created in their own lives, and consequently, they've determined to break that chain. Slowly but surely many of them are now learning to show affection and appreciation for their children. It is something that certainly can be learned.
The Power of Touching
From Contact: The First Four Minutes, by Leonard Zunin, M.D., with Natalie Zunin. (New York: Ballantine Books, 1972)
Every time you pat someone on the arm or shoulder, you are sending a psychic message such as "I like you," "I agree with what you're saying," "You have done well," or "All is well; don't worry." If you back off from someone's touch, the hands-off gesture is as strong as any words. Touching can be intimate, and sexy as well. But in initial contact, in the four minutes when friends or strangers exchange greetings, the power of touching is dynamic.
In various cultures, writer Laura Cunningham points out, attitudes towards touching are strikingly different. She notes that Florida University psychologist Sidney Jourard observed couples sitting at cafs in four cities. In Paris the average couple came into physical contact 110 times during an hour (and they were just having a conversation!) In San Juan, Puerto Rico, couples patted, tickled and caressed 180 times during the same interval; but the typical London couple never touched at all, and Americans studied patted once or twice in an hour's conversation.
Touch will bring you closer (physically and emotionally), so loosen up, warm up, touch more, try not to shrink back. Most important, don't wait for people to approach you. The power of touch lies in its being generously proffered--be the first to offer contact and you'll not often be rejected.... Touch, after all, is the most intimate of the senses. Use it to your advantage! It isn't enough to look, sound, and smell nice. The most powerful impressions you make will be by touch.
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