HEALING POWER OF TOUCH

People brought to Him all those who were sick and begged him 

that they might touch only the tassel on His cloak, 

and as many as touched it were healed. 

MATTHEW 14:35-36

POWER OF TOUCH

Touch is the first sense we acquire and the secret weapon in many a successful relationship. Here's how to regain fluency in your first language.

Probing our ability to communicate nonverbally is hardly a new psychological tack; researchers have long documented the complex emotions and desires that our posture, motions, and expressions reveal. Yet until recently, the idea that people can impart and interpret emotional content via another nonverbal modality—touch—seemed iffy, even to researchers, such as DePauw University psychologist Matthew Hertenstein, who study it.

In 2009, he demonstrated that we have an innate ability to decode emotions via touch alone. In a series of studies, Hertenstein had volunteers attempt to communicate a list of emotions to a blindfolded stranger solely through touch. Many participants were apprehensive about the experiment. "This is a touch-phobic society," he says. "We're not used to touching strangers, or even our friends, necessarily."

But touch they did—it was, after all, for science. The results suggest that for all our caution about touching, we come equipped with an ability to send and receive emotional signals solely by doing so. Participants communicated eight distinct emotions—anger, fear, disgust, love, gratitude, sympathy, happiness, and sadness—with accuracy rates as high as 78 percent. "I was surprised," Hertenstein admits. "I thought the accuracy would be at chance level," about 25 percent. By Rick Chillot, psychologytoday.com

We need touch. We need the comfort, the connection the security and the powerful emotional and physical health benefits that come by being touched in safe and appropriate ways. An abundance of research has found that the benefits of touch don’t stop at the people we feel safe folding into. Less than one second of safe, interpersonal touch, such as a hand to the back or the shoulder can influence health and behaviour in remarkable ways.  Posted by Karen Young, heysigmund.com

What is the power of touch?

•  Newborns that are given nurturing touch grow faster and have more improved mental and motor skill development.
• Children raised with more physical interaction tended to be less aggressive and violent.
• Partners who cuddle have been shown to have lower stress levels and blood pressure and improved immune function.
• Elderly people who receive the soothing, affirming experience of touch have been shown to better handle the process of aging and passing with dignity.

From the moment we are born to the final days of our lives, touch acts as a central aspect of the human experience — impacting our physical, mental and emotional health, and quite literally shaping the way we go through our lives. Posted by: Kerry Song, Robbins Research International



Published:

August 07, 2018, 7:56 AM
September 12, 2017, 5:48 AM