The greatest sense in our body is our touch sense. It is probably the chief sense in the processes of sleeping and waking; it gives us our knowledge of depth or thickness and form; we feel, we love and hate, are touchy and are touched, through the touch corpuscles of our skin.
The Alchemy of Touch: An Introduction
Touch – the “miracle” elixir since the beginning of time! Touch engages the essence of human potential. Over the centuries, compassionate touch has been used as a poultice for the ailing, as the silent bridge between living and dying, for birthing and heartbreak, for warfare and peace. Through physical touch, we come into relationship and contact with another, with our environment, and with the possibility of a transformational exchange. I imagine the goddesses imparting their wisdom of the twinning of heart and hand through the dreams of Asclepius, one of the earliest Greek healers renowned for his often mystical abilities. Even as we hold an awareness of coming into contact with another, touch is happening across the expanse of space.
The beneficial effects of touch have been confirmed through observation and research. Given consistent, kind and soothing contact, infants flourish. These studies highlight the findings of Harry Harlow and his work with rhesus monkeys at his University of Wisconsin lab. Consistent and gentle contact promotes social and cognitive development. A failure to thrive observed among isolation-reared monkeys, as well as adults exhibiting pathological violence, can be traced to sparsely given or non-existent contact. Amazingly, Harlow’s monkeys survived even if their “nurturing other” was in the form of a rug-covered, wire mannequin.
Ashely Montague, author of the groundbreaking book Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin, enlightened Western culture about the essential life-sustaining and nourishing physiology of touch. Asclepius, Harlow, Montague, and others realized the fundamental need to touch and be touched.
Groundbreaking research in neuroscience is radically shifting our understanding of the dynamics of the therapeutic relationship. All of this vitally novel information expands the fundamentals of therapeutic touch. Touch is a perceptual gestalt. It is an invitation to experience a two-way relationship. The practitioner cultivates an awareness of self as he comes into relationship with a client. This subjective exchange between the practitioner and the client challenges the belief that the practitioner is the “doer” or “fixer” who remains untouched in the process, and the feedback loop created between them is a form of communication. This two-way exchange requires that the therapist stay connected with himself even as he “opens” to the client’s system. Perceptual acuity is heightened by a receptive state of mind. The intertwining of the senses (synesthesia) allows the practitioner to “see-feel” and be guided to the quality and depth of contact necessary for this individual at this particular time.
‘The diversity of my sensory systems, and their spontaneous convergence in the things that I encounter, ensures this inter-penetration or interweaving between my body and other bodies – this magical participation that permits me, at times to feel what others feel. The gestures of another being, the rhythm of its voice, and the stiffness or bounce in its spine, all gradually draw my senses into a unique relation with one another, into a coherent, if shifting, organization. And the more I linger with this other entity, the more coherent the relation becomes, and hence the more completely I find myself face-to-face with another intelligence, another center of experience.’
David Abram(2)
The aware practitioner opens to contact as a two-way sensory exchange which is not a “merging.” This potential for exchange offers a nonverbal yet profound way of coming into relationship with another in a transformational and therapeutic context. This article explores the perceptual and neurobiological underpinnings of a receptive, listening, and omnidimensional touch and offers somatic explorations designed to deepen this inquiry.
‘There is but one temple in the universe, and that is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier than that high form. Bending before man is a reverence done to this Revelation in the Flesh. We touch heaven when we lay our hands on a human body.’
Novalis(3)
To Touch and Be Touched
Touch is called the mother of all senses.(4) Before the eyes see or ears hear, touch stirs the embryo. Implantation nestles the fertilized egg into a receptive uterine wall continuing its process of growth and differentiation. From the very beginning, the uterine lacunae nourish the embryonic seed. Within three weeks’ time, the primitive node ignites a midline through vibrating protoplasm traversing toward the future brain. Three embryonic(5) germ layers (ectoderm, endoderm, and mesoderm) unfold carrying the informative mapping, out of which all function and form arises. The outermost layer of the embryo is the skin, which is the largest sensory organ. This tactile system is the earliest function in all living things.
Our skin, as the caparison of flesh, is intimately connected to the brain and its nervous system trailings. In fact, the nervous system, brain, and skin arise from the same germ layer: the ectoderm. The ectoderm covers the general surface of the embryonic body and is the seeding ground for hair, teeth, nails, and the sense organs of smell, taste, hearing, vision and touch. The earlier a function develops, the more fundamental it is likely to be within the organism.
As the science of embryology and pre and perinatal psychology integrate with neuroscience, an understanding of the practitioner-client dynamic emerges as key in the therapeutic relationship. Central to this relationship dynamic is the kinesthetic awareness that as we touch another, we are also touched by the other. Through the complex neural circuitry inherent in a therapeutic context, transformation of both practitioner and client is possible.
In other words, my subjective state as practitioner guides my work. In an empathic exchange, the feeling-sense that flows through me informs me of the state of the individual I am working with. It is literally impossible to keep the “other” out. I am touched as I touch.
Daniel Siegel, M.D., author and neuroscience researcher, describes the importance of “contingent” communication. Contingent communication between infant and primary caregiver fulfills the universal need to have our signals perceived by another and responded to in a meaningful way.(6) However, our need for meaningful contact does not stop at infancy or childhood. Take a moment to consider that in order to make contact that is meaningful to a client’s system, a practitioner opens herself to receiving the nonverbal somatic signals from her client. As the practitioner listens through her hands and heart to this somatic communication, her touch informs the client’s system that he/she is truly being listened to. Historically, touch is considered to be one directional – I touch you and you feel better. Contacting with awareness is a two-way communication whether it is through words or through the receptive hearing of the “heart within our hands.”
‘We are well enough aware that some skill, some ability, usually predominates in the character of each human being. This leads necessarily to one-sided thinking. Since man knows the world only through himself, and thus has the naïve arrogance to believe that the world is constructed by him and for his sake, it follows that he puts his special skills in the foreground, while seeking to reject those he lacks, to banish them from his totality. As a correction, he needs to develop all the manifestations of human character – sensuality and reason, imagination and common sense – into a coherent whole, no matter which quality predominates in him. If he fails to do so, he will labor under painful limitations, without ever understanding why he has so many stubborn enemies, why even he meets himself as an enemy.’
Goethe(7)
The Embryonic Connection: Heart, Hands, and Brain
Through the mysterious unfolding of the embryo, arm buds emerge by day twenty-four.(8) The “flippers” initially surround the developing embryonic heart, like guardian protectors of a temple. The limb buds emerge from a primordial and fertile ground just lateral to the developing heart. Curiously, the developing brain is also growing and expanding nearby. (Keep in mind that we are speaking of the dynamic growth of something roughly the size of a garden pea.)
Ectoderm, the precursor of nerve tissue, and mesoderm, the precursor of heart, blood, and bone, “grow” the embryonic limb buds. Eventually these buds differentiate into fingers, hands, arm bones, tissues, and joints with remarkable sensory potential and nervous tissue refinement. The circulatory system, with its miles of vessels, weaves through the arms like nourishing roots transporting blood-rich oxygen or removing waste. As these vessels flow through embryonic arms, a bridling effect occurs. The rapidly enlarging brain pulls on the vessels below. Consequently, the reigning-in of the slower growing circulatory system forms the elbow joint within the embryonic arm.
Together, heart, hand, and brain form a collaborative potential capable of perceiving the subtleties of the intelligence we touch. As these portals of communication open, listening to and receiving the informational flow of the body, the edges of perceptual knowing expand. By cultivating the sensory experience of the “heart within my hand” or the “vision within my touch,” one broadens the vocabulary that is spoken between oneself and another. The informational flow transmitted by patterns, images, textures, stillness, and movement inform and expand this nonverbal conversation between self and other. The science of embryology and the neurobiology of relationship inform our ability to listen and respond to the information streaming from the intelligent systems of our clients. With this embryological development in mind, try ‘Perceptual Inquiry: The “Heart Within Your Hand”’.
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The Art of Dialogue
Recall a time when you felt listened to by a friend. What were the qualities of that conversation? Did the feeling-sense of yourself, your situation, or your friend shift as you experienced yourself being heard? Neuroscience research informs us that infants thrive when their communication is understood and responded to in an appropriate manner.(10) Unfortunately, it is rare that we experience being heard by someone who is not judging, interpreting, intending, wanting to change something, or busy doing any number of activities while “listening” to us. It is rare that our words, the tonal quality of our voice, and the feeling sense of our expression are received in their fullest. When we come into touch-contact with the intention of “hearing” an individual, our hands transmit a different quality of engagement. This is communication. It is dialogue as real, “contact-full” and receptive as any verbal exchange. Touch is dialogue between practitioner and client in which the felt-sense of welcoming receptivity is the baseline of communication.
Between 1985-1991, David Bohm, a leading quantum physicist and thinker, wrote about the impact of true dialogue. With a little modification, we can take his description of suspension and apply it to a practitioner’s awareness of coming into contact, even before physical touch is made. Even the movement toward making contact is a form of touch and elicits responsiveness in both practitioner and client. This is touch and stirs the neuroreceptors below conscious awareness.
Suspension is a pause from thought, impulses, judgments, etc. and lies at the heart of Bohm’s discourses on the dynamic of dialogue. He writes that suspension is not easily grasped because it is both unfamiliar and subtle.(11) Our brains are designed to make judgment, discernments, discriminating choices, etc. It is not that this activity ceases; it is just that we begin to be mindful of that neurological tendency and suspend engagement with it in a moment(s) in time. Now explore relationship through ‘Perceptual Inquiry: The Art of Coming into Relationship’.
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Reciprocal Touch
How does the client-practitioner dynamic shift if I allow myself “to be touched” by the individual I am touching? What happens to your “sense-abilities” if you open to the inherent intelligence of a living dynamic system? Habitual patterns of working, thinking, and perceiving chain us to familiar guideposts. “Sense-uality” dulls and your perceiving kinesphere shrinks. Suddenly a dynamic system becomes one that is thick, dense and seemingly unresponsive. If you are able to suspend your agenda (even for ten minutes) and allow yourself the time to settle with the intention of coming into a reciprocal contact with another, a doorway of potential opens. Taking the necessary time to come into relationship with another through touch delivers a qualitatively different contact and relational dynamic. Explore this through ‘Perceptual Inquiry: Cultivating a Receptive Touch’.
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Touching the Matrix: Automatic Shifting
What does it take “to be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception”?(12) How do we open to a spacious contact, touching the whole rather than a part? How can we cultivate our touch to perceive the whole and simultaneously listen to the specific? How do we cultivate our touch to receive contact rather than only give input? See what answers come through doing the exercise ‘Perceptual Inquiry: Omnidimensional Touch’.
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A Summary
Sensing the dimensionality and complexity of living systems requires that the practitioner “get out of her own way.” Our hands and our bodies interface with complex, self-organizing and intelligent systems in every session. We glimpse this inherent intelligence when we invite receptive and responsive touch. Think of your body as an activity of perceiving. As I cultivate a perceptual attitude of receptivity, I am touched by the world and individuals I come into relationship with. If I can learn to patiently listen first, instead of imposing an idea (true or not) about what I might imagine the other’s system needs, I might be able to hear-see-feel the nonverbal communications his body intelligence speaks. My perceptual body can begin to understand the subtle voice of the world and individuals around me. If I can offer the spaciousness of my touch and the stillness of presence, the health and wholeness of a client’s system begins to arise. It is then that I touch the implicit drive in all living nature to actualize.
This quality of listening cannot be willed; it can only be welcomed when a shift into dialogue arises in the session. A guiding parameter would be that you meet your client with receptivity and openness, allowing for this kind of connection to emerge. Another guiding kinesthetic parameter is that of settling deeply into the support of your body, pelvis, legs, and feet, thereby inviting the sensate experience of ground to meet you. Sit with the supporting attitude of your perceptual body – a soft and wide vision, an orientation through your hearing or smell to the space of your room, and your breath easy and relaxed. The potential is to sense, touch, and perceive the depth of the interconnecting continuum of life emerging from absolute nothingness to the arising animation in the density of matter. This is a transformational key to healing for both practitioner and client. We are embedded in a matrix of wholeness. We are embedded in our environment. We are in relationship to all that surrounds us. Cultivating a receptive perceptual attitude challenges the beliefs that have structured our worldviews about health, wholeness and healing.
‘The finest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead.’
Albert Einstein(13)
The multidimensional nature of the human body is ever unfolding before us, with all life forms in intelligent, self-organizing, and self-sustaining patterns of expression. Each life form, ignited at conception, traverses through this continuum in wholeness. Unleashed from the tethered beliefs about what a body is and is not, these portals of perception offer the potential of expanding the dimensions of our own awareness, embodiment, and wisdom every time we touch and allow ourselves to be touched.
Endnotes
Dimensional Touch[:]
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