Filed under: The Value of Touch
by Cathy Black
I have a particular interest in massage and its role in promoting healthy touch in families. I’m not a family systems expert, but when I was a child, my family would gather around the living room floor some evening and each of us would get a massage from the rest of the family. For about 10-15 minutes we would each receive a back and leg massage from the four other family members. Then we would switch and someone else would receive, until finally all five of us had gotten our massage. It felt wonderful, and it was bonding and healing for all of us – both individually and as a family.
This was not the norm of the day, let me assure you. I give my parents tremendous credit for being willing to bring experiences like massage and psychotherapy into our lives in those days. I am very grateful to them, because through the massage, I learned that touch was positive and nurturing. My body felt safe and cared for in the hands of loving people. I have no doubt it was a major influence in eventually determining my career as a massage therapist. Perhaps most importantly, I gained a grounded, valued sense of myself, and a deep respect for the preciousness of this human body.
The way we assimilate and process different forms of touch may change throughout life, but touch itself remains an essential aspect for health of human functioning and positive quality of life. Fortunately, as massage has grown more popular and diverse over the past 20 years, the needs of families have begun to be addressed. We see Infant Massage courses, pre-natal and post-partum massage for women, massage for couples, Compassionate Touch and Peaceful Touch for toddlers and young children, elder massage – and that’s just the beginning of a list of possibilities.
It warms my heart to know that children and their parents are being encouraged to massage and be massaged, from early childhood on into the later years. I can only imagine that the benefits of this trend are important, if not crucial, for our larger cultural need at this time.
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