The Power Of Touch (First Posted May 31, 2011)

So.

Okay.

It all started yesterday when she had her first appointment with her new (alternative) health provider who had been recommended by her acupuncturist at her request.  While she did feel well under her acupuncturist’s care – especially with her change of diet – she also knew her repetitively stressed elbows were not responding as optimally as initially forecast.  And, because she simply cannot afford to let the big, bad wolf reach her door, off she went - with her acupuncturist's blessing - in search of further help and support.

Her new ally in her quest for physical health, strength and mobility is a registered massage therapist who has also completed 4 of the 6 years required to become an osteopath and then has tied the two disciplines together with a third, known as "Matrix Repatterning".  So, she is shifting from a treatment modality where the theraputic contact with her body was primarily being made by very fine, sensitively placed needles to one where it is entirely being made by warm, knowledgable hands.

And.

So.

It was while she was receiving her first treatment that she remembered, she remembered, she remembered just how good it feels to be touched intelligently (not too little and not too much and always and only in the right places) and honestly (with both parties respecting each other) - exactly the way one expects to be touched in a theraputic context.   She could feel her body thirstily drinking in and absorbing the trusted, beneficial sensations brought about through the healer's light-but-sure touch.  Her accompanying sense of relief at being (literally) "handled properly" caused tears to spring to her eyes.  "This," she thinks, "is the positive side of the power of touch." 

There is a negative side.

Her mother tells her that as emotionally ardent as she was as a young child she, equally, did not like to be held.  It wasn't that she didn't like to be touched, or to touch.  In fact she was always exploring alluring textures, both indoors and outdoors, with her fingertips.  It was that she did not easily tolerate the feeling of being confined on a lap or in an extended embrace.

Perhaps, as we are warned, there is a way in which we attract that which we most fear.  All she knows for sure is she experienced being physically overwhelmed as a young person and, in one instance, dramatically so.  From this, it would seem, she grew to become (perhaps hyper) discriminating between the feeling of being touched in a way that feels good and touched in a way that makes her feel uncomfortable, or worse.

So.

Yes.

Touch is powerful.  It possesses the power to open or to close.