Touch: Nurturing, Calming, and Necessary

There is something that you have needed since birth.  Without it, infants fail to thrive and may suffer harm that can have a life-long impact.  Some say that our culture suffers from a deprivation of it.  Dr. David R. Cross, a Texas psychology professor, asserts that the deprivation is so severe that “it’s considered by researchers to be worse than physical abuse”. 

Have you guessed what it is aside from the title of this column?  The answer is “touch”. 

You may have heard that a 20-second hug boosts the “love hormone”, oxytocin.  Hugging also reduces the stress hormone, cortisol.  In A Natural History of the Senses, author Diane Ackerman quotes Saul Schanberg, the renowned Duke neuroscientist, as saying, "Touch is far more essential than our other senses. … It's ten times stronger than verbal or emotional contact."   

Touch is a connector that impacts your physiological state, your emotional state, and your well-being.  Touch connects you and your children, affecting their physiological and emotional states and ultimately, their well-being.  

Touch can also be means of teaching your child how their system works and how powerful they are at influencing it.  It can guide your child to self-calm.  It is noteworthy that both our nervous system and our skin developed from the same origin cells, the ectoderm.  The connection between our nervous system and skin still exists.  If you get goosebumps or sense the hair on the back of your neck rise, you feel that connection. 

There is a specific kind of touch that will assist your child in regaining calm.  Your child – and you – can also use it individually to self-soothe.  My mother put me to sleep with this touch! 

In fact, this type of touch is used innately by mothers with their infants.  It involves gentle stroking – a slow caress – typically down the back.  Research has shown that the rate of between 3 and 10.5 centimeters per second – a little over one inch to a little over 4 inches – is optimum.  Triggering specialized nerve fibers (C-tactile afferents) that have the specific and sole purpose of picking up nurturing touch, this gentle touch engages the parasympathetic nervous system, dropping the heart rate, reducing cortisol, lowering stress, and promoting sleep. 

Please note that the original study by Toho University noted that “this calming response isn't entirely automatic at birth; it is a learned neurological pathway that develops properly when a newborn receives consistent, close maternal care in their first weeks of life”.  Children deprived of nurturing care may not respond to this type of touch. 

The neuroscientists in the Toho study also found that “self-soothing touch triggers the exact same neurological ‘calming switch’ in your brain.  When you intentionally apply a slow, gentle touch to your own skin, your nervous system registers the safety signal, instantly working to down-regulate stress.  Your brain is incredibly smart, but it cannot fully separate the source of comfort from the sensation of comfort. When you stroke your own skin at that perfect 3-to-10 cm/second speed, the mechanical activation of the nerves overrides your current stress state”. 

Key areas to target are your forearms, thighs, and face.  The face has the highest sensitivity.  Here are three ways to apply gentle touch to those parts of your body and to teach your child to use gentle touch on themselves: 

·       While sitting, place your fingertips lightly on the tops of your thighs near your knees with your right hand on your right thigh, left hand on your left thigh.  Gently stroke upwards at the once inch per second rate.  At your hip, lift your hands and place your fingertips back on your thigh above the knees.  Continue for twenty seconds. 

·       Cross your arms over your chest, placing your right hand on your left shoulder and your left hand on your right shoulder.  Slowly glide down your arms to your wrists, then lift your hands back to your shoulders.  Do this for at least thirty seconds.

·       Place your fingertips on your third eye between your eyebrows and gently brush outwards towards your temples.  Then place your fingertips on the sides of your nose and brush outwards towards your ears.  Repeat the two “brushings” up to ten times.   

At bedtime, ask if your child would like their back to be stroked.  If they are still awake to tell you after five minutes, inquire how it felt for them!  Teach them the three practices above to do when they feel stressed.  Give them each a name like “Railroad Tracks” for the thighs, “Cross My Heart” for the arms, and “Butterfly Kisses” for the face.  They can come up with names more inventive than mine! 

Our states of being are physiological.  Touch, using the natural connection between our nervous system and our skin, can somatically ease our fears, sadness, hurts, anger, agitation, and stresses.  

Dacher Keltner, a professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley, wrote in his article, Hands on Research: The Science of Touch, "[Our hands] are our primary language of compassion, and a primary means for spreading compassion."

Our friends, families, and communities can always benefit from greater compassion.  Touch is connecting.  Touch is healing.  Touch is calming.  Reach out.  It may touch their hearts.