6 Body Sense
From PTSD to Depression,
Hands-On Work Offers Relief
By Ruth Werner
Massage &
Emotional
Wellness
Massage therapy offers myriad physical benefits, but we
sometimes forget everything hands-on treatments can
do for our emotional well-being. Let's take a quick look
at the importance of touch and some of the specific
ways it can help our mental and emotional health.
TOUCH HUNGER
From the earliest days of humankind, when one person reached out
to soothe another, we have known that welcomed physical contact
is good for us. The loving touch that occurs between infants and
their caregivers helps create a sense of safety in the world that
follows us for a lifetime. Touch that occurs between humans helps
us build our foundational relationships, supports social interaction,
enables emotional sharing, and provides many other benefits.
By contrast, research shows us that prolonged touch deprivation
experienced by infants and young children is connected with
failure to thrive and the inability to create social attachments,
and with shorter lifespans and more illness in isolated elders.
The need for healthy touch is so important, and the consequences of
touch deprivation are so dire, that groundbreaking anthropologist Ashley
Montagu gave our drive for this form of human-to-human interaction