Gateways to Relationship: Touch

Our ability to relate through our sense of touch is miraculous and is often tied to our sense of movement (yes, movement is a sense); in fact touch and movement are our first senses to develop in utero! As you grew in your mother’s womb, you floated in amniotic fluid, sensing shifts in your mother’s movement (often when she was active you ‘took in’ that information and when she lied down to rest, you became active, pressing a foot towards her diaphragm or turning around the centrality of your umbilical lifeline, maybe sucking your own thumb, and so forth). Both your movement and her movement was sensed through your developing joints, muscles and through your skin, providing you with important information about yourself, your ‘family’, and your environment.

Later, as an infant, you gathered more information about self, others, environment as you took everything into your mouth: you sucked your fingers, fist, feet and mom’s breast or dad’s stubbly chin, and all those varied textured toys, kitty’s tail, and the UFOs (unidentified floor objects). Mouthing is a very important form of touch that is rich with information as it reinforces our visual cues (for example: I see the keys) with our sense of touch (I feel the hardness and ragged shape of the keys as I move my tongue around the keys) and with our sense of taste and smell (the keys are bland and have a certain smell) and helps us to develop ‘haptic touch’ (our ability to identify objects without visual cues). Touch is so critical to our relationships that without it, we can barely function. A relatively mild example is Hansen’s disease (aka leprosy, which is a bacterial infection that among other things leads to nerve damage. I say ‘mild’ because Hansen’s disease, if treated, is often curable). Without the ability to sense through touch, damage and subsequent infection can occur that can lead to severe damage /loss of that person’s limbs.

Skin, our primary touch organ, is comprised of three layers: epidermis (outer, thin layer), dermis (middle layer with lots of nerve endings), and subcutaneous which means ‘below the skin’ (fat, fascia, more nerves, etc.) and has various functions including protection, temperature regulation, immune protection, hydration, vitamin D production, sensory input and much more. Sensory input of skin comes from all kinds of highly sensitive and specialized nerve endings: different nerves sense temperature, pressure (both light, brief pressure and deep and sustained), vibration, pressure changes, pain (acute as well as sustained) and so on. The epidermis and dermis communicate via the hairs that grow in the dermal layer and exit thru our outer skin. This is a profound way of sensing our outer environment!

Embryologically, our epidermis is formed from neural crest cells as our brain and spinal cord are developing; in fact our ectoderm is the origin of both our central nervous system and our epidermis. In a very tangible biological way our skin is the periphery of our central nervous system AND our nervous system is the centre of our skin!Consider a few examples: stress affects our skin (acne, eczema, etc) in a centre  peripheral direction AND hydration of our skin (spa, humidity, etc) can lead to a sense of relaxation in a periphery  central direction! So, is your skin the outer surface of your nervous system ... and/or… is your brain and spinal cord the inner surface of your skin?All of this sets us up for a few fun explorations. As always, enter with a beginner’s mind…. Your experiences will be more rich and will enhance your experience of yourself, others, and the environment. Here are 4 explorations for the 4 weeks of September:

Haptic touch (15 – 30 minutes)

1. Partners or a group: Let a friend fill a pillowcase of various weird and wonderful objects. Then without looking (either blindfolded or eyes closed) you reach in with your hand and select an object, describe what you are sensing thru touch (texture, hardness, temperature, shape, etc), state whether or not you like the object, and then state what the object is. Pull the object out…were you correct? [Note that your description of and your perception of the object will be based largely on your personal previous experiences. What if your friend put an object that you had never experienced before in the pillowcase…how does this affect your sensation, description, and ability to identify?]
2. Now repeat this experience with new objects, but this time close eyes and reach in with your foot. How adept are you at describing and identifying the object? (Remember in August’s blog I spoke of the various bones (and implicitly joints) that assist you in encountering your environment? My guess is that if you were a modern dancer in bare feet you will be somewhat better at manipulating and identifying objects, compared to someone who has always worn shoes.) Have fun with this exploration!

Picking raspberries(30 – 60 minutes)

1. With a friend: in your own garden or at a u-pick, collect some fall fruit (it can be any fruit, even tho I will use the example of raspberries for ease of description/consideration). Describe your process of picking fruit to your friend as tho they had never picked fruit before and were learning for the first time:Even tho we often use vision to help us pick fruit, our sense of touch (and other senses) often has the final say: notice how the delicacy in your finger tips as you pick (light pressure, slightly sustained pull), notice how your touch helps to determine ripeness (your varied pressure on the fruit will determine indeed if it is ready, and if the pull seems to be a bit too forceful, you realize that no, best to leave that fruit for a day or two longer for ripening). Sense how your hand shapes around in a voluminous cavern to assist with collecting the berries… the more voluminous your hand, the more berries can be collected. Then notice that if the fruit has been in the sunlight, it feels warm to the touch and that much more tempting to eat! As you are picking, you might notice some movement of the hair on your arm. Without looking, describe that sensation to your friend, and how you feel about it (does it freak you out? You couldn’t care less….etc). Maybe it was a spider… a leaf… an ant….And as you reach past branches and prickles, notice how your skin protects you from injury. Try describing that. How does your description change when a tiny thorn pricks between your fingers? How do you respond to that prickle? Change roles with your friend. How are his/her descriptions different/ similar to yours?

Story-sharing(15 – 30 minutes)

1. With a friend: listen to your friend as he/she describes an experience that was quite profound to them. Notice your responses: do you feel touched? Was their story ‘touching’? What from your past experiences resonate with your friend’s story? Share with your friend your own responses to their story. Notice that story leads to sensation that leads to our central nervous system. Switch roles: Try to use as much detail and description as possible of one of your experiences. Notice when emotion swells to the surface; what senses are you in tune with? Listen to your friend’s response to your story without judgment (as their experiences may be quite different from yours, and may offer new perspectives). At the end, if both of you are amenable to it, give each other a nice long hug….one that can register from epidermis deeply into your central nervous system. Enjoy!