The psychology of touch

It takes a special kind of person to be able to go up to another person and say, "Take your clothes off and lie down. Relax; everything's going to be OK."

People have to be able to trust you. And for that to happen, you have to trust yourself. You have to know yourself quite well. Handling live human bodies is not like handling produce at the supermarket or data on a computer. You've got a whole complex, fragile, consciousness-infused being there beneath your hands when you work on someone. They know right away what you're up to when you lay your hands on them.

This fact was pointed out in an unlikely place. The One Minute Manager had these words of wisdom about touch:

Touch is a very powerful message. Touch is very honest. People know immediately when you touch them whether you care about them, or whether you are just trying to find a new way to manipulate them. When you touch, don't take. Touch people...only when you are giving them something—reassurance, support, encouragement, whatever.

When you touch someone during massage, at times you may awaken feelings within them that have to be dealt with very professionally. Not everyone is capable of dealing with these stirred-up feelings. In many societies and religions there existed, and still exists today, strong taboos against close physical contact. Through the prohibition of touch, religious and societal leaders have attempted to maintain control over people. They know that touch is the instigator of private, primitive experiences, bringing people a sense of safety and security or deep relaxation or healing or sexual arousal or emotional release.

Experiencing these sensations and knowing that they are OK gives people a sense of autonomy and freedom from repression that is not OK with certain kinds of authority. In much of our early training, we are taught to believe that we should not feel certain feelings and that if we do feel them, there is something wrong with us. Therefore, we are taught from a young age to repress anything that is unseemly in our parents' eyes or our churches' eyes or society's eyes. Those feelings, however, remain.

Often in a massage therapy session, especially a good one, some of these repressed feelings may be re-experienced because they are being released from their storage place in the body. These types of memories are called somatic, or body-based, memories. To become an effective massage therapist, you'll have to learn how to communicate with people on a meaningful level about their bodies and their feelings. To do that, you'll have to be mature and responsible. This is something to keep in mind when you are thinking about becoming a therapist or already training to be one.

You may downplay the significance of the nonphysical aspect of touch and claim you are going to use only straightforward, mechanical, no-nonsense, muscle-focused therapy. That is probably not the best approach. Touch is always about people, about their hearts and minds, and sometimes even about their souls...