10.29.2009

Touch: Our Basic Need

I think we all know that we have five senses: sight, sound, taste, touch, smell. Sometimes all these senses come into play for things such as eating. Sometimes we only use a few of these at a time like when we drive. We know that people can live their lives without sight, without sound, or a sense of smell. However, touch is a essential part of our human existence, our human need that we require to help sustain our lives.

Touch is a an often an unappreciated sense that can be excluded from our daily life. There is a quote I saw from Margaret Atwood's book The Blind Assassin: "Touch comes before sight, before speech. It's the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth." If you think about it touch is the first thing that happens when we are born and it's the first thing that new parents want to do: touch and hold their beautiful newborn. It has been proven that with premature and underweight babies that touch will help them grow and sustain life at alarming rates. And as parents, when our children are hurting through either physical or emotional pain, again what do we want to do? Touch and hold them and make it all go away.

Many people do go without touch on a daily basis which to me is a sad thing. I used to have a client that would get massaged just to be touched. For whatever reasons this need was not met in her life so she found the way to get it met. It really did sadden me that she didn't have this basic need met enough in her daily life. I know for me, I'm what would be called a touchy-feely person. Besides what I do for a living of massaging and touching people, I am always touching my friends when I talk or when I see or leave them through hugs and kisses. Personally this is my biggest sense that I like to have full-filled and that's probably why I am so touchy-feely. Touch evokes emotions. It evokes feelings and communication through pleasure, through pain, through sensuality. It is a basic form of human interaction no matter what race, nationality or language that you are. Touch brings us all together.

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