Touch is complex. Really complex. And it is something that we all take for granted. Even us massage therapists tend to overlook how complex touch really is.
Part of the problem is that touch isn't really one sense, but many. What we call touch is really the assembly of a myriad of different sensations that our brain constructs. We can feel temperature, pressure, light touch, heavy touch, tickling, the movement of a hair, vibration - and we lump it all together into this thing called touch. A lot of the touch we experience gets relegated into the subconscious realm as well - proprioception and the inner workings of our bodies are things we don't really have to think about much, they just happen on their own. It is the first sense to develop and our sense of touch is a direct extension of our nervous system.
Just to make things more complex, we have a huge psychological component to it as well. Touch has meanings. Meanings that are different from person to person. Touch is a fundamental part of our being and our attitudes and needs regarding touch affect our entire person.
Describing Touch (what it means to us)
As part of an exercise out of "The Bodywork Entrepreneur", you are asked to complete the following with as many words as you can:
Touching is/touching can...
Comforting, soothing, trusting, helpful, dangerous, harmful, uncertain, consoling, tentative, nervous, habitual, unconscious, calculated, planned, unplanned, inadvertant, unintentional, accidental, malicious, mean, cruel, sadistic, sexual, caring, intimate, arousing, exciting, functional, professional, technical, practiced, misinterpreted, cold, warm, aloof, distracted, possessive, communication, protective, reflexive, condescending, controlled, wild, friendly, loving, intrusive, invasive, good, bad, hard, soft, sensual, formal, informal, welcome, ritualistic, unwelcome, illegal, therapeutic, legal, appropriate, inappropriate, courteous, kind, reverent, sacred, vital, necessary, saving, passionate, angry, violent, aggressive, selfish, unselfish, generous, peaceful, sedating, agitated, shakt, certain, irritating, hurtful, pleasing, scary, fearful, purposeful, thoughtful, regretful, tired, victorious, contentious, competitive, playful, light, creepy, salvation, inclusive, honest, dishonest, shady, meaningful, careless, confident...
...and these words are just the first page of five that I was able to come up with in 20 minutes. See what you can come up with. Obviously touch is complex and runs the gamut of human experience - from one end of the spectrum to the other. It makes sense since it is so fundamental to our nature.
Misinterprating Touch
Seeing how many meanings touch can have, it is no wonder that it can be the cause of so many misunderstandings. You can mean one thing when you touch, but the receiver can interpret it a different way entirely. One of the biggest mistakes a massage therapist can make is to forget that - to assume that the client has the same attitudes about touch as you do. We have to make the effort every time, with every client to understand where they are coming from. They won't know or have thought about it, so it is your job to make sure that this is addressed. Make sure that you are very clear about the intention, form, structure, and application of the touch you do. And don't be afraid to re-emphasize them at any time.
Touch and Relationships
To complicate things even more for massage therapy, the confusion doesn't end there. Touch spills over into relationships and that can lead to a whole new level of challenges. There are five levels of relationship:
- Functional-Professional (like at the doctor's office)
- Social-Polite (like a hand shake)
- Friendship-Warmth (a hug or holding hands)
- Love-Intimacy (lying together, arms around their shoulders, or affectionate kisses)
- Sexual-Arousal (duh!)
In many of our interactions, we have a fairly clear understanding of the boundry but in our profession, there is so much more room for misinterpretation. Under normal circumstances, you would progress through these levels as you get to know a person and build trust. But in massage we push the boundaries immediately simply through the nature of our work.
Massage operates at multiple levels of this spectrum simultaneously, leading to more confusion. Is it any wonder our clients sometimes don't know how to behave? America is a touch starved society (my daughter's school passed a no touch rule) due to culture and litigation. People are afraid to touch each other. Much of the touch that many Americans regularly experience only falls into one of two categories - sex and violence. If those are the only two categories of touch a client knows, and your massage isn't violence, then it must be sexual, right? I mean how many of even their close friends rub their hands all over their unclothed body?
Denial of the Impact of Touch
Massage Therapy as a whole seems to have trouble coming to grips with the nature of touch. Often times we MTs see only the aspects of touch that we want to - the healing, trusting, gender neutral side - and try to ignore the rest. Unfortunately it's like ignoring the elephant in the room. Touch is intimate and carries with it all of the baggage that people have about intimacy. We can't be our most effective if we have our heads in the sand about that. We can scream at the top of our lungs that massage therapy is not sexual, but we have to teach our clients about the difference. And to do that we must first understand all of the things that touch can mean to a person - the good and the bad.
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