Positive human touch is a key part of human interaction. Touch that occurs between humans helps us build our foundational relationships, supports social interaction, enables emotional sharing, and provides many other benefits. Touch is essential to our health and development, whether that’s a handshake with someone we’ve just met, a hug from a caregiver, or a reassuring hand of a friend on the shoulder when we need it.
By contrast, prolonged touch deprivation is connected with failure to thrive and inability to create social attachments when it happens in infants and young children. It is associated with shorter lifespans and more illness in isolated elders.
The need for healthy touch is so important and the consequences of touch deprivation so dire, that anthropologist Ashley Montagu gave the drive for this form of human interaction the name “touch hunger.” We know touch is a basic human need, but after more than a year of social distancing, quarantines, and missed family/friend gatherings, many people are feeling touch starved.
Now, as the world slowly, cautiously comes together again, we are all re-learning how to meet the need for safe, healthy touch. Massage therapy is an intervention that helps meet that need. Book your session and help re-establish human connection. Welcome back!