The imprints of touch
Touch impacts. Caring touch has enriched my life deeply. Our bodies hold our stories and through our bodies we can access our deepest wisdom. This wisdom comes from an innate knowing combined with all that our experiences have taught us. A friend of mine once shared that it was only in knowing deprivation that he could know abundance. So also is it with touch – there is touch that gives life, there is another kind of touch that steals it away. It is in the knowing of one and the effect that has on our whole being can we also recognize the other when we meet it.
Many experiences have shaped and moulded me into someone who knows and understands the power of touch, who recognises how deeply restorative caring touch can be, while also knowing the spaces where no touch is the most caring and tender response.
My body has absorbed the tenderness of caring touch as well as the harshness of non-caring, inappropriate touch.
Some of the memories my body holds give me a sense of warmth, softness and trust when I recall them and a knowing of being looked after and cared for. With other memories I experience the restriction and the recoil from touch that has wounded.
Formative Years
When I reflect on my experience of caring touch there are two memories in particular that occurred quite a few times in my growing up years. They aren’t big or dramatic yet they are imprinted in my being as both precious and formative…They are a part of what has shaped me.
One of these stories belongs to my Auntie Wyn. She lived with my Nana. Whenever I would stay with them on schooldays, there was a ritual around the boundary of school and home that now as an adult I very much cherish. I would get off the bus; they would be there waiting at the door for me. Nana would disappear into the kitchen to get something for me to eat ‘to keep the hunger off’ till tea-time while Wyn would bring me into the bedroom to help me get out of my school uniform and into my ordinary clothes. She had a plastic basin with warm water ready that was always just the right temperature. Then, helping me out of my school uniform she would lightly wash me down with the warm water and a soapy sponge, really gently from head to toe as I wriggled impatiently, “hold on now” she would say, “we’ll just get the smell of school off of you ..”. This is one of my sweetest childhood memories for in the remembering I immediately feel the tenderness of her care pour into me softly.
Another story that taught me deeply was around being unwell – I don’t remember the details of being sick – I don’t remember the chicken pox or the measles or the mumps …..yet what I absolutely do remember clearly is my mothers response – her hands – sitting on the edge of the bed she would take my hand into hers and hold it there, simply stroking it softly every now and then, saying quietly at the same time …”lovey, if I could take it from you I would…”. To this day I hold the comfort of this in my body – the touch and the sound of her words almost like a whispered mantra; however sick or miserable I may have been , simultaneously I knew I was being minded…and that was actually enough.
Many, many years later I read Zach Thomas’s book on Touch, where he speaks about heart and hand coordination, and I recognized that this was where I first learned it – through the hands of a mother and an aunt reaching out and communicating a compassionate heart through their touch. All I knew back then was that the gentle touch managed to reassure me beyond words and seemed to send a message of comfort through my whole body.
Often, when there was a pain or an ache or an upset or a fright; from bike falls to nightmares, fights with siblings or fall outs with ‘best friends’, I learned how reassuring caring touch can be. The response of both my parents was to physically reach out, whether it was about a bruised knee or a bruised spirit, as a means of offering care. It didn’t change the reality of the situation whatever it may have been, yet the caring touch or gentle holding was always enough to make things seem not so bad.
Work : Care-Through-Touch
Touch is in my experience sacred. Non-caring touch is the opposite. one gives life, the other steals it away. My work has deepened my awareness and sensitivity to this. Caring tender touch is how we can meet another with respect and reverence. How I am in my work role is also about how I aspire to be in the world – to meet the other with care, with kindness and with respect. The roots of presence and intention while working have grown deeper over the years. What I have learned through the wisdom of my hands is that it is these ingredients; presence and intention that transform massage/touch into something that is deeply wholesome and restorative. Tender caring touch soothes, dissolves, repairs and restores in ways beyond words.
A further aspect of the journey began some years ago when I was asked to work in the day centre of the Irish Wheelchair Association in Clontarf – It continues to be my great privilege and great pleasure to work with the members of the Sonas and Dochas groups. It is here that what I now call the Touch is Sacred programme began to find a shape. My time in Clontarf ROC has been hugely affirming of the core belief – that presence and intention are fundamental to tender nurturing touch.
I wanted to offer age-appropriate massage to a number of older and less mobile adults. Sometimes I didn’t have the time to work in the way I was used to, sometimes peoples bodies were so frail or fragile I was unsure how I might be of help. Yet the positive feed back or response from the members was telling us clearly that my time with them was helping. I was curious and in reflecting on what I was offering and what I was unable to offer, I met an obivious truth. Yes I was competent in massage work and yes in this I was able to give relief to aches and pains etc., However I also recognized that my massage skills were only part of the work. How I was working was not limited to any massage training, This was part of it but not all. What also came into the room and into my work was a real desire to be there and a real commitment to care through touch for each person whom I met in that space….however that evolved. Sometimes I massaged, sometimes I touched softly and gently and all the time I was attentive both to myself and to the other person.
Although I was dealing with aches,pains, cramps and chronic muscular spasm, it was also important to me not to limit my work to deep tissue or structural massage but also to touch with care, with tenderness and gentleness. This was the essence. The desire to be with each person with kindness and compassion brings us into a completely other level of care and the affect is richer holistically. Something that we might call tranquility or an interior quietness comes into the space.
Another element in the molding or shaping of both myself and how I work comes undertaking an M.A. in Leadership and Pastoral Care in All Hallows College, Dublin (2009/10). This very rich programme gave me the opportuniy to engage in further learning as well as the space and time to reflect, so as to process and integrate more fully all that I already knew through life experiences and through the wisdom my hands had gained in my years of caring through touch/massage.
It was an insightful two years, strengthening my conviction of the power of tender caring touch as well as my commitment to work in a way that offers such care as my contribution into the world. Being aware of the imprints left from when I was young; the tender touch of my aunt and my mother affirms my conviction. These are woven into how I work. My conscious commitment or heart’s desire is to always work with this simple intention : in my touching of this person, may it be restorative and may they feel the warmth of being cared for.
The story of the shaping of me is on-going.