Touch is stranger and more powerful than often assumed. In trauma, pain and anxiety, touch can be a safe, novel stimulus to access new possibilities in our physiology.

As bodyworkers we can learn to be more skillful as we touch our clients. A focus on slow, relational touch can help them to shift their emotional core, re-frame and transcend habitually scary feelings, and release themselves to feel alive and connected.

Touch can help us meet our wordless places in a way that is hard to access through conversation alone.

And it turns out that how touch works is quite different from how many of us have been taught… 

For example, if you’re a bodyworker or clinician who is focused only on local tissue dynamics, there’s now very little evidence in pain science that manipulating joints and stretching muscles works in long-term pain relief. 

This was devastating to learn, as someone who trained for five years as a chiropractor. I used to love doing locally focused work, but I moved away from chiropractic because I found I wasn’t getting the desired results. 

So, if we can’t change tissues by locally-focused touch, what is useful about touch?

More and more, we’re seeing evidence that slow, gentle, emotional, compassionate, interpersonal touch that meets the whole person is most effective in relieving pain and creating more ease in the body.

At the heart of all successful touch is a negotiation around safety and consent. Relational touch includes an exquisite sensitivity to the responses of the person receiving the touch. There are always many layers and stories that may arise. 

Tiffany Field, a very influential figure in touch, did a meta review of massage and found that ‘massage therapy has significantly reduced pain and increased function in all of the chronic pain syndrome studies that have been published over the last decade.’

So, how can we as practitioners use this knowledge to be more brave and ambitious with how we use touch with our clients? Here are some ideas:

1 You don’t need to give pain, to relieve pain.
The classic model is that massage works by poking, prodding, rubbing, manipulating or stretching individual parts of the body. Touch therapists often aim to break down scar tissue or massage out knots or align joints or accurately diagnose by touch. 

Unfortunately, there is very little evidence that this framework of direct interventions provides any lasting, meaningful change. There is a tsunami of evidence that better biomechanics, however defined, does not consistently lead to less pain.

Time for us to put away our foam rollers and re-think sticking elbows into muscles.

2 Focus on the whole person

It turns out that tissues actually change because the person changes. It’s important to acknowledge that we touch whole people, not parts of people, always. So, the representation of pain in your client’s brain, not their local tissues, should be the focus for manual therapists.

The goal of touch should not be local dynamics, instead, it should be a safe, meaningful stimulus to engage a person in their world.

3 Create safety first

The representation of pain in your client’s brain is entirely dependent on their perception of safety. Most manual therapists are far too focused on ‘doing’ to take the time to be present and share touch. 

Touch is an intimate act of communication. Touch can reconnect us to early experiences of negotiating safety and agency.

For touch to be a force for good, we need to be very present with ourselves and with the other. We need to create a space where touch can be safely received at the deepest levels of experience.

4 Use meditative, non-doing touch
As you work, cultivate a practice of settling downwards into your feet, moving back into your spine and slowing your breath. Practice appreciating the person you are with. They’ve always been there, but are often forgotten – the interesting local changes can distract us from the bigger picture.

Make a habit of reflecting on this person’s hopes, dreams and fears. Meet them. Explore how open you can be. How much safety can you communicate via your still hand and still presence? 

I come from a tradition – biodynamic craniosacral therapy (BCST) – where still-hands touch and a huge focus on being present and safe are the core treatment skills. 

BCST is an incredibly exciting modality. It understands deeply that effective, interpersonal touch requires embodied safety, that early traumatic experiences leave a trail in the flesh, that humans are polyrhythmic, and that those rhythms are information-rich and influenced by skillful touch. 

At its best, it is a profound practice of slow, meditative, non-doing relational touch.

On Thursday 1st July, I’m offering a free, online introduction to biodynamic craniosacral therapy and our year-long practitioner training. You can register here.

Upcoming Events:

ONLINE

The Power of Touch webinar

A cross-disciplinary conversation on touch-based therapies and the role of touch in person-centred healing.
8 Jul 2021, 8.00pm BST, Online, £10.
Register here

Free Intro to Craniosacral Therapy

1 Jul 2021, 6.30pm BST, Online, Free
Register here

Want to learn a simple, self-help tool for tension and trauma? Try TRE

TRE Intro Days Online: 5 Jul, 30 Jul, 23 Aug, 30 Sep 2021
TRE Certification Training, Module 1 Online: 21-22 Sep 2021

IN-PERSON (London)

TRE Advanced: Using Touch in TRE (2 days)
Date: 6-7 Aug 2021, 9.30-5.30pm
Cost: £220 Early Bird 1 month before, £250 Full Price
Register here

Cranial Intro Day – Relational Touch
Date: 8 Aug 2021, 9.30-5.30pm
Cost: £75
Register here

Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy Training 2 year training:

London 2021 Seminar 1 starts 15-19 Sep 2021
Galway 2021 Seminar 1 starts 22-26 Sep 2021