Using a lively array of anthropological and sociological sources, The Vital Touch: How Intimate Contact with Your Baby Leads to Happier, Healthier Development by Sharon Heller, PhD, presents a provocative examination of the reasons why, now more than ever, we need to make consistent physical connections with our infants and children.
Richard Kearney offers a timely call for the cultivation of the basic human need to touch and be touched. Making the case for the complementarity of touch and technology, this book is a passionate plea to recover a tangible sense of community and the joys of life with others.
Touch is the basis of our sensory world. Touch is our first way of relating with ourselves, others, and our environment. Providing physical and emotional communication at a level far deeper then words, touch is a vital aspect of experiencing meaning, purpose, and joy throughout our lives. Touch has an important role in our capacity for self-regulation, impacting how effectively children learn to socialize, pay attention, and even engage in classroom activities. How do we experience healthy, supportive contact with others, recognize and avoid unhealthy contact? The author provides outstanding documentation of research clearly indicating how vital touch is to human health and healing. Shared experiences, illustrative charts, tables for clinical interventions, and practical homework exercises offer compassionate guidance for implementing healthy, supportive touch into many personal and professional situations. This book is a vital addition to our understanding of health and what it means to be human. This book belongs in the library of every practitioner, teacher, social worker, couple, parent, prospective parent, and family - anyone who wants to gain a deeper understanding of the profound effects of touch on health and well-being. Michael Changaris, Psy.D. is the founder of the International Institute of Touch Training and Research (ITTR). As a clinical psychologist he specializes in the biological basis of behavior stress physiology, psychobiology of neurodegenerative disorders and the neurobiology of post-traumatic stress.
We are out of touch. Many people fear that we are trapped inside our screens, becoming less in tune with our bodies and losing our connection to the physical world. But the sense of touch has been undervalued since long before the days of digital isolation. Because of deeply rooted beliefs that favor the cerebral over the corporeal, touch is maligned as dirty or sentimental, in contrast with supposedly more elevated modes of perceiving the world. How to Feel explores the scientific, physical, emotional, and cultural aspects of touch, reconnecting us to what is arguably our most important sense. Sushma Subramanian introduces readers to the scientists whose groundbreaking research is underscoring the role of touch in our lives. Through vivid individual stories—a man who lost his sense of touch in his late teens, a woman who experiences touch-emotion synesthesia, her own efforts to become less touch averse—Subramanian explains the science of the somatosensory system and our philosophical beliefs about it. She visits labs that are shaping the textures of objects we use every day, from cereal to synthetic fabrics. The book highlights the growing field of haptics, which is trying to incorporate tactile interactions into devices such as phones that touch us back and prosthetic limbs that can feel. How to Feel offers a new appreciation for a vital but misunderstood sense and how we can use it to live more fully.
Why we need a daily dose of touch: an investigation of the effects of touch on our physical and mental well-being. Although the therapeutic benefits of touch have become increasingly clear, American society, claims Tiffany Field, is dangerously touch-deprived. Many schools have “no touch” policies; the isolating effects of Internet-driven work and life can leave us hungry for tactile experience. In this book Field explains why we may need a daily dose of touch. The first sensory input in life comes from the sense of touch while a baby is still in the womb, and touch continues to be the primary means of learning about the world throughout infancy and well into childhood. Touch is critical, too, for adults' physical and mental health. Field describes studies showing that touch therapy can benefit everyone, from premature infants to children with asthma to patients with conditions that range from cancer to eating disorders. This second edition of Touch, revised and updated with the latest research, reports on new studies that show the role of touch in early development, in communication (including the reading of others' emotions), in personal relationships, and even in sports. It describes the physiological and biological effects of touch, including areas of the brain affected by touch, and the effects of massage therapy on prematurity, attentiveness, depression, pain, and immune functions. Touch has been shown to have positive effects on growth, brain waves, breathing, and heart rate, and to decrease stress and anxiety. As Field makes clear, we enforce our society's touch taboo at our peril.
This book puts a finger on the nerve of culture by delving into the social life of touch, our most elusive yet most vital sense. From the tortures of the Inquisition to the corporeal comforts of modernity, and from the tactile therapies of Asian medicine to the virtual tactility of cyberspace, The Book of Touch offers excursions into a sensory territory both foreign and familiar. How are masculine and feminine identities shaped by touch? What are the tactile experiences of the blind, or the autistic? How is touch developed differently across cultures? What are the boundaries of pain and pleasure? Is there a politics of touch? Bringing together classic writings and new work, this is an essential guide for anyone interested in the body, the senses and the experiential world.
The healer introduced to readers in Andrew Weil's landmark bestseller "Spontaneous Healing", 91-year-old Dr. Robert Fulford has spent over 50 years successfully treating patients failed by conventional medicine. In this information-packed volume, he delineates the healing principles of osteopathy, shares compelling case histories, and offers advice on integrating natural healing methods with modern health care.
What does forgiveness look like?In Relentless, Kellie Springer's memoir, she shares her very human experience on the path to forgiveness for the abuses she suffered as a child. She explores the depth of trauma and the long journey to healing, self-awareness, and self-compassion. Readers will be captivated by her candid story, anxiously accompanying Kellie through her walk of personal growth, and finallycelebrating her realization of compassion and forgiveness. In telling her story, Kellie seeks to inspire others to own their stories and the truths that lie within themselves, in order that they may live from a place of authenticity."I don't know how my story will end but nowhere in my text will it ever read...'I gave up.'" ~ Anonymous