The other day I told my teenage daughter there is a healing power to touch. Like most teenagers listening to a parent's lecture, she rolled her eyes in disbelief. In attempt to make my point I asked, "If four totally different strangers hugged you, don't you feel something different from each one?" She defended her own belief, "Well of course but it's only my own emotions, it has nothing to do with the other person." I gasped with horror at the thought that MY own daughter did not believe there was a healing power to touch, "Are you saying all those adjustments and massages I give you don't help?" Answered with the certainty of any teenage child proving their parent wrong, "Well of course it helps, but only because stretching and massage have a physical effect on the muscle. It has nothing to do with some healing power."
Much like my own daughter today, I also used to believe touch was nothing more than a mechanical stimuli with a specific intended effect. In a vain attempt to disprove this belief, my sisters and I used to try to make each other laugh by tickling each other with our fingers dancing above each others tummy but not quite touching it. It seemed completely absurd that they could make me laugh without even touching me, and I thought surely it had to be all in my mind, simply an emotional response.
Years of experience have taught me otherwise. In school I read studies that showed babies who were touched thrived more; people with pets or spouses were sick less often; and people who were prayed for healed faster and better than those not prayed for regardless of whether they knew they were being prayed for or not. The more I read and experienced, the more I knew touch was not simply something that could be explained away by science or emotions.
When you fall down and sprain your ankle, your natural response is to touch or grab at your injury. Even if you don't believe this is because your touch has the ability to heal, you can attest to the puffy, hot joint you feel with your touch. When you hone your ability to feel this heat you can pull your hands an inch off your ankle and still feel the heat with your hands. In much the same way, once when someone very dear to me was on life support I felt with my hands over her lungs without making physical contact with her body. During the first days everything was hot, but by the fourth day I felt only one area of heat. Just after telling someone else in the ICU room what I had felt, the respiratory therapist came in. After listening with a stethoscope, the therapist (without knowing what I had said), repeated what I had said and pointed to exactly where I had.
Much like art or music, I believe the power to heal is a gift and like all gifts it grows the more we use it. It is well documented that even some animals can feel where a person is sick or hurt, so why is it so hard for us to believe that we can intuitively know or hone our own ability to heal ourselves as well as others? If we eat poorly, don't exercise, and live stressful lives year after year only to develop heart disease, muscle or joint pains, or cancer why do we think that God or our doctor can fix a disease process that took years of poor choices to develop? Maybe just like love languages, a healing touch is different for every person depending on what brought us to where we are. Maybe we all have the power to heal ourselves as well as others with our touch.
Sometimes if we love a certain food we know is bad for us, we tell ourselves a little bit is ok. Sometimes exercise is too painful or difficult to fit into our schedules. Sometimes a fear of what might be keeps us living in unhealthy relationships or lifestyles. Sometimes I treat a patient exactly the same as I have in the past but they tell me it felt completely different. Once I told a woman that based on her weight distribution and genetic factors that she should be tested for diabetes. It seemed simple, obvious, and logical to me. She became very angry towards me, accusing me of calling her fat. Sometimes we do not open ourselves up and allow ourselves to be touched or to touch others.
If you have ever been touched by a stranger's presence, a story, a song, or greater yet the love of another, you know that the healing power of touch is much more than simply a mechanical stimuli. And even if my teenage daughter reads this and rolls her eyes, I know one day she will open herself up and truly recognize the healing power of touch.
