Often language cannot adequately convey meaning. Let us use “love” for our illustration. Love can be felt for your spouse, your baby, your work, your morning tea, your favorite shotgun, your heavenly father, or your country.
To love God has little to do with loving your work. Love for your family is a completely different concept from loving a particular brand of beer. We love all kinds of things and people, but the emotion is not the same. Love by itself has little meaning.
Let’s take a look at “touch”. Your laptop has a touchpad. That’s a very mechanical, non-emotional concept. You can touch someone physically. Depending on your intention, this could range from friendly to aggressive to sexual.
A bodyworker can work on you with a clinical touch. Then there are those therapists whose touch makes you feel like you are in heaven. Certain events in our life can touch us deeply.
One word, but several meanings. Touching has no meaning outside of a specific context – it can be a loving touch or an aggressive touch, a mechanical touch or a sensual touch, a skilled touch or perhaps a rough touch. What determines the meaning of a touch is our intention. Generally our intentions are clear when touching objects. But that clarity is often not there when we touch people.
When you touch a cat or a dog, they just roll over and enjoy it. It is not a problem for them if you are a man or a woman. They don’t have any mental process that keeps them from enjoying it, and neither do babies or young children. They have the natural ability to just enjoy a loving touch. Most animals and young children are very comfortable touching each other.
Some years ago a very interesting study was conducted with new born babies. One group of babies was held and touched all the time, and the second group was deprived of all touch. The study had to be aborted because the vital symptoms of the group of babies who were not touched started to deteriorate and the researchers were afraid that they would actually die.
We all know that young children and infants love to be touched and held and stroked. However at some point things change and suddenly a loving touch is not considered enjoyable anymore, but rather becomes embarrassing and awkward. Why and when do the rules change for touching? It is ‘educated’ out of them, and the adults stamp their behavior on their children.
In the realm of adults we have to contend with issues like religious beliefs, cultural taboos, insecurity and fear, and mental projections. Hugs between men can be just a friendly form of greeting. But it can also make someone feel uncomfortable if he associates hugs between men with homosexuality.
If a man hugs a woman, it could be an enjoyable connection or it could be seen as an unwanted come-on. Unlike children, when adults hug, the world of the mind comes into play. Different cultures have their respective touching rules. Arab men kiss each other on the cheeks, whereas for American men this is not acceptable at all. In one country hugging is normal, in another it is totally inappropriate.
So what is the conclusion of all those ‘touch complications’? Most people love to be touched but are prevented from experiencing it due to cultural taboos, mind games, ill-intentioned people, shyness, or in some countries by the law. This is where massage therapy is the one recourse where touching becomes acceptable and enjoyable and where none of the above mentioned limitations apply.