Patti Wood is an expert in Nonverbal Communication. She has done extensive research on touch and first
impressions. She also analyzes body language for the media by interpreting greeting
behavior and other touch interactions of world leaders, celebrities, sports
stars, and even suspected criminals.
Patti will be taping Couples Therapy in LA this Friday. She will be viewing the celebrity couples body language
Two candidates for the presidency
walk towards each other at the beginning of their televised debate. Look
closely in your mind’s eye and see how the incumbent president offers his hands
first. Notice how his grip seems a little stronger and how he pushes his
opponents hand downward as he shakes it.
Observe how he reaches out with his left hand, grabs the upper shoulder
of his opponent and pulls him in. All
the separate touches have meaning. There
is great power in a single touch.
Just like a hug from a friend, a pat
on the head to your child, a caress on the shoulder to your sweetie, you are
giving and receiving powerful communication with each touch.
There is vast scientific knowledge
and data from researchers around the world that proves positive touch makes us
better communicators, better friends, and better people.
Human touch is vital to our physical
and emotional development and to our overall sense of health and well-being. Communicating
through touch is SO important it has its own field of science known as Haptics .
‘Haptics’ is a word that comes to us
from Greek, meaning ‘I fasten onto’ or ‘I touch.’
Haptics deals with all Tactical
Communication, and it’s defined in the research as “any form of communicating with
another being, that involves touch.”
In his book, “The Stages of Human Life,” J. Lionel
Taylor tells us that “The greatest sense in our body is our sense
of touch… we feel, we love and hate, are touchy and are touched, through the
touch corpuscles of our skin.” And since our
skin is the largest organ of our body there is lot of communication possible
through touch.”
Haptics is
a surprisingly powerful mode of communication. You may know that facial
expressions can convey many emotions, but it may surprise you to know that in studies
where people were only able to communicate with their hands, subjects were able
to effectively communicate to a partner five separate emotions: detachment,
mothering, fear, anger and playfulness. In other research where subjects gave a one second touch
through a barrier subjects were able to
identify love, gratitude, and compassion from touches and even
differentiate between those loving emotions in a way that subjects have not
been able to do in studies of facial communication.
Touch
research, Touch in Utero an Infancy,
benefits
of touch research
Touch is often referred to as the "mother
of all senses" for good reason. It
is the first sense to develop in the embryo, and all other
senses-sight, sound, taste, and smell are derived from it. Researcher Dr. James
OSShage says, “The tactile system is the earliest sensory system to become functional
(in the embryo) and may be the last to fade from our lives.”
According
to bio behavioral scientists at UCLA School of Medicine, touch is critical to a
baby’s brain development. Developmental neuroscience research finds that the
infant brain is designed to be molded by the environment it encounters. In
other words, babies are born with a certain set of genetics, but they must be
activated by early experience and interaction. In the critical first months of
life, events are imprinted in the nervous system. “Gentling” is the behavior that involves the
stroking and touching of newborns of humans and other animals.
“Hugs and
kisses during these critical periods make those neurons grow and connect
properly with other neurons,” says Dr. Arthur Janov, in his book,
Biology of Love. “You can kiss that brain into maturity.”
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The benefits of touch,
infancy
The first
portion of our brain to evolve on top of its reptilian heritage is the limbic
system, the seat of emotion. It is this portion of the brain that permits mothers
and their babies to bond. Loving touch triggers the release of oxytocin, often referred to
as the "bonding hormone ". Studies in
bonding also show that human babies who are held often and touched frequently
in their earliest stages of development have higher scores on physical,
emotional, and interpersonal scales (Klaus & Kennell, 1976; Field et. al.,
1986). Mothers and babies are hard-wired for the experience of
togetherness through breastfeeding, co-sleeping, and baby carrying.
According to Tiffany Field, PhD, director of the Touch
Research Institute at the University of Miami, “Cuddling stimulates pressure
receptors in your baby’s skin that create a host of effects, including reducing
levels of the stress hormone cortical, lowering heart rate and blood pressure,
and improving digestion.” And research says it works the same in
adults.
What happens when
we’re not touched?
Touch not
only feeds basic physiological needs it also provides physiological needs. It
gives reassurance and comfort and aids in the development of self-identity and
self-esteem.
The opposite is true of
abusive touch or lack of touch. In fact, the absence of loving touch has been
documented to have profound impact on the will to live. Death rates for
under-touched infants less than one year of age, in institutes during the
1920's ranged from 30% to 100 %. More than half of
all first-year infants died from a disease called Marasmus from the Greek
“wasting away.” Babies who were not
touched on a regular basis would literally starve themselves to death.
Touch
deprivation impairs development. For example, Romanian nursery children have
been found to have a higher than average incidence of stunted growth. When
given massage therapy, they showed improvement. A control group got attention
but no touch and did not show the same improvement. I am the baby of the family
by many years. I have two older sisters and when I was six months old we moved
to Germany and I had a German Nanny, I really grew up with four moms and an affectionate
dad. All in all my mother says, I was held cuddled and loved on so much as an infant
that my feet rarely touched the ground for my first two years of life. I
remember being patted and hugged throughout my childhood and I think it has
made me the most affectionate member of the family the first to hug, but it makes
me a more positive and confident leader.
Reflect on
these questions and perhaps seek answers from others.
Can you
remember how much and under what circumstances you were held and touched as a
child?
Did your
cultural background affect the touch you were given?Do you think the generation in which you were raised affected how much you were touched by your mom and dad?
How do you think the touch in your early life
affects you today?
Do you
think it affects or did affect the way you interact with your children?
Do you think your touch background affects you in your professional relationships?
Do you think your touch background affects you in your professional relationships?
Earth Field
says, “Touch deprived infants and toddlers become aggressive children,”
Field continues. “As a culture, we are not gentle and physically demonstrative enough
with our children.” Anthropoligal research date show mainstream
American mothers are giving less
positive touch and give more negative touch mainly is response to acting out.
In fact, parents in the US touch less to praise and more to punish.
Field sites a set of studies
conducted in McDonald’s restaurants and playgrounds in both countries show
American moms to be significantly less physically affectionate with their kids
than French mamas.
Of eighteen industrialized nations,
the United States tops the list in adolescent male homicides. France - one of
the huggy-kissiest countries around - is at the bottom.
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