Article by Bruce Stark
Touch is an essential part of our work as hands-on practitioners. Research continues to show that touch is necessary for our sense of vitality and well being. Yet from the perspective of Somatics touch is only one component of the therapeutic dynamic between the massage therapist and the client. The experience of “contact” is equally important to facilitating healing and structural change.
Through touch we become aware of our physical boundaries – what happens at the level of the skin. “Contact” moves beyond the boundary of the skin. It is the experience of everything outside of and within that boundary. Contact invites our clients to be present, thereby enabling them to access more physical and emotional resources to respond to the daily stresses and events of their lives.
Many Somatic practitioners have looked at ways to understand how the differentiation between touch and contact affects our work with clients. Gerda Alexander (1908-1994), a dancer and movement therapist who developed a form of bodywork in the 1950’s called Eutony – eu meaning good or well, and tonus meaning tension – found that by interacting with the motor and autonomic nervous systems she could help individuals become more self aware and experience themselves as a unified whole. Using touch and movement with presence and awareness clients felt “contacted” thereby able to change postural and structural imbalances in addition to increasing their emotional responsiveness.
The body’s receptor systems are highly sensitive and responsive to touch, but what is equally important is how the body perceives the quality and sensitivity of the touch it experiences. When we touch without a sense of receptivity the client can experience it as mechanistic, superficial or invasive, regardless of whether the touch is firm or gentle, or the type of techniques we are using at the time.
By contrast, contacting our clients requires that we as massage therapists become sensitive to what is happening both within the tissues and structures of our clients as well as what is happening externally in the relational dynamic between our clients and us. Instead of just noticing a tight or relaxed muscle we can differentiate it further. Is it rigid or is it flaccid (lifeless, non-responsive, “dry”)? Does it resist movement or is there some spring or “give” in the tissue? Does it feel solid or vitally relaxed (buoyant, enlivened, flexible)?
At first these distinctions may seem subtle to us, but with practice they become more obvious and dynamic. As we pay attention on this receptive and observational level our clients’ sensory nervous systems are stimulated and become more responsive. Contact then becomes a type of “conversation” between us – as we notice more going on within our clients they have the experience of noticing more within themselves. We create a physical and energetic space which facilitates self awareness and self reorganisation. We support our clients’ ability to access their bodies’ inherent wisdom to choose structurally efficient patterns thereby making our work with them deeper, more effective and truly profound.
In combination, touch and contact are our primary tools for helping our clients – whether for specific injuries or imbalances or for a general sense of relaxation and well being. The more we explore the experiences of boundaries (touch) and the movement in relationship to these boundaries (contact) with our clients and within ourselves as practitioners the more resourced our clients will become and the more effective we will be as massage therapists.