The Deep Therapy of Touch
Social distancing and refraining from touching have become essential strategies for avoiding exposure to the coronavirus and preventing transmission but dealing with the effects of ‘hug deprivation’ or ‘touch starvation’ are proving to be a difficult challenge.
Hug Rooms
The Washington Post published (24 December 2020) a heart-wrenching story from a nursing home in Greccio, Italy. Despite residents being able to see and hear their visiting loved-ones from a safe distance or through video calls, some were slipping into depression.
The director had a ‘hug room’ built out of plexiglass. It was moulded into a three-sided booth with four cutout holes. This enables contact-starved residents to receive and give hugs while maintaining safety for all.
Residents told their relatives about this innovation and the schedule to use the hug room for 15-minute sessions quickly filled up.
The descriptions of these joyous hug and stroking encounters are quite moving. There was small talk “but the words were just a soundtrack for a meeting whose meaning was far more physical.” The touching evoked deep emotion and expressions of love.
The photo of a tender moment at a makeshift ‘hug station’ with the caption, ‘She Didn’t Want to Let Go’, became a defining image in ‘Time’s Top 10 Photos of 2020’.
Physical, Emotional and Social Healing
The COVID pandemic has highlighted the way that touch is an essential physical and emotional need and part of what it means to be human. Studies support what we know instinctively, that touching improves our wellbeing, by calming our nervous system, boosting our immune system and reducing stress, anxiety and depression.
One of the astonishing things about Jesus was, not only the way he touched people to heal and to bless but he touched those who’d been pushed to society’s edge and those that society had branded ‘untouchable’. His public act of touching people was a tangible sign of welcome and acceptance and a call for others to do likewise.
Touching Substitutes
Touching prohibitions and other social distancing measures are an important part of COVID protocol and handshaking may never return to pre-COVID levels. In her 2001 book entitled, Touch, Dr. Tiffany Field argued that American society was already dangerously touch deprived, long before the COVID pandemic made it worse. While the infections rage, it is important to build safe connections, gather together wisely and devise creative ways of contacting one another and bringing joy.
In the post-COVID period, when the infection and death rates subside, let’s remember to exercise the personal and communal therapy of touch.
Geoff Pound
Image Caption & Credit: Giovanna Chinaglia grasps her granddaughter’s hands. Though they chatted, the visit was more about touch. (Geraldine Hope Ghelli for the Washington Post)