Benefits of Touch During Massage - It's Fantastic

Touch is 1 of human beings “5 main senses”. It is the sense your masseur uses to help you. Touch relays emotions and is perfectly natural between humans. Touch in massage helps the body heal, removes stress and puts people back “in touch with their body”. It is used in families and between friends to improve the bond between them. Its natural, we all do it, it helps people and maybe we should do it more.

Touch is important as it is 1 of the “5 main senses” that humans use to understand and interpret their world. Its importance is obvious when we consider it is felt through the skin, which is the largest organ in the body. There are more nerve ending in the skin then anywhere else on the body and these sense and relay touch to the central nervous system. So there is a lot of touch sensing going on. Touch is even more important to the sight impaired who get to know and understand the world around them better by touching things. Touch aids your therapist to help you by “seeing” (feeling) tension with their hands. Touch was and can still be used in families and friends to enhance the bonds between them. Touching is a natural, human thing.

A Therapist Uses Touch During Massage to See With Their Hands

Hand touching and massaging another person's hand
A professional massage helps your body to relax from your finger tips all the way down to your toes.

This seeing with your hands was more evident with Narendra Mehta who was blind. It is he who brought Indian head massage to England. Touching enables a masseur to identify where tension exists in a client and then to manipulate muscle tissues removing that tension.

Humans touching other humans is important in a number of ways. Although not as accepted in Western society compared to Eastern society, affective (social) touching is understood to have emotional effects. For instance, a warm touch to make a person feel reassured can certainly help. A warm hug strengthens bonds between people. Also when we experience sudden pain rubbing the area is a very natural thing.

In massage the touch of the therapist helps the body to heal and relax. Energy (body heat, light friction, auric) is transferred during this process helps others feel better as long as the masseur has “Kindness in…” their “…warm touch.” It helps the blood and lymph to flow through the body when done correctly.

Touch during massage can also prevent modern illnesses by elevating stress. It also allows people to get back in tune with their body, when they take a moment to be mindfull of the experience. Without touching, massage cannot take place, making it ultimately important for our purposes.

Enhancing Bonds Between People

In Indian head massage’s ancient family based origins, touch benefited all of those involved by enhancing the bonds between individuals. If you can imagine, it was a mother who was massaging her children, as was the norm in India. The bond between mother and child will have been enhanced. It creates a feeling of security, warmth and comfort. Among friends touch can also enhance the bonds. When you meet someone, or when someone is feeling a little low, a hug can go a long way.

It Is a Natural Thing

Also touching is a very natural thing. In the modern Western world it is frowned upon in many circumstances. However consider, when we fall over or bump into something, the first reaction might be to touch (rub) the affected area. So this can be considered a natural form of healing. So why don’t we touch more to help others?