Theology Department
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The Bhagavad Gita and the Tao Te
Ching, struggle with many issues -- power, discipline, sensory stimuli, how
to act, desire, ignorance, knowledge, attachments, freedom. How would a blindfold
walk, and the readings below, relate?
Sources are listed at the end.
"Our skin
is what stands between us and the world.....it imprisons us, but it also
gives us individual shape, protects us from invaders,
cools us down or heats us up as need be, produces vitamin D, holds in our
bodily fluids......it can mend itself when necessary, and it is constantly
renewing itself. Weighing from six to ten pounds, it's the largest organ
of the body. Skin can take a startling variety of shapes: claws, spines,
hooves, feathers, scales, hair. It's waterproof, washable, and elastic.
It lasts surprisingly well. For most cultures, it's the ideal canvas to
decorate with paints, tattoos, and jewelry. But, most of all, it harbors
the sense of touch.
"The hairiest
parts of the body are generally the most sensitive to pressure, because
there are many sense
receptors at the base of each hair. In animals, from mice to lions, the
whiskers around the mouth are extraordinarily sensitive; our body hairs
are sensitive, too, but to a lesser degree. The skin is also thinnest where
there's hair. "Feeling
doesn't take place in the topmost layer of skin, but in the second
layer. The top layer....is
dead, sloughs off easily, and contributes to that ring around the bathtub.
A carpenter looking for rough patches may run a thumb over the plank
of wood he has just planed. A cook may roll a bit of dough between
a thumb and forefinger to test its consistency. Without having to look
at the spot, we know at once where we cut ourself shaving, or where
a stocking is starting to run. It's entirely possible to feel wet,
even though we may not be wet (when washing dishes with plastic gloves
on, say), which suggests the complex sensations that constitute touch.
The reason it's easier to get our feet wet first when we brave an icy
ocean is that there aren't as many cold receptors in the feet as there
are on, for example, the tip of the nose. Stopple the orifices of your heart,
"Language
is steeped in metaphors of touch. We call our emotions feelings, and we
care most deeply when something 'touches'
us. Problems can be thorny, ticklish, sticky, or need to be handled with
kid gloves. Touchy people, especially if they're coarse, really get on
our nerves. Noli me tangere, legal
Latin for "don't meddle or interfere," translates literally
as "Don't touch me," and it was what Christ said to Mary Magdalene
after the Resurrection.....A toccata in music is a composition for organ or other
keyboard instrument in a free style. It was originally a piece intended to show
touch technique,
and the word comes from the feminine past participle of toccare, to touch.
Music teachers often chide students for having 'no sense of touch,' by which
they mean the indefinable delicacy of execution.
In fencing, saying touche means that you have been touched by the foil
and are conceding to your opponent, although, of course, we also say it when
we think we have been foiled because someone's argumentative point is well made.
A touchstone is a standard -- originally, hard black stones like jasper or basalt,
used to test the quality of gold or silver by comparing the streaks they left
on the stone with those of an alloy.....D.H. Lawrence's use of the word touch
isn't epidermal but a profound penetration into the core of someone's being.....What
seems real we call "tangible," as if it were a fruit whose rind we
could feel. When we die, loved ones swaddle us in heavily padded coffins, making
us infants again, lying in our mother's arms before returning to the womb of
the
earth, ceremonially unborn. When, like a tortoise retracting its limbs, he withdraws
his senses
"Massaged
babies gain weight as much as 50 percent faster than unmassaged babies.
They're more active,
alert, and responsive, more aware of their surroundings, better able to
tolerate noise, and they orient themselves faster and are emotionally more
in control. [In one study a follow-up exam eight months later showed] massaged
preemies were found to be bigger in general, with larger heads and fewer
physical problems. The touched infants....cried less, had better temperaments,
and so were more appealing to their parents, which is important because
the 7 percent of babies born prematurely figure disproportionately among
those who are victims of child abuse. Children who are difficult to raise
get abused more often. People who aren't touched much as children don't
touch much as adults, so the cycle continues. "A
1988 NYTimes article
on the critical role of touch in child development reported 'psychological
and physical stunting of infants deprived of physical contact, although
otherwise fed and cared for...' which was revealed by...a study of
primates and another of.....World War II orphans. 'Premature infants
who were massaged for 15 minutes three times a day gained weight 47
percent faster than others who were left alone in their incubators....the
massaged infants also showed signs that the nervous system was maturing
more rapidly: they became more active.... more responsive to such things
as a face or a rattle....infants who were massaged were discharged
from the hospital an average of six days earlier.' Eight months later,
the massaged infants did better in tests of mental and motor ability
than the ones who were not. There's nothing extra going into the [massaged] babies,
yet they're more active, gain weight faster; and they become more
efficient. It's amazing how much information is communicable in a
touch. Every other sense has an organ you can focus on, but touch
is everywhere.
-- Dr. Tiffany
Field, child psychologist at the University of Miami Medical School, the
hospital of which handles up to 15,000 births
a year. Saul Schanberg, a neurologist, works in pediatrics and is interested
in psychosocial dwarfism. "Some children who live in emotionally destructive
homes just stop growing. ....even growth-hormone injections couldn't prompt
the stunted bodies of children to grow again, but tender loving care did.
The affection they received from the nurses when they were admitted to
a hospital was often enough to get them back on the right track.....he
began to think that preemies, who are typically isolated and spend much
of their time without human contact. Animals depend on being close to their
mothers for basic survival. If the mother's touch is removed (for as little
as 45 minutes in rats), the infant lowers its need for food to keep itself
alive until the mother returns. This works out well if the mother is away
only briefly, but if she never comes back, then the slower metabolism results
in stunted growth. "Touch
reassures an infant that it's safe; it seems to give the body a go-ahead
to develop normally.
In many experiments conducted all over the country, babies who were
held more became more alert and developed better cognitive abilities
years later. It's a little like the strategy one adopts on a sinking
ship: First you get into the life raft and call for help. Baby animals
call their mothers with a high-pitched cry. Then you take stock of
your water and food, and try to conserve energy by cutting down on
high energy activities -- growth, for instance. Focus your vital breath until He
"..... a relatively small amount of touch deprivation
alone caused brain damage, which was often displayed in the monkeys as
aberrant behavior" in a University of Illinois primate experiment,
in which the cerebellums of isolated and partially-separated monkeys were
autopsied. Touch is far more essential than our other senses.
It's ten times stronger than verbal or emotional contact, and if
affects damn near everything we do. No other sense can arouse you
like touch; we always knew that, but we never realized it had a biological
basis. If touch didn't feel good, there'd be no species, no parenthood,
or survival. A mother wouldn't touch her baby in the right way unless
the mother felt pleasure doing it. Those animals who did more touching
instinctively produced offspring which survived, and their genes
were passed on and the tendency to touch became even stronger. We
forget that touch is not only basic to our species, but the key to
it.
"In the
absence of touching and being touched, people of all ages can sicken and
grow touch-starved.....The first emotional comfort,
touching and being touched by our mother remains the ultimate memory of
selfless love, which stays with
us life long.
"Touch,
by clarifying and adding to the shorthand of the eyes, teaches us that
we live in a three-dimensional world....We
remember the feel of the loved one's hand, how their body curves, the texture
of their hair. Touch allows us to find our way in the world in the darkness
or in other circumstances
where we can't fully use our other senses.
"Touch
is so powerful a healer that we go to professional touchers (doctors, hairdressers,
dancing instructors, barbers, tailors...)
and frequent emporiums of touch -- discotheques, shoeshine stands, mud
baths.....The most obvious professional touch is the massage, designed
to stimulate circulation, dilate blood vessels, relax tense muscles, and
clean toxins out of the body through the flow of lymph..... [While] there
are many different massage techniques....studies have shown that loving
touching
alone -- in whatever style -- can improve health.
"A Philadelphia
experiment studied the survival chances of patients who had had heart attacks.
Examining a wide spectrum of variables
and their effects on survival, the experiments discovered that produced
the strongest effect was pet ownership. It made no difference if the person
were married or single -- pet owners still survived the longest. The idle
stroking of our pets that is so calming and can be done almost subconsciously
while we do something else or talk to friends or work has a healing effect.
As one of the experiments said: 'We raise our children in a nontactile
society and have to compensate with nonhuman creatures. First with teddy
bears and blankets, then with pets. When touch isn't there, our true isolation
comes through.'
"Despite
the fact that we're territorial creatures who move through the world like
small principalities, contact warms us
even without our knowing it. It probably reminds us of that time, long
before deadlines and banks, when our mothers cradled us and we were enthralled
and felt perfectly lovable. Even touch so subtle as to be overlooked doesn't
go unnoticed
by the subterranean mind."
And when the men of that place recognized him, they....brought
to him all that were sick, and besought him that they might only
touch the fringe of his garment, and as many as touched it were made
well.
Matthew
14:35-36
Sources: From A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman unless otherwise noted. (I recommend Ackerman's book highly; see me if you're interested in other readings.) |