What Do You Miss Most About Human Touch?

“It’s all about stimulating the response reception in the skin, which leads to a whole physical reaction that slows the nervous system down,” Tiffany Field, the director of the Touch Research Institute, told me. If you’re sheltering alone, Field said, “I’m encouraging people to self-massage, which has the same benefit of activating receptors under your skin. Even just walking around your living room, you’re stimulating the pressure receptors in your feet.”

Thinking about how our relationship with touch might morph amid a pandemic, I asked people to share memories of their most affecting experiences with touch. Their answers demonstrate that many of our most resonant interactions are those we can—literally—feel.

“I used to wash hair at a salon. One woman would moan slightly when I touched her head. She found ways to extend her hair-washing time, which I was already extending because she obviously needed it. One day she told me, ‘My husband is dead and I have no children or grandchildren; you’re the only one who touches me.’”

“There’s this one area of my back on my upper left side, right on the bone, that always itches. I can’t reach it with my own fingers. I’m stubbornly independent, but this itch requires another human hand in order to get relief. And when someone finds the spot (there’s a lot of direction on my end) and scratches it, it is the fiercest, most sincere pleasure. The kind that makes me feel a little in love with whatever hand is at work. Thing is, the more someone scratches, the more intense the itch. Eventually, their hands get tired. And I’m grateful to them for trying, sad they’re gone. The itch might be a nerve-related thing or a dry-skin thing, according to the internet. Honestly, I wonder if my back really itches at all or if I’ve made it up. It’s nice to need a hand, and to miss it.”

“At the end of a 12-step meeting, we stand and grab the hands of strangers or friends on either side of us. Somebody says, “Take us out,” and that means to start a prayer. We pray together, including many of us who don’t believe in God. I feel, always, such gentleness and yet such solid commitment in the way we hold each other. I’ve been at a meeting at least once a week for 26 years, and since we can’t meet in person right now, we’re doing Zoom meetings and phone check-ins. I’m thinking now about the privilege of the circle, how I’ve never worried what was on those hands, and how those palms and fingers saved me.”

“I work with children who are deaf-blind, and I think a lot about one little girl who had developed a lot of self-injurious behaviors, banging and hitting her head constantly. The first time I met her, her teachers and team said that she was very resistant to touch, and would scratch or bite whenever someone approached her. She lay curled up in a ball on a wooden part of the floor, so I sat about four feet away from her and started to rhythmically tap on the floor, pausing every 15 seconds or so. At first, she was startled and curled up tighter, but after a few rounds of this, she started to calm down. I scooted a foot closer and resumed the routine. By the time I got to about a foot from her, she had relaxed completely, and started to explore with her hands. She bumped my knee, and from there found my hand, my arm, and my face. She thought my beard was hilarious, and laughed aloud—the first time her teachers had seen her laugh.”