Touch

While working in India, Doctor Paul Brand, who pioneered the modern treatment of leprosy, once laid his hand on a patient's shoulder. Then, through a translator, Brand informed the man about the treatment that lay ahead. To his surprise, the man began to shake with muffled sobs.

Doctor Brand asked his translator, “Have I done something wrong?” The translator quizzed the patient and reported, “No, doctor. He says he is crying because you put your hand around his shoulder. Until you came here, no one had touched him for many years.”

In his beautiful TEDx talk, John Sutherland, an officer in London's police department, explains a principle in forensic science called Locard's exchange principle. Developed by Dr. Edmond Locard, known as the Sherlock Holmes of France, this principle has a simple premise: every contact leaves a trace. In other words, every criminal leaves a trace behind him. One forensic expert put it this way:

Wherever he steps, whatever he touches, whatever he leaves, even unconsciously, will serve as a silent witness against him. Not only his fingerprints or his footprints, but his hair, the fibers from his clothes, the glass he breaks … the paint he scratches, the blood … he deposits or collects … This is evidence that does not forget.

Sutherland explains how this principle applies not just to forensic science but to all human relationships:

Every time two people come into contact with one another an exchange takes place. Whether between lifelong friends or passing strangers, we encourage, we ignore, we hold out a hand, or we withdraw it. We walk towards or we walk away. We bless or we curse… And every single contact leaves a trace. The way that we treat and regard one another matters. It really matters.

Dr. Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology and the scientific adviser for Pixar's film Inside Out, claims that human touch is the "the foundations of human relationships." He explains, "Skin to skin, parent to child, touch is the social language of our social life … The foundation of all human relationship is touch. There are four years of touch exchanged between mother and baby … In the social realm, our social awareness is profoundly tactile."

Keltner was one of the co-authors for a study that looked at "celebratory touches" of pro basketball players, including "fist bumps, high-fives, chest bumps, leaping shoulder bumps, chest punches, head slaps, head grabs, low fives, high tens, full hugs, half hugs, and team huddles." The researchers discovered that teams who players touched one another a lot did better than those teams whose players didn't. Keltner has concluded that touch lowers stress, builds morale, and produces triumphs—a chest bump instructs us in cooperation, a half-hug in compassion.

American culture—along with many more reserved European nations—is not comfortable with simple touch between men. While many global cultures express male/male friendship with embrace, linking arms, and even holding hands or a kiss on the cheek, the U.S. and likeminded cultures get nervous at anything much more than a handshake. But what does that physical isolation do to us?

A blog post from The Good Men Project asks, "… [W]here does this leave men? Physically and emotionally isolated. Cut off from the deeply human physical contact that is proven to reduce stress, encourage self-esteem and create community. Instead, we walk in the vast crowds of our cities alone in a desert of disconnection. Starving for physical connection." It's easy to forget the healing, grounding power of physical touch. Let's work to reclaim kind, appropriate, affectionate touch in our communities.

[The 19th century English poet] Samuel Taylor Coleridge described how his own [son], then three-years-old, awoke in the night and called to his mother. "Touch me, only touch me with your finger," the young boy pleaded. The child's mother was astonished.

"Why?" she asked.

"I'm not here," the boy cried. "Touch me, Mother, so I may be here."

Donald Miller quoted this story and then observed, "Essentially, we are all calling out for God to touch us that we may know we are here, and yet he waits, and we go untouched and seek out the knowing we exist in a thousand other ways."