Why we need a daily dose of touch: an investigation of the effects of touch on our physical and mental well-being. Although the therapeutic benefits of touch have become increasingly clear, American society, claims Tiffany Field, is dangerously touch-deprived. Many schools have “no touch” policies; the isolating effects of Internet-driven work and life can leave us hungry for tactile experience. In this book Field explains why we may need a daily dose of touch. The first sensory input in life comes from the sense of touch while a baby is still in the womb, and touch continues to be the primary means of learning about the world throughout infancy and well into childhood. Touch is critical, too, for adults' physical and mental health. Field describes studies showing that touch therapy can benefit everyone, from premature infants to children with asthma to patients with conditions that range from cancer to eating disorders. This second edition of Touch, revised and updated with the latest research, reports on new studies that show the role of touch in early development, in communication (including the reading of others' emotions), in personal relationships, and even in sports. It describes the physiological and biological effects of touch, including areas of the brain affected by touch, and the effects of massage therapy on prematurity, attentiveness, depression, pain, and immune functions. Touch has been shown to have positive effects on growth, brain waves, breathing, and heart rate, and to decrease stress and anxiety. As Field makes clear, we enforce our society's touch taboo at our peril.

"My cheek is folded into his neck. He's speaking into my ear and I can feel his chest rising and falling against me. This hug is long, gentle, intimate and alien. Thanks to the huge sheet of plastic squeezed between us, covering us from head to toe and several feet further, it's also completely risk-assessed." The Guardian In the Summer of 2020 Dante or Die's Artistic Directors came across photographs of plastic hug tunnels in Brazilian care homes: plastic curtains with plastic arm-holes that allow two people to hug one another safely. They enabled elderly people to hug their loved ones during the Covid-19 pandemic. It struck a nerve, and inspired the company to make a one-on-one performance installation exploring the role of touch in our lives, which could be performed live during the pandemic. Skin Hunger is about the power of touch - a vital aspect of humanity that so many of us didn't realise we needed until it was restricted. The company invited pioneering writers Ann Akinrijin, Tim Crouch & Sonia Hughes, to respond to the idea with a piece of writing that would integrate the physical act of touch into the performance. Crucially, each piece of writing simply cannot be performed without an audience member sharing the space with a performer. This book includes each writer's piece of writing, reflections from the creative team, a foreword from a neuroscientist specialising in touch and images from the original production that took place in a hidden chapel in London's West End in June 2021.

Living in a world where magic is outlawed, Sadima's special gift to speak to the animals binds her to two young men who are determined to restore magic to their poor village in order to save the people they love. Reprint.

An exploration of the new science behind our most underappreciated sense and why we need to harness the power of touch for our health and well-being. Every day, we use our sense of touch to navigate the world. A handshake, a pat on the shoulder, a hug—all essential touches that make up our daily lives. In Touch Matters, Professor Michael Banissy brings together diverse scientific insights from the world's largest study on touch with takeaways on how to enhance your levels of touch for a happier, healthier life. The book explains why touch is essential to our well-being, the role it plays in our relationships, friendships, in the bedroom, workplace, in team activities such as sports, and much more. Banissy's latest research explores: Our "touch personalities" Touch starvation How touch defines our relationships and self-esteem The impact of touch on our physical and mental health This is a fascinating window into one of our most important and basic senses and how to harness its power. FEATURES ORIGINAL RESEARCH FROM "THE TOUCH TEST": Touch Matters is based on one of Banissy's most recent projects—the Touch Test—a science and broadcast collaboration with the BBC and Wellcome Collection. This project explored attitudes and experiences of touch via the world's largest contemporary survey on the topic, public exhibitions, and a series of broadcast programs focused on the topic of touch that received worldwide attention. The project had approximately 40,000 participants from 113 countries. OFFERS GUIDANCE ON COMMUNICATING AND CONNECTING IN OUR DAILY AND PROFESSIONAL LIVES: As we return to office work and live in a world where touch has become loaded with meaning, this book will help people understand how important touch is and the role it plays in every aspect of our lives, from relationships and friendships to the workplace and team activities and much more. Perfect for: Readers interested in science, psychology, and self-help Fans of James Nestor's Breath, Marc Brackett's Permission to Feel, Bill Bryson's The Body, Mark Miodownik's Stuff Matters Adults and parents of children resuming in-person activities including going back to the office, returning to school, traveling, and socializing Those interested in learning more about the science of touch, touch starvation, and how important touch is to child/human development People struggling with depression or anxiety around physical contact

Richard Kearney offers a timely call for the cultivation of the basic human need to touch and be touched. Making the case for the complementarity of touch and technology, this book is a passionate plea to recover a tangible sense of community and the joys of life with others.

Were you raised in a "non-touching" atmosphere? Is your "inner hunger" really a yearning for touch? Do you know what your touching "taboos" are? Do you wish you could feel more comfortable touching others or being touched? Are you fulfilling your loved one's need for touch? Would you like to learn how touching influences behavior and how it could enrich your daily? In the revised edition of her exciting book, The Power of Touch, Phyllis K. Davis explores the human need to touch and be touched--and how America's cultural taboos have made us a touch-starved nation. Phyllis shares important insights on physical contact, not only as a biological need, but also as a language that communicates love more powerfully than words.Thought provoking and inspiring, The Power of Touch examines the catastrophic effects on individuals not nurtured by loving touch. People deprived of this kind of touch often exhibit compulsive overeating, restlessness, drug abuse, promiscuity, and workaholism. Even more shocking--singles deprived of touch have a death rate five times higher than their married counterparts. Phyllis also refutes the myth that picking up crying infants spoils them and stresses the role being physically nurtured as babies plays in becoming well-adjusted adults. To help the reader learn how to bring more touch into their lives, Phyllis includes a chapter of touching exercises and ideas. "Without touch, a baby dies, the human heart aches, and the soul withers. Touch is communication on the most basic level: The Power of Touch is about the language of love spoken through physical contact. The need for touch is a necessity throughout our lives, from birth to death, which serves to sustain us emotionally and physically. She discusses how touch can improve relationships of all kinds-parent/child, man/woman, friend/friend-help heal the body, and open the heart to a deeper love. She provides insights into the role of touch in infant health, sexual satisfaction, well-being of the elderly, and she suggests a number of activities and exercises that will make touching a delightful and valuable tool in your life. In this wonderful book, author Phyllis K. Davis teaches you about the role of touch in healing, infant care, raising children, developmental psychology, lovemaking, old age, and friendship. The message is simple: Open your heart, reach out, and touch those you care about. If you are a friend, parent, massage therapist, teacher, lover, grandparent, caretaker, health-care professional--or just a compassionate human being--you will learn how even the briefest and simplest forms of touch influence your behavior and enrich the lives of those sharing your world.

Out of all the human senses, touch is the one that is most often unappreciated, and undervalued. Yet, the surface of the human body, the skin, is actually one huge sheet of tactile receptors. It provides us with the means to connect with our surroundings. Despite the important role that vision plays in our everyday lives, it is the skin that constitutes both the oldest, and by far the largest of our sense organs. The skin protects our body from the external world and, at the same time, informs us about what occurs on its surface. In Touch With The Future explores the science of touch, bringing together the latest findings from cognitive neuroscience about the processing of tactile information in humans. The book provides a comprehensive overview of scientific knowledge regarding themes such as tactile memory, tactile awareness (consciousness), tactile attention, the role of touch in interpersonal and sexual interactions, and the neurological substrates of touch. It highlights the many ways in which our growing understanding of the world of touch can, and in some cases already are, being applied in the real world in everything from the development of virtual reality (VR) environments, tablet PCs, mobile phones, and even teledildonics - the ultimate frontier in terms of adult entertainment. In addition, the book shows how the cognitive neuroscience approach to the study of touch can be applied to help improve the design of many real-world applications/products as well as to many of our everyday experiences, such as those related to the appreciation of food, marketing, packaging design, the development of enhanced sensory substitution systems, art, and man-machine interfaces. Crucially, the authors makes a convincing argument for the view that one cannot really understand touch, especially not in a real-world context, without placing it in a multisensory context. That is, the senses interact to influence tactile perception in everything - from changing the feel of a surface or product by changing the sound it makes or the fragrance it has. For students and researchers in the brain sciences, this book presents a valuable and fascinating exploration into one of our least understood senses

This book is an up-to-date compendium of knowledge on the secret language of close relationships, namely nonverbal routes of communication. In close relationships, as everyone learns sooner or later, the usefulness of words can be somewhat limited, because people (a) mean different things by the same words, (b) mean the same thing by different words, (c) sometimes find it hard to express their feelings in words, and (d) lie. Nonverbal signals therefore often provide the best means of communication. The book points out how decoding (interpreting) nonverbal signals is a major key to success, because often what people say wholly belies how they feel—nonverbal signals reveal their true feelings rather than what they want other people to think their feelings are. This book helps decode those secret signals. The book is written by the leading worldwide experts in the field of nonverbal communication to ensure accuracy, comprehensiveness, and timeliness.

Touch matters. It is fundamental to how we know ourselves and each other, and it is central to how we communicate. Digital touch is embedded in many technologies, from wearable devices and gaming hardware to tactile robots and future technologies. What would it be like if we could hug or touch digitally across distance? How might this shape our sense of connection? How might we establish trust or protect our privacy and safety? Digital Touch is a timely and original book that addresses such questions. Offering a rich account of digital touch, the book introduces the key issues and debates, as well as the design and ethical challenges raised by digital touch. Using clear, accessible examples and creative scenarios, the book shows how touch – how we touch, as well as what, whom and when we touch – is being profoundly reshaped by our use of technologies. Above all, it highlights the importance of digital touch in our daily lives and how it will impact our relationships and way of life in the future. The first work of its kind, Digital Touch is the go-to book for anyone wanting to get to grips with this crucial emerging topic, especially students and scholars of Digital Media and Communication Studies, Digital Humanities, Sensory Studies, and Science and Technology Studies.