Safe Touch Starts Young

Touch can be an incredible healer.

But ONLY if there is true consent.

Sometimes it's explicit verbal consent. Sometimes it's body language - the way someone opens their arms for a hug, they way they lean in to a gentle stroke on the arm. Yet sometimes consent is virtually impossible to achieve because the person in the position to give consent has never been taught that their body is their own - that it is their right to say yes, or no.

This can happen in a multitude of ways but until that understanding is in place, any touch that happens can only go so far - before it hits the wall of feeling external pressures rather than the simple choice of someone to accept the Touch.

This year the popular and brilliant A Mighty Girl website (they're also on Facebook) features an excellent blog entitled "This Holiday Season, Let Kids Choose Who They Hug." Clear and informed by experts in the fields of mental health and child development, this article says it all - including responses supportive adults can offer other adults who appear offended by behaviour which, until that point, may be a-typical for that particular family. As with so many things, if we can start this Touch education young, so many problems in later life can be avoided.

Consent in therapeutic Touch is central to all things NO HANDS - and, of course, NEUROTOUCH as well. This is why clear communication is one of the core foundations all our courses are built on - and why we offer a 6 day communication training, the TRANSACTIONAL BODYWORKER, for any bodyworker, any where in the world, who wants to bring this clarity to their own work. Our Effective Communication self-study course also covers many core principles which previous students have found quite literally life changing - check it out.