Tony Windsor<[log in to unmask]> writes:
<Dear Mel, If you did not exist someone would have had to invent you. My
Saturday evenings with a Gin & Tonic would not be the same without your
valuable and sometimes irreverent 'digs' at received wisdom.>
***Thank you for those kind comments, though, I can assure you that there
others who think otherwise!
<I have no personal experience of the subject except that a very dear friend
of mine has a son who may have been 'traumatised at birth' and has been
significantly helped after only a few sessions of cranio-sacral osteopathy.
Behaviour/social skills and leaning ability have all been significantly
improved, not to mention sleeping patterns, which has been a major factor in
family life.....
Can you point me to a reference which will suggest the age at which children
may be influenced by adult perceptions or beliefs? >
***This issue of influencing the mind and behaviour in infants and animals
has long intrigued me when I was doing my MSc in brain research. I took one
of my first steps towards trying to understand this process by examining the
way in which information about the environment (including objects and people
in it) reaches the brain and is processed there. We still have only
scratched the surface of analysing exactly how the following sequence of
events: INPUT (sensation) - perception - cognition - higher order processing
-mediation - OUTPUT really takes place.
Your comments suggest that living creatures are influenced only by verbal,
auditory or visual communications and the belief systems of those involved in
the interaction. However, it is perfectly possible to teach any animal
without a single verbal command, using only gesture, tactile contact and
other nonverbal means. It has been shown repeatedly that the sense of touch
is one of the most powerful senses in influencing human behaviour, both in
providing pleasure or pain. It is independent of linguistic encoding and can
produce extremely powerful reactions and responses. In fact, the withholding
of tactile contact or the application of physical abuse is known to cause
many emotional and behavioural disorders in children.
That is why, when I taught some of the classical theories behind human drives
and behaviour at my former university (I used to lecture in communication in
the Dept of Linguistics for many years), I modified the well-known Maslow's
Hierarchy Model of human needs to include the need for touch and movement as
some of the basic physiological needs that have to be fulfilled before all
other needs such as safety and social needs.
Thus, I do not find it at all surprising that the power of suggestion can
operate very competently via touch, or even one's presence and movement in
another person's body space (proxemics and kinesics). Very often, unspoken,
yet strongly elicited sexual undertones associated with gentle and caring
human touch, even in a therapeutic setting can reduce a patient's pains and
perceptions of his/her condition. In the case of the very young, the
association of touch with warmth, protection, safety and sheer hedonistic,
primal pleasure is more than adequate to ensure that any therapy using
caring, gentle touch will enjoy a great measure of success. Heaven knows how
certain US Presidents, Kings and Queens have risked life, limb and careers in
the pursuit of some stolen moments of tactile bliss! I doubt that they did
so for reasons of verbal erudition and philosophical enrichment.
For those who have studied 'Therapeutic Touch' and 'Renaissance Nurse' by
Dolores Krieger, you will recall Dolores citing research which showed how
well premature infants responded to regular touch and holding in terms of
attaining normal bodymass and blood profiles. Well, similar research has
been produced since Dolores wrote her books, so I have no doubt at all that
craniosacral 'touch and space' manipulation relies to a major extent on the
human need for special types of well-studied and rehearsed touch. When
someone is able to scientifically prove that craniosacral rituals offer
something significantly more than sensory and perceptual placebo manipulation
through the enormously powerful tactile sense, then I shall begin to be less
skeptical of the hypotheses currently being put forward about its modus
operandi.
Dr Mel C Siff
Denver, USA
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