Touching And Being Touched

Touch is a fundamental element of dance. The (time) forms and contact zones of touch are means of expression both of self-reflexivity and the interaction of the dancers. Liberties and limits, creative possibilities and taboos of touch convey insights into the ‘aisthesis’ of the different forms of dance: into their dynamics and communicative structure, as well as into the production and regulation of affects. Touching and Being Touched assembles seventeen interdisciplinary papers focusing on the question of how forms and practices of touch are connected with the evocation of feelings. Are these feelings evoked in different ways in tango, Contact improvisation, European and Japanese contemporary dance? The contributors to this volume (dance, literature, and film scholars as well as philosophers and neuroscientists) provide in-depth discussions of the modes of transfer between touch and being touched. Drawing on the assumptions of various theories of body, emotion, and senses, how can we interpret the processes of tactile touch and of being touched emotionally? Is there a specific spectrum of emotions activated during these processes (within both the spectator and the dancer)? How can the relationship of movement, touch, and emotion be analyzed in relation to kinesthesia and empathy?

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.

Feelings of Being is the first ever account of the nature, role and variety of 'existential feelings' in psychiatric illness and in everyday life. There is a great deal of current philosophical and scientific interest in emotional feelings. However, many of the feelings that people struggle to express in their everyday lives do not appear on standard lists of emotions. For example, there are feelings of unreality, surreality, unfamiliarity, estrangement, heightened existence, isolation, emptiness, belonging, significance, insignificance, and the list goes on. Ratcliffe refers to such feelings as 'existential' because they comprise a changeable sense of being part of a world In this book, Ratcliffe argues that existential feelings form a distinctive group by virtue of three characteristics: they are bodily feelings, they constitute ways of relating to the world as a whole, and they are responsible for our sense of reality. He explains how something can be a bodily feeling and, at the same time, a sense of reality and belonging. He then explores the role of altered feeling in psychiatric illness, showing how an account of existential feeling can help us to understand experiential changes that occur in a range of conditions, including depression, circumscribed delusions, depersonalisation and schizophrenia. The book also addresses the contribution made by existential feelings to religious experience and to philosophical thought.

Marriage should be based on love, right? But does it seem as though you and your spouse are speaking two different languages? #1 New York Times bestselling author Dr. Gary Chapman guides couples in identifying, understanding, and speaking their spouse's primary love language-quality time, words of affirmation, gifts, acts of service, or physical touch. By learning the five love languages, you and your spouse will discover your unique love languages and learn practical steps in truly loving each other. Chapters are categorized by love language for easy reference, and each one ends with simple steps to express a specific language to your spouse and guide your marriage in the right direction. A newly designed love languages assessment will help you understand and strengthen your relationship. You can build a lasting, loving marriage together. Gary Chapman hosts a nationally syndicated daily radio program called A Love Language Minute that can be heard on more than 150 radio stations as well as the weekly syndicated program Building Relationships with Gary Chapman, which can both be heard on fivelovelanguages.com. The Five Love Languages is a consistent New York Times bestseller - with over 5 million copies sold and translated into 38 languages. This book is a sales phenomenon, with each year outselling the prior for 16 years running!

The "New York Times" bestselling author of "The Compass of Pleasure" examines how our sense of touch is interconnected with our emotions Dual-function receptors in our skin make mint feel cool and chili peppers hot.

Given that touch and touching is so central to everyday embodied existence, why has it been largely ignored by social scientists for so long? What is the place of touch in our mixed spaces of sociality, work, domesticity, recreation, creativity or care? What conceptual resources and academic languages can we reach towards when approaching tactile activities and somatic experiences through the body? How is this tactile landscape gendered? How is touch becoming revisited and revalidated in late capitalism through animal encounters, tourism, massage, beauty treatments, professional medicine, everyday spiritualities or the aseptic touch-free spaces of automated toilets? How is touch placed and valued within scholarly fieldwork and research itself, integral as it is to the production of embodied epistemologies? How is touch involved in such aesthetic experiences as shaping objects in sand, or encountering fleshly bodies within a painting? The goal of this edited collection, Touching Space, Placing Touch is twofold: 1. To further advance theoretical and empirical understanding of touch in social science scholarship by focussing on the differential social and cultural meanings of touching and the places of touch. 2. To develop a multi-faceted and interdisciplinary explanations of touch in terms of individual and social life, personal experiences and tasks, and their related cultural contexts. The twelve essays in this volume provide a rich combination of theoretical resources, methodological approaches and empirical investigation. Each chapter takes a distinct aspect of touch within a particular spatial context, exploring this through a mixture of sustained empirical work, critical theories of embodiment, philosophical and psychoanalytic approaches to gendered touch and touching, or the relationship between visual and non-visual culture, to articulate something of the variety and variability of touching experiences. The contributors are a mixture of established and emerging researchers within a growing interdisciplinary field of scholarship, yet the volume has a strong thematic identity and therefore represents the formative collection concerning the multiple senses of touch within social science scholarship at this time.

A chronicle, a memoir, a reflection on the pandemic, and a cultural analysis of the new spatial, social, and epistemological forms that have arisen with it, this volume weaves together cultural history, aesthetics, and urban and digital studies. It looks at the particular ways in which the possibilities for touch, touching and being touched, both physically and affectively, are reconfigured by the pandemic. How are love, care, and humanity’s complex relationships with technology and nature played out in the interval between abandoned city centres and digitally mediated gatherings? How can we comprehend the reconfiguration of relationships through the human response to the pandemic as an experience that concerns us all but affects each of us in different ways? How do we think through the technological and material dependencies that the pandemic situation establishes? And how does this allow us to imagine the world beyond the pandemic—both utopian and dystopian? The essays in this book explore the new forms of intimacy and distance that are developing in the wake of COVID-19, offering a distinctive, topical analysis in the fields of urban and digital studies.

The rules of physical contact can be tricky to grasp and children with special needs are at a heightened risk of abuse. This friendly picture book explains in simple terms how to tell the difference between acceptable and inappropriate touch, thereby helping the child with special needs stay safe. Each story covers a different type of touch from accidental to friendly to hurtful and will help children understand how boundaries change depending on the context. It explores when and where it is okay to touch other people, when and where other people can touch you, why self touching sometimes needs to be private, and what to do if touch feels inappropriate. This book is an invaluable teaching resource and discussion starter for parents, teachers and carers working with children with special needs.