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The only one of our 5 senses that is critical to survival is also the one we sideline

the most TOUCH.

About three months after the loss of my husband, I was sitting with my sons at their

school Annual Day function. The school band was ripping out numbers before the

start of the evening's programme. As it played the opening chords of the achingly

beautiful 'Teach Your Children', I was overcome by a rush of memories. This was a

song my husband and used to love to sing together, with him strumming his guitar

and our little boys pitching in with harmony vocals in voices that had not yet broken.

Before the school band had reached the first melting "Just look at them and

sighhhh... and know they love you", the tears were running silently down my face.

Then I felt a small hand creep into my lap and entwine my fingers. And

from the other side came another little hand. I looked on either side

and saw that my twin sons' eyes were also brimming with tears.

I gave both their hands a squeeze, and kissed them lightly on the

cheek. And we sat that way through the evening, our hands entwined,

in a synergy of comforting and being comforted. Babies need it,

grandparents thrive on it, and pet dogs and their owners alike see their

blood pressure drop when they receive it. Human touch is the first

language we learn, and our richest means of emotional expression

throughout life. Newborn babies process most information

through their skin. And even a frail 90- year-old with failing eyesight

clearly understands the grasp of a caring hand. But touch is also

arguably much more than that: it is our most essential source of sensory

stimulation. We can live without seeing or hearing -- in fact, without any of

our other senses. But babies born without effective nerve connections between

skin and brain can fail to thrive and may even die. Decades ago, laboratory

being touched by their mothers. They could see, hear and smell their mothers - but

they could not touch them. The babies became apathetic and failed to

progress. They did not explore as young primates normally do; rather they threw themselves prone on the floor, crying and

grimacing all the time, or huddled against a wall, rocking back and forth with their hands over their heads or faces. As with

baby monkeys, so with human babies. "Stroking" - that is, repetitious bodily contact, is essential to their survival. Without it,

they die, not just psychologically, but often physically, too. One of the most dramatic proofs that physical death can result

from touch deprivation during the early months of life came in the early part of the 20th century in studies carried out on

babies raised in institutions. About half the mortality among infants under 1 year in these foundling homes was found be due to

an intriguing condition called larasmus" in which, despite adequate nutrition id healthcare, the babies seemed to waste vay.

(Marasmus is, in fact, a Greek word that eans "wasting away"). When New York's Bellevue Hospital started a iothering"

policy, making it a rule that every by was talked to, picked up, held, cuddled and rried around, the results were as dramatic

as emarasmus findings: the infant mortality rate the hospital fell from 50% to less than 10%. It ok some more time however for

Tender Loving be seen as the single most important eapon against marasmus. What explains these amazing outcomes? fants

are not fully developed at birth. They ied help in every way to survive. That help cludes physical stimulation on an ongoing isis.

Infant massage, one of the oldest iditional practices in Eastern cultures, including dia, provides that stimulation, helping to tone

e respiratory, circulatory, and gastro-intestinal stems (in addition to providing the cues necessary for the emotional health of

the ?wborn). The benefits of this traditional "touch erapy" for infants have been scientifically ibstantiated by literally hundreds

of studies rer almost a century now. One of the most equently-cited studies from the Touch Research stitute in Miami showed

that premature infants ho were massaged for 15 minutes three times a Nhether it's a natural by-product )f a mobile culture, a

fallout of our echnological age or something else, t seems all of society is less in touch )hysically than ever before. People iorl't

even shake hands as much as hey used to. The high-tech, easy-touch route is so inuring in terms of the convenience it affords,

we tend to forget the price we )ay in terms of authentic, warm human ouch. I recall reading this true-life cignette about a four-

year-old girl who, tfter discovering the story of the "Three .ittle Pigs", asked her dad to read it light after night. Dad, weary of

reading he same story each evening, tape-ecorded it and taught his little girl how o turn the machine on and off, as