Original Skin. Maryrose Cuskelly

where babies were massaged by researchers for 15 minutes three times a day for ten days. The treatment also included gently moving the babies’ limbs. At the end of the ten-day period, the massaged babies had put on 47 per cent more weight than the control babies who were not massaged. Kangaroo care can achieve similar results, Carol believes. ‘I think human beings need close bodies. Whether you’re a baby or an old person, you need people who love you to be physically close to you.’

      ‘There’s such a lot of similarity between little bodies that are at the edge of viability and old bodies that are at the edge of viability,’ Carol tells me, and this belief influenced the way that she interacted with her father when he was old and dying. Towards the end of his life, he was in a nursing home where she would visit him three or four times a week. But, she says, she would never just sit beside the bed. Ignoring the sometimes-puzzled looks of the staff and other visitors, she would climb up on the bed and sit beside her father so that her body was touching his. She would also stroke his arms and head with her hands.

      ‘There’s almost some sort of taboo about touching your dad the way you would touch a baby, she says, ‘but I would do that all that time.’ It was something they both found comforting.

      On one visit, she found him bruised and battered in his bed after a bad fall. As usual, she had arrived in time to help him with his evening meal, but he refused to eat.

      ‘I just leant over and gave him a big hug,’ she says, ‘and his old arms went around me.’ They stayed like that for a long time and then, finally, when they broke the embrace, she was able to get her father to eat. ‘He absolutely needed the close contact more than he needed food. He needed someone to hug him and to understand how he was hurting.’

      TOUCH HAS ALWAYS been associated with the healing professions. Doctors, physiotherapists, nurses, myotherapists and masseurs, occupational therapists, and practitioners of alternative medicines use touch diagnostically, to comfort, and in the course of treatment.

      In many traditional blessings, the hand of the holy person is placed on the head of the one to be blessed, the touch conferring authority, absolution, or a benediction. The Bible contains numerous references to both Jesus and his apostles ‘laying on hands’ in order to heal or to bestow the Holy Spirit.

      Royalty were once thought to have the power to heal through touch. When the king or queen claimed the source of their right to rule as coming directly from God, their power was exemplified through the notion of the Royal Touch. Exercised by monarchs in England and France up to the 18th and 19th centuries respectively, the ritual was deemed particularly beneficial for sufferers of scrofula, a nasty tubercular condition that afflicted the lymph nodes of the neck area. Ugly, weeping sores resulted, and the condition was known in France as ‘mal le roi’—the King’s Evil. As well as being able to bestow healing with the touch of their hands, true kings are apparently never attacked by lions.

      Massage, whether therapeutic, remedial, or for relaxation, is a popular way that we can get permission to be touched. As our society has become more affluent, there has been a rise in businesses that enable us to be ‘professionally’ touched in an impersonal and yet intimate way. From the hairdresser and the beauty therapist to masseurs and physiotherapists, we lower the usual boundary of personal space to allow these strangers and acquaintances to put their hands on our bodies.

      Recently, when I had a massage as a treat for my birthday, as the therapist, a young woman who I had never met before, tucked the soft, thick towel into the band of my underpants and edged them down, I was reminded of the intimacies of touch that happen between a child and its mother. The physical environs of the modern massage suite serve to further evoke the nursery: the darkened room, the soothing music, soft cloths placed against the skin, and the sweet smells of citrus and lavender.

      It was like being a toddler again, being fussed over and coddled a little. I was positively tucked in. As I lay there happily submitting to the firm, professional stroke and kneading of the masseuse’s hands, I reflected on the pleasant selfishness of submitting to this touch that did not require reciprocation. Apart from the fee that I would pay at the end of my session, I had no obligation to respond to the firm strokes and the occasional deep bite of pressure on a particularly knotted muscle. My experience of it was as a one-way transaction, but I did wonder if my masseuse felt the same way.

      Anne Davies is a myotherapist. Myotherapists use many traditional massage techniques, along with a detailed knowledge of anatomy and the working of joints and muscles, to treat pain, injury, and dysfunction of movement. Anne’s client base comes mainly from those with sports injuries or postural issues and ranges from elite athletes to weekend joggers. Small and compact, she strikes me as someone who focuses on the biomechanics of massage and its therapeutic benefits to the muscles beneath her hands. I imagine her treatment room as light and spare, totally devoid of candlelight and whale song.

      For Anne, when assessing injury in her client, touch is way to ‘see’ into the muscles and joints. The knowledge she gains through palpating the tissue beneath the skin allows her to gauge where there’s inflammation or a build up of fluid, or where the muscle is in spasm.

      At one point, Anne leans across the table to take my hand, ‘Can I touch you?’ she asks, and I give permission. She holds my hand lightly in hers, her fingers moving in small circles over the place where the skin lies close to the bones, uncushioned by a layer of fat. The contact is sure, deft, and professional, as she demonstrates the light pressure that is required to encourage lymphatic drainage. At her assured touch, I find myself responding. It is immediate; Anne’s touch is at once reassuring and pleasant. I feel like a cat that finds itself unexpectedly, yet pleasantly, scratched behind the ears.

      Despite her clinical approach, Anne concedes that there is often an exchange of energy between a masseur and the person being massaged. This exchange can go either way and sometimes, she says, there are clients who emanate a negative or malevolent charge, and ‘you have to protect yourself against that’. Other times, she says, before she begins a massage, she will feel tired and depleted, but by the end of the hour she’ll be energised. Something has happened in the time she has had her hands on the skin that has revitalised both her and her client.

      No matter who it is on the table before her, there is always an undercurrent of a sexual or cultural nature, she says. Teenage boys, prickly and full of juice, are an interesting challenge as clients. Anne tries to overcome any awkwardness brought on by their partial disrobing and her hands on their skin by talking to them like an aunt’. If they have an iPod, she asks them about the music they’re listening to; if it’s a sports injury that they’ve come to see her about, then she’ll talk to them about the sport they play.

      For some, she says, she feels like a hairdresser, in that they talk to her about their families, their work, and the other matters that have filled their day. For other clients, with injuries requiring painful manipulation, she imagines they view coming to see her like a visit to the dentist. She does concede, though, that the release of adrenaline and endorphins that a massage can give, even though there may be a degree of pain, can be pleasurable. And at the memory of her fleeting touch on my skin, I don’t imagine a massage from Anne would be all bad.

      Towards the end of our chat, Anne mentions a ‘skin hunger’ that she has noticed, mainly in her older clients. Perhaps they have found themselves single after a divorce or the death of a partner, or it maybe they simply don’t touch their partner much any more. Often, she finds, they will spontaneously tell her that it feels good to be touched, but more frequently she is simply aware that the feel of hands on their skin is something that they have been craving. An image of Carol sitting beside her elderly father in his bed in the nursing home comes to mind. I see her with her weight comfortably pressed against his body and her hands stroking his arm.

      What are the rules for professional touch? In the massage suite, there are the discretions of the averted gaze and the carefully placed towel that shields areas of the unclothed body that are not being massaged.

      In a conversation with Jenny Webb, whose career as a masseuse, myotherapist, and a teacher of both, spans almost 20 years, she tells me that she advises her students that any time they touch a client it must be for a professional purpose. For instance, she