massage therapy journal

keeping you in touch.

  

Mann set out to find a way. Certainly, learning about “stranger danger,” as she and so many other children did, wasn’t the way. She, like the majority of those abused, knew her abuser. Instead, she looked to her own profession. She consulted with an Axelson-trained therapist to help develop a program of nurturing touch that could be taught to children. She also referred to the Pennsylvania Rape Coalition’s literature for safe touching practices— which recommends avoiding touching children on the lower back and thighs.

She emphasized boundaries. “Touch is about choice,” she says. “You don’t have to give or receive massage unless you want to, and if you start, you have the right to change your mind.”

Much of Mann’s hands-on work now includes leading workshops at libraries, schools, grief camps and conferences for early childhood care providers and educators—where she can teach children and those who care for them the benefits of healthy touch and the power of saying “no.”

She tells stories—Noah’s Ark with its menagerie, for example—or sings songs—such as the “Itsy Bitsy Spider”— on the child’s back. Other times, she’ll do tactile guessing games with the child’s hands. The children love it.

Mann mostly hears encouragement from teachers as well. “I hear over and over again, ‘I want to touch the children, but I can’t because of liability.’” She hopes that her program will help to change that.

“Just as nurses come into classrooms to screen for hearing and vision, and others screen for learning disabilities, I want to be able to go in and alleviate fears and say, ‘I can show you how to do this so children can get affirmation that they need,’” she says.

Derick shares this wish. About six months after that fateful night in 2003 when she viewed the Peaceful Touch video, she received a flyer—serendipitously, she says—advertising a Hans Axelson workshop near her home in Connecticut.

Peaceful Touch U.S.

After attending, and connecting with other local, likeminded souls, a new entity was born. “We started Peaceful Touch U.S. that weekend,” Derick says. Today, she co-chairs the program with Thomas VanDemark.

First, they had to translate the program for American culture, which meant no Swedish massage (too hands-on for the American market) and no hand-to-skin contact— way too uncomfortable for touch-free Americans.

Peaceful Touch U.S. created its own training manual, which included its four principals: permission (always ask first), presence (be present to your friend), pressure (ask for feedback) and practice (makes perfect).

Derick then approached a state-funded early child education center in nearby Newington, Connecticut, which served 60 children, aged three months through kindergarten, with a staff of 20. It helped that one of the parents was also a student at the CCMT. In the summer of 2006, Derick trained the staff in four, three-hour sessions over the course of a month.

The center’s director, Patrick Clow, says the Peaceful Touch training was like visiting Mars. “In my [traditional American] education, we never had any kind of coursework discussing touch, the quality of touch and the importance of touch,” he says.

He saw immediate results, though, especially with one 4-year-old tantrum-prone boy, which reinforced Clow’s decision, even though it was initially a hard sell to his board. “If someone came [near] the boy he would yell and scream and get upset,” Clow says. “The other children would get belligerent or defensive.”

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