NeuroAffective Touch
Touching is as necessary to the body as words are to the mind. Our skin is our largest sensory organ, containing hundreds of thousands of receptors that gather tactile information and pass it on directly to the brain. Loving, respectful touch is essential to healthy growth and development, while lack of touch is so damaging it can even impair the desire to live. Unfortunately, for over a century, the world of psychotherapy has disregarded half the equation—its clinical efforts have focused almost entirely on the mind and cognition while largely ignoring the body’s urgent need for touch, an important neurological component that allows us to integrate what our bodies are feeling with what our minds are thinking.
NeuroAffective Touch™ is a valuable tool that speaks the language of the body, yet invites the mind as an active partner. It uses direct contact with the skin and connective tissues and brings focus to the body’s many systems including nervous, endocrine, and circulatory. Facilitating access to feelings through this somatic conversation, it supports self-regulation and the awareness that leads to fulfilling connection with self and others.
As a therapeutic approach, NeuroAffective Touch™ addresses early attachment and developmental deficits by engaging the body on its own terms, at the deepest biological level, to heal the relational matrix.
-Dr Aline LaPierre – originator of NeuroAffective Touch
What Happens In A Session
-
NeuroAffective Touch is most often done on a massage table that has been modified.The table is covered with a very soft cushion so the effect is like a nest or of a particularly soft and comfortable place to sink into.
-
The body can settle into this in a way that is reminiscent of the early experience of being held in safety and comfort as a child or infant.
-
NeuroAffective Touch can also be done sitting or leaning up against something such as a chair or a couch.
-
The client is fully clothed. Shoes and belts may be removed.
-
The practitioner will use warm small pillows of various shapes or gentle touch to calm and communicate with the body's systems and slowly bring the parasympathetic nervous system fully online.
-
There may be words and quiet conversation as experiences are processed and meaning is made.
-
Clients often feel a deeper level of relaxation than they have ever experienced before.
-
This process can reach early traumatic imprinting and allow the nervous system to receive input that was needed but perhaps never received.
-
The vagus nerve and the sympathetic nervous system can slowly gain function and balance within appropriate activation rather than overreaction.
-
Sessions last for 60 minutes and the investment is $150. A 1.5 hour session is $220