The Touch Map In Our Hands
Cornelia Elbrecht AThR, SEP, ANZACATA, IEATA, IACAET
While clients are engaging with crayons, collage materials, paint and clay, their hands act as neurophysiological sensory organs (Linden 2015) (Grundwald, M. (Ed.) 2008) (Elbrecht, C.; 20013; 2021) As the hands reach out to touch an object, they also receive sensory feedback from this encounter. These object relations are not only informed by the present encounter, but also by past experiences. Virtually all traumatic events involve touch, such as unwanted, violent, painful, disgusting touch, or the absence of existentially needed touch due to neglect. Our skin boundary becomes invaded through inappropriate touching, through abuse, accidents and medical procedures.
Held as implicit memories in the body, clients are rarely aware of how profoundly these past injuries shaped their present haptic relationship with the world. However, these experiences are written into the body map of the hands and consequently clients will avoid connecting with any area in their palms that could activate past traumas. Understanding haptic object relations allows therapists to observe clients’ fear of embodiment, or comfort level with it. Fostering clients’ haptic connection through specific art materials can add significantly to a unique sensorimotor healing process.
Our hands are complex neuro-physiological sensory organs. From the haptic perspective the hands mirror the entire human organism. Neurologist David Linden, who dedicated his research to the science of touch, calls this phenomenon a touch map. That a “map of the body surface exists in the somatosensory cortex.” (Linden 2015) We can quite effectively adapt this haptic body map for our work as art therapists.
Figure 1: Pushing away with the base of the hands.
For example, the base of the hand relates to the pelvis and abdomen. If you attempt to push the table in front of you away, you will easily discover that your fingertips have little strength, using the flat hand also has no power, but the base of the hand will be able to move the table. It will instantly engage the gravitational core in the lower abdomen. Even when sitting in a chair, the feet, legs, and abdomen will get organised to apply a counter pressure that reverberates through the entire body. The base of the hand engages all gross motor impulses involving pressure. The thumb in this context is technically not a finger, but an extension of the base of the hand, necessary to apply counterpressure through a variety of grips.
Figure 2: Fully connecting with the flat hand.
The flat hand has the highest sensory abilities. The moment the inner hand connects with paint or clay it will communicate qualities to the entire body, such as warm or cold, soft, or hard, pleasurable, or disgusting. Our key relational capacity lies in the inner hand. When we caress or hug someone we love, we will engage with an open hand. When the flat hand is smoothing paint, liquid clay, or shaving cream we deeply connect. When slime, playdough or clay arrives in the inner hand, the heart-lung region responds, and clients feel the material, which can be both sensory and emotional. Clients who have been hurt in relationships will frequently brace away from direct contact with the art materials through the flat hand; they will prefer distancing tools such as crayons, paint brushes, and scissors, or use only their fingertips. They will go to great length, in order not to be fully touched. They will avoid the relational centre in our physiology, the chest and heart area.
Figure 3:
Detailing with the fingertips, fine-tuning an image.
The fingertips can act like virtual sensors, not only able to touch, but also to see, hear, smell and taste. Along with their fine motor skills they have an astounding perceptual capacity. They are the ones who see images, colours, and landscapes when they create. The fingertips engage our cognitive abilities; they stimulate our imagination; they recognise shapes and can name them. The fingers’ fine motor skills can fashion a particular detail of a figure according to a mental plan, and in the process generate meaning.
Being aware of this touch map enables art therapists to observe the haptic connection their clients have with the art materials. More importantly it gives many clues about the client’s comfort level with their embodiment. If we view trauma as a physiological event rather than a story, the haptic engagement with art materials offers intriguing ways to art therapists to bring the dissociated sensory or inhibited motor function back online.
Works Cited
Elbrecht, Cornelia. 2021. Healing Trauma in Children with Clay Field Therapy; How Sensorimotor Art Therapy Supports the Embodiment of Developmental Milestones. Berkley, California: North Atlantic Books.
—. 2013. Trauma healing at the clay field, a sensorimotor art therapy approach. London/Philadelphia: jessica Kingsley.
Grundwald, M. (Ed.). 2008. Human haptic perception: Basics and application. Basel/ Boston. MA/ Berlin: Birkhauser.
Linden, David J. 2015. Touch, the science of hand, heart and mind. Great Britain: Viking .
AThR, SEP, ANZACATA, IEATA, IACAET
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