The Primary Qualities of Touch

Location

• Unlike smell, taste, sight and hearing, touch is not localized in the same way. Your skin -- the largest organ in your body -- is how you employ touch to gather information about the world around you. Almost all of your skin is covered in nerve endings. These nerve endings perceive temperature, pain, pleasure, texture and more. The skin is composed of three layers -- the epidermis, the dermis and subcutaneous tissue. The epidermis is the outermost layer of skin that you can see, where the nerve endings that perceive touch reside. The dermis lies underneath the epidermis and contains hair follicles and sweat glands. The dermis also produces new skin cells to replace the dead ones as they are sloughed off of the surface of the epidermis. The subcutaneous tissue underneath the dermis and epidermis contains fat and connective tissue working to insulate the body and regulate body temperature.

Mechanism

• The technical name for the nerve endings, skin and receptors that let you perceive touch is the somatosensory system. Different kinds of touch receptors located all over your skin perceive whether an object is hot, cold, smooth, rough, soft or hard. These receptors relay a message to a close-by neuron, which are your body's messengers to the brain, when they touch an object. Neurons pass on the message that an object has been touched until it reaches the brain, which then sends signals back via the same pathway to communicate whether you should continue touching the object or stop touching it. This rapid-fire exchange of sensory information takes place almost instantaneously.

Receptor Types

• There are four different kinds of major touch receptors located throughout your skin's surface. These receptors are the first point of contact in the sensory chain that communicates details about an object's touch via the neuron pathway. Mechanoreceptors detect pressure, vibrations and texture. Thermoreceptors detect temperature. Pain receptors detect pain, and proprioceptors detect the relative position of different parts of your body in relation to one another and to the outside environment.

In Massage Therapy

• In massage therapy, the principle of touch has four major qualities. Some massage therapists believe that all four major qualities -- spiritual, mental, emotional and physical -- must be respected in order for massage to be successful and beneficial to the patient. The spiritual aspect of touch emphasizes the person's connection with her spirituality, whether in the form of a particular religion or a more personalized belief system. The mental aspect of touch brings to bear the person's thoughts and opinions on his experience of the physical world around him. The emotional aspect of touch respects the feelings and emotional state of the massage therapy patient at the point of contact of the massage. Finally, the physical aspect of touch -- its most obvious aspect -- relates specifically to the nature of the touch, whether it is deep or superficial, firm or gentle, and fast or slow.