Where Touch and Soul Meet

Does one ever think of the power of touch? It is one of the senses of the human body. It’s an assumption for most that it is as basic as breathing. For some, that relationship of touch in their hands or fingers ends at those exact points.

For others, those who allow the feeling to travel along the nervous system back to the neurons in the brain, face an affliction of unpredictable events.

Religious institutions and spiritual traditions believe a soul exists within us. I believe it safe to say that the soul is multi-faceted, and travels in every cell of our body. When a person says their heart is broken or their head hurts, caused by non-physical external or internal trauma, the soul is affected.

Over 5 decades I have served others. I’ve been a Boy Scout who held old ladies’ hands to cross a street. I’ve held my grandmother’s hands many times for years as she wanted to die and join my grandfather. I was a Volunteer Fireman who helped people by using CPR or helped carry them on a stretcher to receive higher medical care. In the middle of life, my babies needed to be held to offer love and comfort. Time sped by fast, and what seemed like a blink of an eye, they were grown men. The touch was not needed anymore from me.

A new career opened as a Certified Nursing Assistant. What a joy to see a smile on someone who suffered from pain to find relief from a simple touch by a hand on their head, or on their shoulder. Touch was far deeper than physical. It is also an invisible energy that can be transmitted just with a look. Look into an elder’s eyes who has been abandoned by their family and feel the warmth of the connection.

An unexpected work accident caused me to change careers again. This time, I was to enter a new arena using soul, touch, and feeling. I trained to be a Massage Therapist.

Being a C.N.A. was a rewarding career, but to have the honor to care for over 8,000 people was more I ever dreamed of, with humans.

I was allowed to learn from the best to be the best. I was able to use my listening skills, to use the education received from doctors, and to study people who gave of themselves after death for people like me to learn.

We are alike, every one of us. Peel off the skin and we are nothing but various networks much more complicated than a computer. In fact, we control computers. We tell them what to think and do. For now. What they cannot do is have feelings because they have no soul.

This new career I entered was more than offering care. I was also a confidant. I heard things from people from all levels of society, I can never repeat. Ever. Not even a psychiatrist or clergyperson heard thoughts from their patients or parishioners as I did. Except, I did not send a bill or dole out Hail Mary's because they sinned. The client was given more than a massage. They felt the love from my soul, my heart, my mind… through my hands.

My hands composed of bones, ligaments, muscles, and undamaged nerves gave them touch from the point in the brain, which I would not call the motor region, but what some may call the God Spot. Many clients told me I had hands from God. Egotistical thoughts never entered my mind. I would only say, it was the doctors who taught me.

One fact I left out of the career change from C.N.A. to Massage Therapist. Due to the work injury, I suffered three herniated discs in my neck and a torn muscle in my shoulder. The surgeons wanted to jump right in, and I said no. While I was in pain, the determination to succeed, to graduate, to give, to serve…pre-empted any thought of quitting.

Let’s dig deeper into the realm of touch. It goes beyond human interaction. Humans are the only creatures to use language. That is what scientists want us to believe. Every living microscopic organism has its own language. To ponder the thought beyond the norm, rocks, the hard silent ones that water wears down, are made up of minerals. Minerals, we are made of. So, it is fathomable that rocks can communicate and therefore can feel.

The loss of feeling for me began years ago as my spine began to deteriorate. Nerves were pinched. Surgery was not an option. Multiple massage clients over the years had the same surgery in the same area 3 or 4 times. In my case, more than one-third of my spine was affected by herniated disks, and an abnormally large spine left a narrower spinal canal. Additionally, to put more icing on the cake, add calcification buildup, and disk degeneration. There is no choice for surgery for me with the possible outcomes, of paralysis, or as the drug commercials say quickly in their disclaimers…experience death. I don’t think I want to experience death. Is it a one-way or two-way ticket?

What is the mindset of the person losing feelings in their hands/fingers?

Very few young people think of mortality. It may be safe to say a majority think of misplacing their keys more than losing feeling in their body. Stoics say, Memento Mori to invigorate life, and to create priority and meaning. They treat each day as a gift and constantly remind themselves not to waste any time on the trivial and vain.

The most special gift besides surviving my childhood was to become deeply attached to dogs. Emotionally, and with touch. Dogs are the only domesticated animal that will give unconditional love no matter how poorly it is treated. All is forgiven with a touch of the hand, the touch of a nose to fur, a touch of the side of one’s face to their face.

Their love kept me alive three times during my sixty-five years of life. Their touch and allowing me to touch them was yet at another level of love beyond giving to all the people I served over the years, with my hands, fingers, and soul.

I told my friend when I stopped giving massages my hands would begin to die. It was true. The last Geriatric-style massage (pressure and range of motion techniques with a fully clothed person) was on December 25, 2022.

Even so, with that ending, every day for ten years, my dogs would roll on their backs for belly rubs and skin scratches. For my Bambaloo, heartbreakingly, her life ended on February 03, 2023, by my decision. My other dog, Bailey, still receives the attention. Now I have a new furry one, Fiona.

Per my prediction, one week later during the first week of January 2023, I woke up in the morning as any other day. I went to pour myself a glass of chilly water.

Wait. What is that pain in the base of my right thumb? I never overused my thumbs in massage therapy. It was painful to the touch and hard to move. There was no injury to the site I could think of. As I bent my fingers, my knuckles snapped. More pain. Arthritis? So fast?

Two days later, my left hand felt as if someone was stabbing needles into it. Heart attack symptoms? No, the old ticker just passed a few exams. What was happening to me? Carpel tunnel syndrome from nowhere? No. The evident nerves affected because of numbness only in the thumb, index finger, the F finger, and ring finger, were the Radial, Median, and partial Ulnar.

I began to drop things. I’d pick them up and drop them again. The strength in my once strong forearms and hands was now diminished by at least 60%.

The good news is change of diet has reduced the inflammation removing the tingling sensation. However, the result of the most likely culprit, the spine we need, has caused Neuropathy. Yes, the tingling is gone, the fingertips now have little to no feeling. Everything I was as a giver to others has ceased. The action of rubbing and scratching my dog’s tummy and sides is still there. They feel my hands and fingers, but I don’t feel their skin. Sometimes I want to cry.

Yet, now, for the rest of my life, the gift I was given of touch, to heal, to relay the messages from my soul and neurons… is gone…,

Forever.