The skin is the main organ of the sense of touch.  It is the largest, weight and surface, of the human body.  It weighs from about six to ten pounds.  It is made of two layers, the epidermis, or the top layer, and the dermis of the bottom layer.  The top part of the epidermis is a layer of dead skin cells.  These flakes fall off and are steadily replaced.  We lose about fifty million skin cells every day.  The skin contains hair follicles, nerve ending, sweat glands and blood vessels.  The soles of your feet are the thickest.  And the eyelid has the thinnest skin on the entire body.

The sense of touch is our oldest, most primitive and persuasive sense.  It’s the first sense we experience in the womb and the last one we lose before death.  The organ that is most associated with touch is the skin on the outside of your body.  Our skin, which has about fifty touch receptors for every square centimeter and about five million sensory cells overall, loves to be touched.

The nerve endings in the skin can detect pressure, pain and temperature.  Your sense of touch allows you to tell the difference between rough and smooth, soft and hard, and wet and dry.

Some parts of your skin have more nerve endings than other parts, so some parts are more sensitive to touch than others are.  You do not only have skin and touch on the outside of your body.  You have skin and touch sensations on the inside of your body.

Touch and skin go together like a bundle of joy, but for some, they can want to avoid touch like an intervening way to stay away.

Infants need to experience exquisitely good touch from their caretakers in order to feel safe and secure.  They need this for their entire lives, all the way to being very old up to the last minutes of their lives.  You may have noticed that a lot of people do not get safe and secure touch from enough other human beings.

Picture two people holding hands, or stroking skin, having strong and close soothing and/or sexual sensations.  We human beings thrive with this kind of safety, soothing, and loving.  However, there are many people who want to avoid touch.  From infancy or later, they have experienced touch as awkward, dangerous, uncomfortable, or extremely afraid of touch.

Touch can be so incredibly uplifting for some and so incredibly squirmy for others.    To live with little or no touch from others is a huge deficit.  There are ways to overcome this barren and life non-affirming stance that one must not have the pleasure of touch.

I hope for every one that they can find ways to be touched, with skin receptors that greatly enhance their existence.

This is Jonathan Brower, Ph.D. saying good bye for now.  Should you want to call me, please do so.  818-707-4557.