Up: [[Savour]] Created: 2023-10-02 Updated: 2025-01-06 ## Factoids The reason it’s easier to get your feet wet first if you’re going into icy water is that there are fewer cold receptors in your feet than there are in, for example, the tip of your nose. (Ackerman) A mirror wouldn’t have any meaning to us without touch. It’s because we do things like play with our hair, or bracket our wrist with the thumb and forefinger of our other hand, that we recognize ourselves and the world as three-dimensional. (Ackerman) Animals have it all over us when it comes to touch sensitivity. Snails have extremely sensitive feet (I didn’t know they had feet). Sea turtles can feel a twig moving across their shell, and they like to have their shells lightly scratched. And any animal that digs for food, like an anteater or a prairie dog, has a great sense of touch. (Ackerman) People who have tattoos over their entire body live shorter lives because their skin can’t breathe properly and some of the inks are poisonous. (Ackerman) Japanese tattoo is called irezumi. A Japanese person wearing the work of a grand tattoo master may choose to donate his skin to a museum or university, the way we might donate organs after death. The Medical Pathology museum at Tokyo University has 100 of these skins, many of them [full body](https://cvltnation.com/dead-skin-living-art-the-museum-of-tattooed-skin/) Our skin is our largest organ. It weighs about six pounds. (Ackerman) Just touching someone’s hand or arm can lower their blood pressure. (Ackerman) Touch is so important in emotional situations that we touch ourselves the way we’d like someone else to comfort us. For example, wrapping our hands around our shoulders and rocking, or rubbing our hands up and down our arms as we pace. (Ackerman) Touching is as therapeutic as being touched. Stroking a pet has a healing effect. (Ackerman) Even touch that is so subtle that it’s not noticed has a positive effect. Experiments were done where people were unobtrusively touched and they: - rated the library (where they’d been touched by the librarian) and their life higher — university students - gave the waitress better tips — a couple of restaurants in Mississippi - returned money that had been left behind in a phone booth (Ackerman) ## Try - Play with modelling clay, Play-Doh, kinetic sand, or Silly Putty. (Rubin) - Fold a fortune-teller or origami figure (Rubin) - Check out touch and feel books, pop-up books and lift-the-flap books (Rubin) - Get someone to put together a little bag of objects. Close your eyes, put your hand in the bag and feel each item, its contours and dimensions. Name it if you wish, but that doesn’t really matter. The goal is to touch without knowing. (Rubin) - Focus on what you’re wearing. Notice where you feel tightness or bagginess, roughness or softness. Notice if there are changes to any of them when you walk or sit. Try NOT to label. (Rubin) > [!user] Sources > Gretchen Rubin, *Life in Five Senses* > Norman Farb and Zindel Segal, *Better in Every Sense* > Diane Ackerman, *A Natural History of the Senses*