“Warm Fuzzies” in Healing: The Tradition of Embodied Body Touching in Folk Medical Encounters

Abstract

Human touch (“warm fuzzy”) has a tremendous potential to communicate and heal. Although body touching is measured and conditioned in the clinical world, in the folk tradition, it is spontaneous and grounded in experiences of intersubjectivity. Watching numerous medical encounters in an Indian rural setting, we confirm haptic modalities are not just therapeutic but help patients and healers to deeply engage in intersubjective interactions. It is an emotional journey of patients and healers who come close to each other through the sequential process of experiencing “being-apart-from-oneanother,” followed by the feeling of “being-with-one-another,” “being-withinone-another,” and finally “being-for-one-another.” We believe intersubjectivity is the key to healing that starts with free body touching; it is the healing praxis of modern times.