Reach Out and Touch Someone

The Heart Touch Project provides the elderly, children, and AIDS patients with the healing power of touch and connection. Health care volunteers—chiropractors, massage therapists, acupuncturists, and others—have donated more than 18,000 massage sessions over the past 8 years.

Shay Beider massages a pediatric patient and tells stories and to keep the child engaged in the massage.

Four years ago, I began working to create the first comprehensive hospital-based pediatric massage program in the country at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA). At this point in my life, I was a returning college student determined to go to medical school, who had taken up massage therapy as a way to pay my way through school. As I began to practice massage, a whole new world opened up for me.

While volunteering on the geriatrics ward at Kaiser Hospital, a patient named Mary asked me if I would rub her back because she was sore from lying in bed all day. I spent about 20 minutes massaging her. When I came by to say good-bye, she grabbed me and, with tears welling up in her eyes, said, “Thank you so much for being here today. You have no idea what a difference your being here has made in my life.” It was that moment when I realized the power of touch. I had seen powerful responses to touch before in my massage practice but I was dumbfounded that such a simple act could have such a profound impact on Mary.

As I started to explore how to create a hospital-based massage program, I came across the nonprofit organization the Heart Touch Project. Heart Touch historically provided compassionate touch therapy or gentle massage to AIDS patients who were at the end of life.

In 2000, I met with the founder Shawnee Issac-Smith, MPH, of Heart Touch and asked if she would like to expand its services to include hospitalized infants and children. She was excited about this possibility and said she felt the volunteers would be too.

Heart Touch volunteers are composed of massage therapists, chiropractors, nurses, acupuncturists, and other health care professionals who are licensed to touch. All volunteers take a 3-day sensitive-touch skills workshop to prepare them for working with individuals who are suffering from chronic illness or who are at the end of life. After completing their training, Heart Touch volunteers visit private homes or medical facilities to offer touch to the ill and isolated.

Although 90% of Heart Touch volunteers are certified massage therapists, we have had chiropractors who have taken the training and found it to be useful in their own practices. It reinforces the importance of sensitive touch and the element of compassion that is relevant to all aspects of the health care profession. Heart Touch training is free to volunteers who make a 1-year service commitment and can be taken for a fee by health care professionals who wish to learn more about compassionate touch.

Heart Touch volunteers in the Infant and Children’s Program take additional training courses to prepare them for working with infants, families, and children with special health care needs.

Becky, a child with special health care needs, receives a style of massage called compassionate touch from Casey, a Heart Touch volunteer.

The Infant and Children’s Program was made possible by start-up funding we received from First5 LA. This funding has enabled us to provide services to infants and children under 5 years of age at CHLA and to prepare us to expand our services to other area hospitals over the next few years. We are currently involved in an infant massage research study to see whether massage can be beneficial for medically complex infants in the Center for Newborn and Infant Critical Care at CHLA.

Since we started massaging infants and children at CHLA, I feel my understanding of the healing properties of massage has expanded greatly. I now understand why Mary was so moved by the time I spent with her massaging her back. Hospitalized patients need to be able to connect with their humanity and to feel that they are cared for, nurtured, and supported. The physiological benefits of touch are beginning to be better understood by the scientific community. Research studies have shown a decrease in stress hormones and increased oxytocin and serotonin levels. At the same time, the mind is critically important to healing. The awareness that there is someone there for us when we are ill to lend a gentle hand and to serve our most vulnerable needs can help us to remember we are not so alone.

For more information about how to become a volunteer, learn more about Heart Touch, or to make a donation, please call 310-391-2558 or visit www.hearttouch.org.   CP

Shay Beider is director of the Infant and Children’s Program for the Heart Touch Project and Integrative Touch Program Coordinator for Childrens Hospital Los Angeles