Being In Touch Conference 2026

Description

In collaboration with the CAMBRIDGE BODY PSYCHOTHERAPY CENTRE,
Whole Being Films present:

BEING IN TOUCH 2026:
COMMUNICATING THROUGH
TOUCH IN PSYCHOTHERAPY

A ONE DAY CONFERENCE

Recorded AT KING’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY
Professor Francis McGlone, Professor Aikaterini (Katerina) Fotopoulou, Tom Warnecke, Anita Ribeiro (PhD), Julia Corley, Gill Chumbley (Gill’s talk excluded for copyright reasons) and Claudia de Campos

INTRODUCTION
Touch is fundamental in communication between people and is a two way process that is quicker
and more immediate than communicating through spoken language. Touch remains important
throughout life and is part of non-verbal or extra-verbal communication. It runs alongside the
spoken word, and sometimes a touch on the arm, or a hug can convey far more than words. Some
experiences are beyond what can be put into words.
Communicating through touch is a way of relating in body psychotherapy. Words and touch can
run alongside each other for fuller communication. Body psychotherapists are trained to touch, have
a touch lexicon, are skilled in its timely therapeutic use, and know how to observe and discuss the
impact of touching with clients. Ways of touching are diverse and complex. Varying speed,
rhythm, pressure and depth, focussing on different tissues of the body, touching skin to skin,
through clothes, touching with finger tips, the palms of the hands, elbow to elbow are some of the
possibilities. Through experience the skills and methods of touching become embedded in the
psychotherapist and are pulled out of the practitioner, often intuitively, in a relational “dance”
between client and therapist at appropriate moments.
Until fairly recently neuroscience has neglected research on touch, and concentrated on the other
senses. However, there is now a burgeoning interest with papers being written on Affective Touch,
mirror touch, vicarious tactile experience and so on. The importance of touch in infancy is also
generating papers.
We hope in this one-day conference to build on the discussion of the first conference in 2022 and
bring together body psychotherapists, psychotherapists from other modalities and neuroscientists to
exchange ideas and dialogue with each other.

MORNING PRESENTATIONS
10.00 Welcome - Gill Westland
10.02 Arrival exercise - Gabriela Garcia
10.05 Morning Facilitator - Tom Warnecke

10.07 - 10.42 Professor Francis McGlone:
Touch - THE Influencer: From the Womb to the Tomb
Recent research has shown that some skin sensory nerves send ‘feel good’ signals to the brain when
activated by gentle touch, and how this kind of touch may be all-important in developing a healthy
‘social brain’, sustaining human relationships, regulating the immune system, and controlling stress
and aggression. Research into the sense of touch has focussed mainly on touch receptors
(mechanoreceptors) found in the fingertips where information is conveyed to somatosensory areas
of the brain by fast-conducting myelinated nerve fibres, enabling this information to be processed in
‘real-time’ – an important factor when handling objects or tools or being touched.
However, we have recently discovered that touch has another channel, beyond the purely
discriminative one, an affective and affiliative one, comprising highly sensitive slowly-conducting
unmyelinated nerves in the skin of the body that respond to gentle caressing touch – c-tactile
afferents (CT). In this talk I will describe research that has characterised the structure and function
of CTs using psychophysical measures, electrophysiological recordings, functional neuroimaging,
psychopharmacology, and measures of stress hormones. These data provide support for the
functional role of a body-based emotional touch system – one that underpins the rewarding aspects
of nurturing care the reassuring hug from a friend in times of need, the impact of social contact on
the brain and the body’s stress regulatory and immune systems. And much, much more - from the
womb to the tomb..........

10.45 - 11.25 Professor Aikaterini (Katerina) Fotopoulou:
The Neuroscience of Affective Touch: From Basic Mechanisms to Tactile Emoticons
I will present insights from the psychology and neuroscience of affective touch, including the
mechanisms by which affective touch acts to facilitate affective regulation (e.g. the
neurophysiological mechanisms by which parents can sooth stress or pain by touch), affective
communication (e.g. how touch can communicate social support or empathy) and self-development
(how touch interactions in early life teach us about our body boundaries) in health and in disease.
Such effects of social touch acquired a new resonance in the years of Covid19 and social distancing
measures, reminding us the well-studied role of contact comfort in development, relatedness and
health. I will explore relevant data collected during the pandemic on the mental health effects of
unprecedented touch deprivation in human adults, as well as survey, experimental and
neuroimaging insights on experiences and attitudes to digital remote, or vicarious touch technology
for mediating physical remoteness and social communication, for example the sharing of digital
tactile emoticon during social media interactions with soft robotic devices.1

11.50 - 12.25 Anita Ribeiro (PhD):
How complex is therapeutic touch in psychotherapy?
This presentation explores the intricate factors influencing the complexity of stimuli delivered
during the therapeutic touch modalities created by Pethö Sándor, MD. It will start by discussing the
value of sensory novelty to regulate motivation in depression and anxiety disorders, related to the
novel stimuli of a touch that is light, stationary, long-duration, and bilateral. Following, the
importance of the neural and attentional environment established during touch therapy, which
involves the receiver's physical state, such as lying down in a passive, task free state, eyes closed, in
a resting state/default mode brain connectivity. Within that context, it will discuss the interaction
between the receiver's explicit and implicit histories of interpersonal touch, early attachment
priming, highlighting the role of insula-encoded fibres (CT fibres) that function as a proto-affective
system in preverbal development. These fibres later integrate into a broader cognitive-affective
system as declarative memory evolves. Finally, it will address the quality of attunement and
biobehavioural synchrony between therapist and receiver in combination with stages of therapy.
12.25 - 1.00 Questions and discussion with morning speakers

AFTERNOON PRESENTATIONS
2.00 Afternoon Facilitator - Theo Raymond
2.02 Arrival exercise - Laura Wheeler

2.05 - 2.40 Tom Warnecke:
Touch in psychotherapy - mutuality, contexts and taboos
In psychotherapy, touch is not just a somatic intervention, but an event informed by, as well as
affecting, the psychophysiology of both protagonists. Touch is necessarily mutual and a co-created
two-person psychological space. The recognition of mutuality invites our attention to the
phenomenal experience of both participants, which may on occasions indicate hidden aspects of a
tactile contact. Mutuality often remains in the background but may also move into the foreground at
times, for example when some childhood sexual trauma becomes activated in a psychotherapy
process. How do we manage tactile contact when it touches a 'Gestalt' context considered 'unsafe' or
perhaps 'too challenging'? And what might support us and help us to safely meet such challenging
dynamics in the therapeutic relationship?

2.40 – 3.15 Julia Corley:

3.40 Panel Presentation:

4. 00 - 4.20 Claudia de Sampaio Campos:
Back to the Beginning: Reich, Touch, Development, and Prevention—Where Are We Now?
In this paper, I draw on Wilhelm Reich’s pioneering work with couples and their babies,
highlighting his contribution to early prevention and the promotion of healthy development in
young children. I will also consider contemporary perspectives on child development, attachment,
and neuroscience.
The paper explores different dimensions of touch—for example, how a baby experiences being held
by its mother, whether physically in her arms, through her gaze, or through her attuned mental
presence. I will reflect on how the quality of touch shapes bodily experience and influences one’s
sense of self and capacity to be with others. Finally, I will consider what it means to be in genuine
contact—to feel met—and what can obstruct this process. This includes examining the barriers to
connection, as well as the complexities and potential consequences of touch.

4.20 – 4.40 Gillian Chumbley (presentation excluded from video for copyright reasons):
Curiosities and Conversation, a project with museum staff bringing artefacts into a dialysis unit.
With excellent support from Cambridge University Hospital Arts and Cambridge University
Museums (CUM) I have been involved in a number of Renal Arts Programmes over the years, for
both patients and staff at the dialysis unit (CDC), working with the Arts to “humanise the medical
environment”. I would like to present the work of one of these programmes.
It is well known that aspects of dialysis treatment induce feelings of boredom, depression, isolation
and frustration in renal patients. Staff are also affected by the mood of their patient cohort and can
become unknowingly emotionally armoured and numb. Creative arts programmes allow patients and staff to

(re-) find their creative abilities and use them to improve their mental health, alleviating dis-connect and loneliness.

In May 2017, I developed and facilitated a joint project between CDC and Cambridge local
community museums entitled “Curiosities and Conversations”. Museum learning facilitators from
the Fitzwilliam, Archaeology and Anthropology, Geology, the Scott-Polar and Kettles Yard brought
historic, curious, fascinating and tactile objects from their diverse collections into the dialysis unit.
They visited each dialysis patient (1:1) at the treatment bedside with their artworks/ objects and
participants could choose whether they would like to ‘have a conversation’ or not. As patients were
encouraged to look at, touch, handle and explore these wonderful artifacts at their own pace,
interesting conversations and storytelling quickly arose between participants. Touching these
beautiful objects engendered curiosity; having an empathic facilitator supported lively conversation;
carers and unit staff joined in, and a sense of emerging community began to flow.
We found that this particular 'Curiosities and Conversations' project approach enhanced patient time
spent on dialysis treatment by fostering engagement, curiosity and interest. There was both a sense
of excitement and reverence for patients when they were able to touch and hold objects that were
usually untouchable and glass-encased. Collections that were usually remote were brought into staff
and patients' everyday lives. The informal and conversational approach allowed an experience of
interconnection, enjoyment and happiness to emerge. From this simple and intimate dynamic, many
stories were given the space to be heard.

Panel discussion

4.40 - 4.55 Reflections on the day - Dr Christos Sideras
4.55 Thanks and closing comments - Theo Raymond and Gill Westland
5.00 p.m. Finish