McClure - Infant massage: a handbook for loving parents

Infant massage, as it is shared in this book, is not a fad. It is an ancient art that connects you deeply with the person who is your baby, and it helps you to understand your babys particular nonverbal language and respond with love and respectful listening. It empowers you as a parent, for it gives you the means by which you become an expert on your own child and therefore can respond according to your babys unique needs. Rather than growing up selfish and demanding (though all kids go through such stages), a child whose voice is heard, whose heart is full, and who is enveloped in love overflows with that love and naturally, unselfconsciously gives of himself to others. He learns what healthy, respectful touch is by being touched that way. He learns self-discipline by watching his parents and imitating them. The deep emotional bonds formed in infancy lay a foundation for a lifetime of trust, courage, dependability, faith, and love.

Vimala McClure is a visionary who has helped innumerable people become far better parents. She has become my own personal Dr. Spock, the main source I turn to for loving and competent guidance and inspiration in raising my children.

M ARC A LLEN , author of Visionary Business and A Visionary Life

What a brilliant way to love and nurture a child! The first connection between parent and child is physical, through the body. By using the techniques that Vimala has developed, your parental relationship will be off to a magnificent start.

J UDY F ORD , author of Wonderful Ways to Love a Child and Wonderful Ways to Be a Family

Embodying spirit is the work of our timesand the beautiful, empowering words of Vimala McClure bring to our everyday life a deep and abiding experience of the timeliness of the body, soul, and spirit. We are changed.

C AROLYN C RAFT , director of Wisdom Radio

In the summer of 1974, when my first child was born, I didnt know anything about infant massage, but I knew that I wanted to touch my baby. It was a hot summer, and it felt good to carry my daughter around skin to skin. I would take her outside and lay her on a blanket in the fresh air under the eaves of our house. There I would rub her with sweet almond oil and massage her soft skin.

At about this same time, a few hundred miles away, Vimala was massaging her babies. Vimala is the premier proponent of infant massage in the world, and was among the first to write about massage in general and infant massage in particular. In fact, Vimalas work in infant massage has been instrumental in the birth of touch therapy and bodywork in the United States and has helped to popularize and legitimize massage throughout the world. Her early work on infant massage and premature babies was years ahead of its time and continues to influence the humane care of newborns through touch.

For many of us, infant massage has been a way to learn to touch our babies and to become comfortable with touch in general. Those of us who became parents in the 1960s and 1970s grew up in much less intimate and touchy-feely times than today. Seeing people hugging affectionately in public as we do today was almost unheard of forty years ago, when Vimalas innocent book sparked a revolution in touch in the United States.

As revolutionary as it is, infant massage is really an old-fashioned idea, and its beauty lies in the fact that anyone can do it. Its simple and its good for you. It cant hurt you or your baby and it costs nothing. Dont think that you need special skills or talents to massage your baby. It comes naturally and is a way for our babies to teach us about themselves and for us to learn how to touch.

Touch is as necessary to the human baby as food. Anthropologist Margaret Mead studied tribal societies all over the world and found that the most violent tribes were those that withheld touch in infancy. Neurologist Richard Restak says that physically holding and carrying an infant turn out to be the most important factors responsible for the infants normal mental and social development. The effects of this normal development do not just influence infancy but impact the neural and neuroendocrine functions underlying emotional behavior in enduring ways. In other words, the more we experience authentic intimacy as infants, the more we are capable of intimacy as adults. And what could be more intimate than gentle touch?

Research at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine suggests that massage can stimulate nerves in the brain that facilitate food absorption, resulting in faster weight gain. Massage can lower stress hormones, resulting in improved immune function. Touch therapy can also help premature infants gain weight faster, asthmatic children improve breathing function, diabetic children comply with treatment, and sleepless babies fall asleep more easily. Other research indicates that touch therapy can benefit infants and children with eczema and can improve parent-baby interactions.

What better way to improve parent-baby interactions, what better way to ensure your baby is getting enough skin-to-skin contact, than with infant massage? The soothing oil and the soft, easy touch of your hands are sensory delights that you can share with your baby as you introduce him to the world. Massage is such a nice way to get to know your baby and to spend time together in the early weeks and months. Soon enough she will be up and around, and these touch times of the early months will be sweet memories.

There were eight years between those first massages I gave my daughter and the first real massage I had myself. It was not until the 1980s that massage therapists were easily available, and it took me many years to become comfortable with the idea of indulging in massage. Something that at first seemed frivolous to me has now become a cornerstone of my health care. Vimala has taught us that touch is not a self-indulgence but is actually a basic human need. How unfortunate that we would consider fulfilling such a basic need to be self-indulgent.