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Greetings from David Palmer
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 Finally, winter has arrived in Connecticut after an autumn that extended through the middle of January. It feels like the perfect time to hunker down and make plans for celebrating the 30th anniversary of the massage chair.
Gadzooks! Three decades! I know I am getting older when I find myself teaching chair massage to practitioners who weren’t even born when the first massage chair shipped in 1986.
One of this year's projects is to document more of the early history of the massage chair and the chair massage industry before I get hit by a truck. For example, Judi Calvert, our profession's archivist and founder of the Hands-On Trade Association, just sent me this awesome picture of the original chair at the 1988 Kona Hawaii Ironman event.
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Image courtesy of Judi and Robert Calvert, massage team volunteer directors from 1985-1990 for the Ironman.
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Meanwhile, I am anxiously waiting to hear when the History Channel will be airing their series featuring a segment on the massage chair. Last November a five-person crew filmed me and my friend Carlin Holden in San Francisco and, in Zurich, they filmed my co-inventor, Serge Bouyssou. It was a trip to see how the TV magic is made. All of the crew got chair massage samples, so I am hoping for a great result. As soon as I find out the date and time I will drop you a note. Below is a picture of one of the two 3-camera setups in my friend's Victorian.
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History Channel video shoot.
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Next, I am more than a little pleased to announce an agreement with our latest TouchPro training affiliate, Rapha Holistic Treatment Limited, in Trinidad and Tobago. Since 2012, this energetic team has been providing mobile massage services to the public of T & T. After spending nearly a week last November training their key staff and practitioners, I came away with the conviction that this was a very special group of committed chair massage advocates. You can read more about Rapha on our website.
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The Rapha Team in Trinidad
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Now, on with the main attractions. In my new identity as a Touch Educator/Advocate all of the articles below deal with my favorite topic. Enjoy!
In touch,
David
P.S. I almost forgot. The TouchProStore also has a new identity that we launched last week. Check out the professional new look of our store and use the storewide coupon "NewLook" for an additional 5% off the already discounted prices through February.
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Cuddle Clubs Monetize Touch
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 Professional massage practitioners are not the only ones who make money touching. A growing movement gaining traction in our disembodied world brings groups of unrelated people together for non-erotic touch interaction.
Variously called cuddle clubs, cuddle parties or snuggle parties this phenomenon has begun to move into the mainstream. More...
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What We Need to Know About Touch
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 Skin stimulation (touching) is essential to maintaining physical, psychological and social well-being, according to an ever-increasing body of scientific literature. Since touch is the fundamental tool through which massage professionals interact with those who pay for our services, it seems obvious that we should have the deepest understanding of touch and touching. Here is what the skilled touch professions need to know to become the recognized experts on the subject of touch and touching. More...
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 One important characteristic of all touching is the intention of the person initiating the touching. Much of the time the intention behind the touch is not conscious or it is presumed. However, adding conscious intention adds a deeper level of connection to the touch interaction. Here is a list of the reasons we initiate touch. More...
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 Skin stimulation (touch) is essential to the development and maintenance of health and well being in every human. Why then has it been so neglected as a subject for legitimate inquiry except perhaps by poets? The other four senses have garnered reams of research, had university departments dedicated to them and whole occupations given over to the cause of hearing, seeing, tasting and selling. But where is the profession dedicated to touching? Touch is truly the "orphan sense."
Fortunately, that is changing. In the past 20 years, particularly with the rise of neuro-psychology, the primary sense of touch is finally beginning to get its due. As it does there is an increasing need to organize our thinking about touch and touch. One useful tool to begin building would be a taxonomy of where touching occurs. More...
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