Starting with a simple setting that can easily be accomplished with few special preparations, readers will learn, step-by-step, how to make a deep and meaningful connect with their partner's body. Using a combination of strokes from the most time-honored massage traditions, they will learn to be mindful of where their partner holds stress and tension. As the massage continues, readers will enter into a profound nonverbal dialogue with their partner, learning much from the simple act of contact with another body. All of the techniques are illustrated with black-and-white photographs. Elegant and refined, this book is a perfect gift for a special someone or a friend in love.

A behavioral scientist explores love, belongingness, and fulfillment, focusing on how modern technology can both help and hinder our need to connect. A Next Big Idea Club nominee. Millions of people around the world are not getting the physical, emotional, and intellectual intimacy they crave. Through the wonders of modern technology, we are connecting with more people more often than ever before, but are these connections what we long for? Pandemic isolation has made us even more alone. In Out of Touch, Professor of Psychology Michelle Drouin investigates what she calls our intimacy famine, exploring love, belongingness, and fulfillment and considering why relationships carried out on technological platforms may leave us starving for physical connection. Drouin puts it this way: when most of our interactions are through social media, we are taking tiny hits of dopamine rather than the huge shots of oxytocin that an intimate in-person relationship would provide. Drouin explains that intimacy is not just sex—although of course sex is an important part of intimacy. But how important? Drouin reports on surveys that millennials (perhaps distracted by constant Tinder-swiping) have less sex than previous generations. She discusses pandemic puppies, professional cuddlers, the importance of touch, “desire discrepancy” in marriage, and the value of friendships. Online dating, she suggests, might give users too many options; and the internet facilitates “infidelity-related behaviors.” Some technological advances will help us develop and maintain intimate relationships—our phones, for example, can be bridges to emotional support. Some, on the other hand, might leave us out of touch. Drouin explores both of these possibilities.

Communication is increasingly moving beyond ‘ways of seeing’ to ‘ways of feeling’. This Open Access book provides social design insights and implications for HCI research and design exploring digitally mediated touch communication. It offers a socially orientated map to help navigate the complex social landscape of digitally mediated touch for communication: from everyday touch-screens, tangibles, wearables, haptics for virtual reality, to the tactile internet of skin. Drawing on literature reviews, new case-study vignettes, and exemplars of digital touch, the book examines the major social debates provoked by digital touch, and investigates social themes central to the communicative potential and societal consequences of digital touch: · Communication environments, capacities and practices · Norms associations and expectations · Presence, absence and connection · Social imaginaries of digital touch · Digital touch ethics and values The book concludes with a discussion of the significance of social understanding and methods in the context of Interdisciplinary collaborations to explore touch, towards the design of digital touch communication, ‘ways of feeling’, that are useable, appropriate, ethical and socially aware.

Photographer, author, and educator Roberto Valenzuela has a proven track record for teaching and explaining difficult concepts to photographers of all skill levels. His remarkable ability to break down complicated ideas into understandable, approachable elements that photographers can truly grasp–and then use their newfound knowledge to improve their photography–made his first book, Picture Perfect Practice, a breakout success. In Picture Perfect Posing, Roberto takes on the art of posing. For many photographers, after learning to compose an image and even light it properly, a portrait can still easily be a failure if the pose is not natural, elegant, and serving the needs of both the subject and the photographer. Instead of just showing page after page of poses–like most posing books on the market–Roberto actually breaks down the concept of posing by examining the anatomy, starting with the core foundation: the spinal chord and neck. Building from there, Roberto discusses every component of what makes poses work, as well as fail. How should the model hold her hands? Bend her elbows? Position her fingers? Should the model look toward or away from the camera, and why? It all depends on what the photographer wants for the shot, and Roberto discusses the entire process, from the intent of the photographer through the execution of the pose. For those who have been discouraged by an inability to pose their subjects, or who have simply not known where to start in order to "figure it out," Picture Perfect Posing is the essential resource they need to learn how posing truly works, and how they can learn to direct the exact pose they need for the shot they want.

Touch in Child Counseling and Play Therapy explores the professional and legal boundaries around physical contact in therapy and offers best-practice guidelines from a variety of perspectives. Chapters address issues around appropriate and sensitive therapist-initiated touch, therapeutic approaches that use touch as an intervention in child treatment, and both positive and challenging forms of touch that are initiated by children. In these pages, professionals and students alike will find valuable information on ways to address potential ethical dilemmas, including defining boundaries, working with parents and guardians, documentation, consent forms, cultural considerations, countertransference, and much more.

Deborah Heneghan was fifteen when her seventeen-year-old sister died of cancer. A few weeks later, she woke in the middle of the night to a faint whisper summoning her. That was the beginning of Heneghan’s communication with her dead sister, one that continues to this day. In Closer Than You Think, Heneghan shows how she began to recognize the signs and messages from her sister. She shows readers how to get back in touch with deceased loved ones and find guidance and a helping hand from their big-picture perspective in the beyond. Filled with tips, tools, strategies, and stories to help the reader make contact, Closer Than You Think will give you hope, comfort and peace that your loved ones do ‘live on’ and are engaging you in a very real way. Readers learn how to connect and communicate with their deceased loved ones and remain close to them in a natural, healing way. Closer Than You Think shows how to: Recognize the signs, dreams, or other messages from your loved onesOpen the dialogue with your loved one for a lifetime of continued communicationTransform your anger and grief into hope and actionTune-in to healing guidance For anyone who has lost a loved one and is trying to develop a clearer connection with them, Closer Than You Think provides hope, comfort and peace that loved ones do live on and are engaging us in a very real way.

A new baby's arrival can be incredibly daunting, as parents need to master a whole new set of skills in a very short period of time. Babycare: Everything you need to know offers all the basic, fundamental information that parents need in order to ease them through those first hours, days, weeks and months. It covers the core skills: how to change, dress, bathe, hold, carry, feed, comfort and soothe a newborn baby up to his first birthday. Large, step-by-step photographs with short, direct captions illustrate all the necessary stages of essential care, such as how to change a diaper, how to put on a sleepsuit, and the best positions for breastfeeding.