Research backs up the science of touch, too: Rabin studied how touch impacts the emotional brain at the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Psychiatry and found that “when you are touched in a loving way, when you are experiencing soothing vibration, or a massage, or holding a pet, there’s something actually happening [to your brain]1,” he recounts. “It’s telling you, ‘I’m safe right now.’ And it’s actually the same thing that happens when you take a deep breath, and it’s the same thing that happens when you do biofeedback [therapy].”
