Butterfly Touch Massage for Families

Butterfly Touch Massage is developed and patterned by Dr. Eva Reich, MD while working with premature babies in Harlem Hospital during 1951-1952 and from her teaching workshops around the world. Eva later realised that Butterfly Touch Massage works equally well for children and adults as well as with the elderly even though it was initially developed to help mother and baby bond.

Dr. Eva Reich is the daughter of psychoanalyst Dr. Wilhelm Reich who later discovered orgone energy, the energy responsible for the biological pulsation of life on Earth. Dr. Eva Reich coined her father’s gentle work especially with babies and children, and developed it as Gentle Bio-Energetics. Gentle Bio-Energetics is an educational and therapeutic model that integrates verbal and body therapies for healing and growth. The gentle aspect refers to the non-invasive role of the therapist/helper, who nurtures with both touch and verbal interventions. The nature of the gentle touch heals both physical and emotional primal trauma.

Butterfly Touch Massage is one of the techniques used in Gentle Bio-Energetics. It is a light touch therapy that helps to relax the recipient, melt the tension and armoring system in the body, release trauma and restore life energy for healing to take place. Hence, this can be done to free the person of negative emotions that are trapped in the cells as a result of traumatic life experiences. Butterfly Touch Massage melts the body’s defense system. It is the first step towards the expansion of life energy to flow freely.

Benefits of Butterfly Touch for Couples/Parents

• reduce stress and anxiety in life and improve overall health and wellbeing
• promote bonding with spouse and for older couples who neglected intimacy
• create bonding between parents and children
• staying calm and peace in order to enjoy life
• promote mental clarity to handle life challenges

Benefits to Mothers during Pregnancy to beyond Postpartum Period

• help the labouring mother to relax, stimulate the production of endorphins - the natural pain-relief, induce sleep during labour and birth
• support psychotherapy for those who experienced violence and sexual abuse before labour starts
• help to heal the memory of primal trauma, release negative emotions that can hinder the labouring process
• relax the mind, release resistance that causes the mother to hold back. Hence, helps in labour progress
• build better relationship and strengthen bond between partners
• partner gets to be involved in the labour process and have a better experience
• restore energetic flow, calms the nervous system, helps mothers in postnatal recovery to prevent postpartum depression
• let go of birth trauma, including the use of epidural, lost of control, birth didn’t go as plan, difficult birth

Benefits to Babies

• help baby release birth issue as early in life as possible and integrate the birth experience
• repair bond if mother and baby were separated after birth
• relax tense muscles, expands newborn’s energy especially in the fourth trimester
• calm the baby and reduce colic
• stimulate bowel movements
• promote growth

Benefits to Children

• quiet the active mind and calming them down (hyperactive child)
• induce sleep
• help children to reduce stress and anxiety
• enhance sensory integration
• build trust and repair parent-child relationship
• reduce disruptive behaviour

Who should attend Butterfly Touch Massage Therapy Workshops?

Parents, childcare providers, care givers including grandparents, Doulas, Massage Therapist, Holistic Practitioners