Moderate Mental

Self Soothing Touch

Summary

Deliberate self-administered affective touch — a warm hand held on the heart/belly, or a slow ~3 cm/s stroke of the forearm — measurably blunts the cortisol surge of acute stress, and it does this even when you feel nothing change, which is exactly the point: it is the floor-level downregulation act that works under the surface. ---

MODERATE (mechanism well-characterised; protocol rests on a single good RCT that moved cortisol only)Last updated June 2026
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