Like Stroking a Butterfly’s Wing Like Stroking a Butterfly’s Wing
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Photo by David Clodet/Unsplash
Wellbeing

Like Stroking a Butterfly’s Wing

A Most Delicate Massage
Agnieszka Rostkowska
Reading
time 7 minutes

The Butterfly Touch is one of the shortest and the most delicate massages in the world. Its power lies not in strength but in gentleness. 

The baby was motionless, its eyes closed, its skin blue. It wasn’t breathing. The staff in the room froze, fixed their eyes on Dr Eva Reich, and waited wordlessly. The young doctor bent over the child and started to stroke it, so delicately that she barely brushed over the tiny hands and legs, gently moving over the little belly, almost without touching it. Her every move, in all its softness and smoothness, was simultaneously energetic and assured. After a moment, the little body twitched. The skin grew pink, the chest expanded and started to rise. The baby opened its eyes. Another life saved.

Reich assisted with difficult births and looked after infants whose lives were endangered. There were a lot of them in her care because Harlem Hospital in New York catered for premature babies from all over the city. It was the start of the 1950s,

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Illustration by Joanna Grochocka
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Healing in the Temples of Asclepius
Tomasz Wiśniewski

The symbolism of Asclepius remains present in our world today: modern medicine is still represented by the image of the Greco-Roman god’s serpent coiled around his staff. But it’s worth remembering that the fifth century healing methods applied in the temples of Asclepius did not rely on pharmacology.

The supplicant roomed at a special temple guest house and was prepared by priests. There was animal sacrifice—preferably of roosters—fasting, bathing in ice-cold springs, and ritual cleansing. If they had a dream the priests considered favorable, the next night would be spent in an abaton, an innermost temple room inaccessible to lay people. There, the patient would lie on a bed called a klínē (the root word of “clinic”), where they waited for a healing experience that could occur through a spontaneous vision, or a dream should they fall asleep.

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