Exploring the healing touch of pickup basketball as a self-care method for educators and helping professionals: an ethnographic approach

ABSTRACT

Pickup basketball involves plenty of moments in which positive physical contact occurs when exchanging celebratory gestures, such as high fives, handshakes, or hugs after a game of victory. This type of physical touch accrues significant health and mental benefits, which is the underpinning of Healing Touch – a physical touch-based energy therapy that helps to restore harmony and balance in the energy system enabling a person to self-heal from physical, psychological, and emotional stressors. This study explores the Healing Touch of pickup basketball as a self-care method using an ethnographic approach. Data were collected through active and complete participant observations, semi-structured face-to-face, and telephone interviews. The findings reveal the sport’s potential to serve as a self-care practice. Emerging themes from the study centered on pickup basketball’s affirmative, unique intimacy and physicality, and empowering nature, as well as ways in which healing in the form of positive touch transcends race, gender, and cultural differences. Practical recommendations include the creation of more skill-level specific pickup basketball opportunities to reduce potential barriers and intimidations, specifically for women and older individuals, while bringing more public and general awareness to the existence of pickup basketball as an affordable and abundantly available physical activity and self-care method.

KEYWORDS:

• Healing touch
• pickup basketball
• self-care method
• physical touch-based energy therapy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Katja Sonkeng

Katja Sonkeng, MA, MS.Ed., is a second year doctoral student in sport management and policy in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Georgia. Her research interests are primarily in sociological aspects of sports, specifically diversity and equity issues in sport, sport labor migration, and the nexus between sport and health.

Jepkorir Rose Chepyator-Thomson

Jepkorir Rose Chepyator-Thomson, Ph. D., is a professor of sport management in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Georgia and Director of Cultural Studies in the Physical Activity Lab. She received her Ph.D., MS, MA and BS from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research interests include studies on curriculum and policy issues related to sport and physical education in Africa and African diaspora, urban and transnational diversity, sport labor migration, and gender in sport. She is the recipient of the 2008 Nell C. Jackson Memorial Award from the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance for her research on women and girls, and was recognized through an interview on American National Public Radio (NPR) and ABC/News 20/20 Program for her research work on Kenyan runners. She enjoys running, tennis, travelling, and reading.