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

Abstract

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.