HELD INTO STILLNESS: OXYTOCIN, ATTACHMENT, AND A BABY WHO HELPED ME SLOW DOWN

Rus Devorah (Darcy) Wallen, LCSW, CIMHP

A few articles ago, I wrote about “Learning to Stay.” Staying put. Staying in the moment long enough not to bolt, fix, perform, organize, over give, overthink, or become a one-woman municipal emergency-response department with a purse.

This Shavuos marks the ninth anniversary of what I call “My Stroke of Good Fortune.” It was the day G-d clunked me on the head, or, as my husband says with loving theological blunt force, gave me “an attitude adjustment.” Apparently, subtle memos from Heaven had gone unread. A registered, return-receipt, payment-upon-delivery letter was required. Since then, slowing down has become one of my primary avodas. Not because it comes naturally. Quite the opposite. I have been working on slowing down for what feels like close to 60 years. (As a teen I was introduce to meditation by my friend’s mother, to cool my jets.) Every day, I try to incorporate some form of meditation, breathwork, herbal support, minerals, mindful awareness, music, red light therapy, movement, prayer, writing, and the occasional stern talking-to from my prefrontal lobe (Which quite often gets derailed despite my best efforts. Life isn’t smooth sailing, to put it mildly.)

I have written slowing-down songs. I have practiced breathing. I have created affirmations. I do self-soothing with the Havening touch gestures. I have tried to teach my nervous system that not everything is a fire, not every moment is a summons, and not every feeling requires a committee meeting. And yet, sometimes Hashem places an experience directly into my lap, literally in my lap, that accomplishes what all my protocols are trying to teach me. One of the very few activities that slows me almost instantly is holding a baby. If I had to name the short list, it would be this:

1) holding a baby,

2) sitting close with a dear friend in a deep meaningful conversation,

3) learning Torah with a good chavrusa-style match,

4) producing or listening to high-caliber restful music, and perhaps a few other forms of holy nervous-system ambush, but back to #1.

1) Baby-holding has its own category of yum.

A few weeks ago, at our full sit-down Shabbos kiddush (traditional meal following the Sabbath prayer services), there was a particular baby who had been capturing my attention for some time at these socio/spiritual events. Whenever I saw him, he focused. I smiled, made funny faces, and he smiled back. His mother enjoyed the interaction, the children looked around, and everyone seemed quietly fascinated by the fact that an entire relationship can take place through our eyes and faces alone. That Shabbos, I had the opportunity to hold him. (Yummmm!)

This baby and I are not exactly strangers. He is my rabbi’s great-grandson, and his mother remembers me reading to her and playing with her when she was a young child. So, this was not total unfamiliarity; I was not a baby-napper. It was more like layered communal familiarity, a “Tante.” This is the kind of relationship that has grown with my Rabbi’s family, home, and shul over decades, where one generation remembers my guitar, another remembers my stories, and a third generation decides whether I am safe based on my face.

A lively child was holding this baby, Meir, and he was not fully settling in her arms. He was “fussy” (= noisy). So, I became an oxytocin opportunist and asked the child if I could please hold him. Since it was Shabbos, it meant my rapt, and full attention. No scrolling. No multitasking with a baby balanced somewhere between an elbow and an agenda. Actually, being present. Physically, holding a soft, warm, weighty baby. His breath near my breath, heart near heart. This is a tiny, sweet creature who needn’t be rushed, and who will let you know if he has other physiological needs calling. He would let us know loudly and with excellent diaphragmatic support.

There is the oxytocin, of course. Oxytocin is sometimes called a bonding hormone, though like most things in the body, it refuses to be reduced to a Hallmark card. Research suggests that oxytocin is involved in early parent-infant bonding, especially through affectionate touch, gaze, vocal interaction, and repeated caregiving exchanges. A systematic review on oxytocin and early parent-infant interactions notes its role in social bonding and parent-infant relational processes, while research on affectionate caregiver touch highlights touch as one pathway for parent-infant synchrony, involving oxytocin, dopamine, and endogenous opioid systems.

But for me, it was not only the oxytocin. More importantly, it was the slowing. It was the way my heart began to listen to the baby’s rhythm. It was the way my breathing became less of an intervention and more of an atmosphere. The baby did not need a lecture on nervous system regulation. The baby needed a regulated nervous system nearby. He needed warmth, steadiness, gentleness, and a body that said, without words, “You are safe here.” The moment I picked him up, he settled. Then he leaned into my shoulder. Then he softened. Then he nestled. And something in me, the machine that is always running, churning, calculating, creating, noticing, responding, and preparing, became quiet. I could have stood or sat like that for hours. No urgency. No productivity. No performance. Just the sacred weight of a baby who had decided, for the moment, that I was safe and comfy.

Eventually, I walked over to his mother, though I confess that I intentionally kept his face mostly turned away from her. I knew that if he saw her too soon, or too clearly, he might decide that his actual mother was preferable to this loving, engulfing, auntie-type, big, warm quasi-stranger. I was being mildly selfish. Spiritually elevated, of course, but still selfish. His mother seemed happy. She told me that he does not go to everyone, and she noticed how comfortably he was nestling. I told her what I truly believed: that this was a sign of her good mothering.

In attachment theory, secure attachment does not mean a child clings desperately to the mother and cannot tolerate anyone else. It also does not mean the child treats every person as interchangeable. Secure attachment means the caregiver has become a reliable base of safety, so the child can explore, engage, tolerate manageable separations, and then return to the caregiver for comfort. Ainsworth’s Strange Situation research helped identify this pattern: securely attached children use the caregiver as a secure base for exploration and are comforted by reunion after separation or distress.

That is the beauty of secure attachment. The stronger the root, the more possible the reaching. The more reliable the home base, the more tolerable the world becomes. The mother’s attunement does not imprison the child in dependence. It gives the child enough internal safety to borrow the arms of another safe person for a little while. His willingness to settle with me was not evidence that he needed his mother less. It was evidence that she had given him enough safety to borrow the world for a few minutes. And for those twenty minutes, this baby borrowed my arms. His mother got a brief rest. He got a soft landing. I got the opportunity of a lifetime.

This is also where Tehillim becomes almost startlingly precise. Dovid HaMelech says, “Im lo shivisi v’domamti nafshi, k’gamul alei imo, k’gamul alai nafshi,” “I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me” (Psalm 131:2). This is not dissociation. This is not collapse. This is not passivity. It is the deep inner quiet that comes when the self no longer has to keep grasping, proving, or managing the universe by force.

The image is astonishing. A child resting with his mother. A soul that has stopped clawing at the air. A small being who is not frantic with demand, hunger, ego, or alarm. A little body that has learned, at least in that moment, “I am held.” This is the inner posture of bitachon, not as a slogan pasted over panic, but as an embodied knowing. The soul can become quiet because it is no longer alone in the cosmos.

That Shabbos, I was not the mother in the pasuk. I was not even the baby. In some strange way, I was both the holder and the held. I held him, and his settling held me. My nervous system lent him steadiness, and his softness lent me stillness. This is the great secret of human regulation. We are not sealed containers. We are porous creatures. We breathe one another’s weather. Proverbs 27:19 says, “K’mayim haponim laponim, kein lev ha’adam la’adam - As water reflects face to face, so the heart of a person to a person.” This is one of the great verses of relational life. Heart answers heart. Nervous system answers nervous system. Face answers face. Rashi explains that just as the face one shows to water is reflected back, so too the heart of one person is reflected in relationship with another.

ENJOY MY SUNO SONG - Held Into Stillness

And here the word panim becomes astonishing. Panim means face, but the face is not merely a biological surface. It is the front door of the inner world. It is where the hidden person becomes visible. In Hebrew, the face is not only anatomy. It is presence. It is relational revelation. The word p’nimiyus means the innermost part of something, its essence. The face is the outward gate of inwardness. That is why “K’mayim haponim laponim” is not just a lovely poetic line. It is a theory of social bonding in one pasuk. Before attachment theory had a laboratory, before co-regulation had a name, before polyvagal language described the social engagement system, Shlomo HaMelech had already noticed that one human face calls forth another human heart.

Polyvagal theory gives us another language for this. Stephen Porges describes the “social engagement system” as involving neural pathways that coordinate facial expression, vocalization, listening, and autonomic regulation in the service of social connection. In this frame, the face, voice, and heart are not separate departments. They are one relational instrument. A softened face, warm eyes, gentle vocal tone, and regulated breathing all become safety cues. A baby does not read our résumé. A baby reads our face.

This is also why Pirkei Avos teaches, “Hevei mekabel es kol ha’adam b’sever panim yafos,” “Receive every person with a pleasant countenance” (Pirkei Avos 1:15). It is not only etiquette. It is not merely “be nice.” The face itself can become an instrument of chesed. A human face can welcome, soften, dignify, and regulate. In a world where people are often met with hurry, critique, scanning, suspicion, or spiritualized busyness, a pleasant countenance is not cosmetic. It is a small act of emotional shelter.

A baby does not ask whether we understand autonomic regulation. A baby notices whether our body is broadcasting danger or safety. The baby’s nervous system is exquisitely tuned to gaze, tone, touch, rhythm, and timing. Modern developmental science would call this interactional synchrony, co-regulation, attachment security, affectionate touch, and neurobiological bonding. Torah says, with breathtaking economy, “As water reflects face to face, so the heart of a person to a person.”

This also helps explain why touch matters so much. Touch is not only contact. It is communication. Research on affectionate caregiver touch suggests that touch helps establish and maintain parent-infant synchrony at both behavioral and neural levels, while other studies on physical contact emphasize its role in fostering a feeling of safety in the parent-infant relationship. Tronick’s still-face paradigm, in its own painful little laboratory drama, showed how profoundly infants respond when the relational field suddenly goes flat. Babies are not little digestive systems with cheeks. They are relational theologians in onesies. They know when the face has left the room.

This is where I also think of Havening touch, not as a casual add-on, but as part of a structured psychosensory approach that many clinicians, including myself, have found deeply settling for the nervous system. Havening Techniques involve more than pleasant touch. They use specific forms of soothing touch, paired with carefully sequenced attention, emotional processing, and cognitive shifts, to help the brain and body update distressing emotional activation. The science is still developing, as it is with many newer therapeutic methods, but the clinical logic is strong: gentle, rhythmic touch can signal safety, reduce arousal, support emotional regulation, and help the body move out of threat physiology. For many clients, this kind of self-soothing touch is profoundly calming. For others, it may not be appropriate or welcome, because not every person wants to be touched or to touch themselves in a therapeutic context. As always, consent, preference, pacing, and clinical fit matter. But when it is welcomed and properly used, Havening can be a powerful way of helping the nervous system remember that safety is possible.

Holding a baby is not “doing Havening,” of course. The baby did not sign a consent form, select a protocol, or attend a training. But he did enjoy my gentle stroking of his arms and face. And the body recognizes cousins. Warm contact, rhythmic breath, steady arms, gentle containment, low demand, and full presence are old medicines, older than our terminology. The nervous system knew them before we named them.

Shabbos made this possible. That matters. A weekday kiddush, if such a thing existed in my nervous system, might have been surrounded by phones, texts, undone tasks, calendar alerts, and the small electronic mosquitoes of modern life. But Shabbos changes the conditions. Shabbos says: stop creating, stop producing, stop improving the universe for one holy day and learn to inhabit it. “Vayinafash,” “He rested and was refreshed” (Exodus 31:17). The word itself carries the sense of nefesh, soul-breath, re-souling. Shabbos is not only a prohibition against work. It is an ecological intervention for the human soul.

In that sit-down kiddush, the baby, the mother, the shul, the meal, the absence of phones, the intergenerational familiarity, and the softness of Shabbos all gathered into one quiet teaching. No app could have delivered it. No productivity system could have scheduled it. No wearable could have explained it while it was happening. For a few minutes, there was only a baby, a body, a breath, a face, a heart, and the ancient wisdom that human beings are not meant to regulate alone.

A few weeks have passed since that Shabbos, and I am still thinking about it. Not because it was dramatic. Quite the opposite. It was powerful because it was small. A baby settled. A mother rested. A woman who has spent nine years learning to slow down was slowed by a tiny teacher with soft cheeks and excellent instincts.

I have spent years trying to slow down. A few weeks ago, a baby did it in seconds. A baby does not read our résumé. A baby reads our face.

REFERENCES

Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. N. (2015). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation. Psychology Press. Original work published 1978.

Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Parent-child attachment and healthy human development. Basic Books.

Carozza, S., & Leong, V. (2021). The role of affectionate caregiver touch in early neurodevelopment and parent-infant interactional synchrony. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 14, Article 613378. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2020.613378

Crowther, S., Mellor, C., & Sun, K. (2025). Havening: A psycho-sensory therapy for enhancing emotional resilience and psycho-emotional wellbeing across the perinatal period. Frontiers in Global Women’s Health, 6, Article 1619273. https://doi.org/10.3389/fgwh.2025.1619273

Feldman, R. (2007). Parent-infant synchrony: Biological foundations and developmental outcomes. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16(6), 340–345. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2007.00532.x

Feldman, R. (2012). Parent-infant synchrony: A biobehavioral model of mutual influences in the formation of affiliative bonds. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 77(2), 42–51. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5834.2011.00660.x

Mesman, J., van IJzendoorn, M. H., & Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J. (2009). The many faces of the Still-Face Paradigm: A review and meta-analysis. Developmental Review, 29(2), 120–162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2009.02.001

Porges, S. W. (2003). Social engagement and attachment: A phylogenetic perspective. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1008(1), 31–47. https://doi.org/10.1196/annals.1301.004

Porges, S. W. (2009). The polyvagal theory: New insights into adaptive reactions of the autonomic nervous system. Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine, 76(Suppl. 2), S86–S90. https://doi.org/10.3949/ccjm.76.s2.17

Scatliffe, N., Casavant, S., Vittner, D., & Cong, X. (2019). Oxytocin and early parent-infant interactions: A systematic review. International Journal of Nursing Sciences, 6(4), 445–453. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnss.2019.09.009

Sumich, A., Heym, N., Sarkar, M., Burgess, T., French, J., Hatch, L., & Hunter, K. (2022). The power of touch: The effects of Havening Touch on subjective distress, mood, brain function, and psychological health. Psychology & Neuroscience, 15(4), 332–346. https://doi.org/10.1037/pne0000288

Tronick, E., Als, H., Adamson, L., Wise, S., & Brazelton, T. B. (1978). The infant’s response to entrapment between contradictory messages in face-to-face interaction. Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 17(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0002-7138(09)62273-1

Yoshida, S., & Funato, H. (2021). Physical contact in parent-infant relationship and its effect on fostering a feeling of safety. iScience, 24(7), Article 102721. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2021.102721

TORAH SOURCES

Exodus 31:17. “Vayinafash,” describing Shabbos as rest and renewal.

Numbers 6:25. “Ya’er Hashem panav eilecha,” “May Hashem shine His face upon you.”

Psalms 131:2. “I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother.”

Proverbs 27:19. “As water reflects face to face, so the heart of a person to a person.”

Pirkei Avos 1:15. “Receive every person with a pleasant countenance.”

Rashi on Proverbs 27:19. Commentary on the reflective nature of one heart to another.