Signal to Noise

Have you ever struggled to tune in a weak radio station? Static fills the speakers as you strain to hear the station while tweaking the dial. Of course today's radios jump electronically to the station with the strongest signal when you push the next button. In electronics what determines a "strong" signal is the signal to noise ratio. Signal is also called intelligence. Noise is what we want to reject or filter out.
When we work with out client they are going through a very similar process of trying to determine what in our input/touch is intelligent and should be listened to and what is extraneous noise and should be rejected. Each time the client makes a decision about this their ability to adapt or change is reduced a little--I subscribe to the theory that we have only so much adaptive capacity and that it is not measured in time but in decisions like described here. If we are inputting a lot of extraneous noise into the client's body, through touching them with no purpose to the touch--petting--than they will use their adaptive capacity on filtering out that touch and not gain as much benefit. If on the other hand, no pun, we are sure about what we are trying to achieve with our touch than our signal to noise ratio will be high and the client will benefit more, if only in that we did the filtering for them.
The next time you are working with a client ask yourself before you touch them if you are sure of what you are trying to achieve with our intervention.