Why is touching the head considered threatening in some Asian cultures?
Particularly in Southeast Asia, the head is taboo because it’s believed that somewhere here resides the spirit or the soul of the person, and it plays out in many different ways. For example, the Hmong people who are originally from Laos have that same belief. There was a preschool here in the United States, and the new teacher had just come, and she had been given a very brief orientation, and she was to teach the children colors and parts of the body. And they had these outlines of the body, and she would say, “Color the hands orange, color the feet purple, color the clothes green, put brown eyes on the face.” The children wouldn’t do it. “Put a red mouth.” The children wouldn’t do it. And everything that she asked them to do, every feature to put on this blank face the children refused to do. She just couldn’t understand what was going on. Then after class was over, the teacher said, “Oh, we forgot to tell you, the Hmong have a belief that the spirit resides in the head, the head is
