Do you need a hug?

Hugs

“Everybody needs a hug.  It changes your metabolism.”  Leo Buscaglia

“I love hugging.  I wish I was an octopus, so I could hug ten people at a time.”

                                  Drew Barrymore

         In my youth, I was not a hugger.  Then in the early nineties, I went to a spirituality seminar in the Arizona desert with a hundred and twenty other women from all across America and Canada.  Those women taught me how to hug and mean it.  I came back from that experience a hugging fool.  My women friends and I launched a hugging campaign at church.  Some people didn’t like it, but most did.  Before long, the minister had to cut the passing of the peace out of the worship service because people got so involved in hugging that he couldn’t get them back to their seats. 

         Nowadays, people hug instead of shaking hands.  I think in touch-deprived America this is a good thing.  Did you know that the only country in the world in which people touch less than we do is England?  In countries like France, Italy and Argentina, people touch ten to one hundred times more often than we Americans do.  And in some countries, men are even allowed to kiss and hug!  And they aren’t even on a football field!  It’s amazing!

         Leo Buscaglia is right about hugs changing your chemistry.  A good, well-meant hug sets off a cascade of ‘happy’ neurotransmitters in our brains that make us feel good.  Probably if we hugged enough people everyday we wouldn’t need all those medications we think we can’t live without.  Then there wouldn’t be so much Prozac in our ground water.  Think of it as cleaning up the environment.  The new, greener, huggable you!

         All mammals are warm-blooded, social animals.  Mammals in the wild spend a great deal of time grooming one another.  I watch my little dogs in their sleep and in their play, side by side, tussling and gnawing on one another.  Did you know that if a mother cat can’t lick her babies, their digestive systems don’t work and they die?  Human babies, who aren’t held and loved, don’t develop the neural networks necessary for learning.  We’re mammals, y’all.  Let’s don’t lose track of that in all our modern sophistication.  Give somebody a hug today and collect one for your self.

                                  Shalom,

                                  Jane