Hugging Souls

Hugging to me is one of our most overlooked and misunderstood human encounters. You may wonder what hugging has to do with woo-woo; for me the connection is energy.

I think of hugging as energy exchange. I view sexuality that way, too, but in this blog entry I won’t be discussing sex per se.

I am a very sensuous being. Born and raised in Northern California, I am a card-carrying touchie-feelie teddy bear type. I have always gravitated to people who like to touch and cuddle. Touch me when you talk to me and you will make a more profound impression. That’s my bias.

Over the course of my life, my conception of embracing, which was always very sensuous, has become increasingly more spiritual. That is where “hugging as energy exchange” came from.

Spiritual to me, just so you understand, is not about religion. I do not belong to any church. Spiritual to me means recognizing the importance of mind and heart. When I hug someone, I am hugging much more than a body. I am hugging an indwelling spirit, a consciousness, a being that does not always inhabit that body.

I have felt for many years that hugging is a form of communication spoken in body language. Hugging is one great way for me to read a person’s emotional presence. I can tell with remarkable precision (checked out through voice, if need be) how someone feels about me.

When I talk about hugging, I am not referring to most of the one-second body collisions people in our culture are conditioned to produce for the occasion (“give” would be the wrong word here). You know, the A-frame, don’t blink or you’ll miss it atrocity.

For me it’s got to arrive in the ten-second range to even be considered as real, not just absent-minded habit. Especially if you think of embracing as energy exchange, you don’t get much “juice” from a hug that’s faster than touching a hot iron.

I discovered in my 30s how much better I felt about myself, other people, and the world at large after receiving a long, affectionate hug from someone. A hug like that cheered me up better and faster than words. Indeed, a hug was enlightening in a tangible sense. It felt more real than rhetoric.

Of course, embracing someone, especially for ten seconds or longer, almost automatically dropkicks it into the briar patch of sex. Obviously, that’s because hugging is an onramp to foreplay. Many people stalwartly keep hugs short to sidestep any chance of becoming sexually stimulated. People who think like that will be among the first to look at other people hugging and think “foreplay” or “lust” instead of “love.”

Want to put terror into many hearts? Suggest hugging for a whole minute. Sixty eternal seconds. That might not seem so daunting if you’re talking about embracing someone you’re crazy about, but what about a stranger or someone you wouldn’t want to sleep with.

A few years ago I attended Unity of Corvallis, Oregon. Part of the Sunday service was an event called Greet Your Neighbor. As music played, congregants were encouraged to mill about greeting others with words, a handshake, or a hug. We touchie-feelie devotees loved it. Over the year I was there, I happily hugged women and men alike(gays and straights of both genders, I might add.) Every now and then someone would (mis)interpret my behavior as sexually invasive (I can quickly tell) but much more often than not I felt welcoming and welcomed, and often got positive comments..

Because, you see, hugging is not about sex. It can be, but not automatically. For me I noticed that consciousness has everything to do with it. Intent. Often when I embrace I visualize something of nature like bright sunrays or flowing water or beautiful colors. When I hug someone and that stuff is going on in my mind, it sends a warming and wholesome feeling (or at least that’s what I tell myself.)

With that in mind I was intrigued to hear about the so-called hugging guru, Mata Amritanandamayi. She hugs to heal and empower and share the love of the Universe. The estimates of how many people she has hugged over thirty years are staggering. One account says 30 million in 30 years. Pretty impressive if you do the math. That would be hugging 2740 people a day. Another account drops the 30 to 21 million. I’d settle for 93 hugs a day for thirty years just to join the Million Hug Club.

I wonder how many hugs Leo Buscaglia logged in his lifetime. (No, it’s really not about numbers. It’s about quality. )

By referencing the Hugging Guru and the Hug Doctor, I suspect that I am attempting to legitimize my fascination for this method of connecting with people. Hugging feels so good, so right, so enlightening to me that I am struck dumb when someone suggests that it is just a lecherous libido in action. I avoid embracing people like that. I don’t want their energy!

If I were designing a perfect world, I would love to see hugging elevated in stature. I would like hugs to be ceremonies where I let my love of life and humanity flow through me and into someone else. I would like it to be a sensually pleasing expression of sacred and welcoming joy.

If I were designing a perfect world, I would gather a group of kindred spirits together for weekly hug-a-thons where we could embrace the night away while sharing our stories, our feelings, our quests. (Don’t I live dangerously, though?) As we opened our arms to each other, we would open our hearts to each other, too. By regularly staying in touch, literally and metaphorically, we would brighten our lives with love.

I think there would be more to this than sensual pleasure. I am not a neuro-linguistic programming expert by any stretch, but it has occurred to me that by combining pleasing physical sensations with affirmations and positive thinking, one could be sending an awesome force of empowerment to the brain. When our bodies feel wonderful, we’re more open to assimilating positive messages.

Anybody want to join in on my reality?