I Was Just Thinking HUGGING MY WAY TO HEALTH
	MARCH 2005

by Don Huntington, Editor In Chief

For human beings, you need two hugs a day to survive, four hugs for maintenance, six hugs to grow. (Virginia Satir, Marriage and Family Therapist)

A university professor was stunned when one of his favorite pupils, who had been a bright young student, committed suicide with no advance warning. As a preventive measure against future incidents, he began to line his students up to give them each a big hug whenever he started and finished a class.

The professor’s name was Dr. Leo Buscaglia and he went on to write a book about his experiences that was so successful he became a noted public speaker on the topic of hugging for health. Dr. Buscaglia would lecture for an hour and then sometimes spend twice that long passing out hugs to the members of his audience who had lined up afterwards.

Dr. Buscaglia had a simple explanation for the effectiveness of his embraces, “If somebody hugs you, you know you must be there or they’ll go through you.”

I think there was a genuine point beneath Buscaglia’s humorous comment. Perhaps when I get a hug the embrace really does feel like an affirmation of me as a real person. That might be why it feels so good to bury my face in the neck of some warm puppy and have him nuzzle me in return. I know I’m authentic or this puppy and I wouldn’t be able to share this wonderful moment together.

Most of us in America are touch-deprived, according to some social science researchers. A number of people have shared with me with genuine regret that their parents were never in the habit of touching them. A massage therapist, who was born and raised in South America, told me that aversion to touching or being touched was a particularly American shortcoming.

Some people think hugging to be childish. And, in fact, children really love to hug and to touch. My seven-year-old grandchild hugs cabin attendants when boarding airplanes and other children he meets in the mall. He periodically gives hugs to everyone in whatever room he’s in that makes them all feel like they’ve been touched by an angel.

Hugging is not childish, in fact, though the practice has some child-like qualities. When two people embrace they become like children for a moment, deliberately dropping defenses that we adults keep in place all the rest of the time.

My grandchild and I are both non-discriminating huggers of men, women, children, senior citizens (who are some of the most fun people to hug), laughing people, grieving, joyful, dying…. The only people I don’t hug on a regular basis are young women — because they sometimes think that getting a hug from an old gray-haired guy is too weird. I also am careful about this around people of Asian descent who sometimes have some cultural thing going on that I try to respect.

I’ve learned to respect the wishes of some individuals — especially guys — who just don’t like to be touched, but most people I meet are glad to be hugged, or at least they learn to be glad. One woman told me that the first time I met her and her husband I gave them both a big hug. She said her husband asked her afterwards, “Why did that guy hug me?”

Now she says he’s disappointed if he misses his hug.

Most of all, I hug and touch my wife. Rae and I have been married for 39 years and still sometimes hold hands when we drive in the car. I hug her the first time we are both conscious in the morning, hug her last thing before we go to sleep at night, and typically hug her whenever our paths cross during the day.

Touching and hugging provides a curative for psychological isolation — one of modern society’s most terrible illnesses. Albert Schweitzer made the poignant statement: “We are all so much together and yet we are all dying of loneliness.”

I know a few people consider hugging to be a strange custom of mine, but everyone knows that when I hug them, I hug them good. I hug them so they know it is not simply a social convention. Some accept it as a gift — which they usually give right back to me.

“Six hugs a day to grow,” this month’s quote says. If you’re feeling spiritually stunted today, you might find someone and give him or her a big bear hug right now. The experience might add an inch or so to the spiritual height of you both.