Benefits of Hugging

Reaching out and touching someone, and embracing him/her tightly is a way of saying you care. It is proven to have positive therapeutic effects on both mental and physical ailments. The effects of a good old fashioned bear hug (firm but not crushing!) has immediate effects for both, the hugger and the person being hugged. It loosens you up and breaks the bonds of body as well as of society. Hugging reinforces a positive emotional state necessary to make important and sometimes critical decisions or changes.

Every centimeter of skin (one of our five senses) is sensitive to touch, from the head to the tips of the toes. The possible origin of the need to be touched may begin
in the mother's womb. The entire fetus body is touched by the amniotic fluid, keeping it warm and nurturing it. After birth a baby recognizes its parents initially by touch and sound. Cuddling and caressing helps the child feel secure and is known to aid in self-esteem.

Hugging is being used even as an aid in treating some physical illnesses, following research that it leads to certain positive physiological changes. For example, touch stimulates nerve endings, thereby helping in relieving pain . It is thus not uncommon for a chronic pain patient to be prescribed "Therapeutic touch" which involves placing the hands on or just above the troubled area in the patient's body for half-an-hour (shades of reiki). This pushes up the hemoglobin levels in the blood, increasing the delivery of blood to tissues, a study at the nursing department of New York University showed. Some nurses' associations in the USA have since endorsed therapeutic touch.

The miraculous way in which hugging works is described in a touching story about Lee Shapiro, a retired judge, who realized that love is the greatest power there is and began offering everybody a hug.

Some years ago he created the Hugger Kit. It contains 30 little red embroidered hearts. Shapiro would take out his kit, go around to people and offer them a little red heart in exchange for a hug. Soon, he became a minor celebrity for spreading his message of unconditional love.

Once, accepting a challenge from a local television station in San Francisco, he went ahead and offered a hug to a six-foot-two, 230-pound bus driver, from a community known to be the toughest, crabbiest and meanest in the whole town. Even as the TV cameras whirred, the bus driver stepped down and said: "Why not?"

But Shapiro was queasy when invited to a home for the terminally ill, severely retarded and quadriplegic. Accompanied by a team of doctors and nurses, he went about his routine of hugging and handing out little red hearts till they reached a ward with the worst cases. The last person, named Leonard, whom Shapiro had to hug, was drooling on his big white bib; There's no way we can get across to this person, Shapiro thought.

But finally he leaned down and gave Leonard a hug. This is what followed, in the *authors' words:

All of a sudden Leonard began to squeal: "Eeeeehh! Eeeeehh!"

Some of the other patients in the room began to clang things together. Shapiro turned to the staff for some sort of explanation, only to find that every doctor, nurse and orderly was crying.

Shapiro asked the head nurse: "What's going on?"

Shapiro will never forget what she said: "This is the first time in 23 years we've ever seen Leonard smile.

*'The Hugging Judge' in Chicken Soup for the Soul by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen.

Think about it … it only takes a simple, heartfelt and warm embrace to change the lives of others .. and your own. Try it, it works - hug someone today!