A hug is uncomfortable for many people .
Others love hugs .
I have always been impressed by a story by Leo Buscaglia in which he, a teacher, used to hug every person on the school campus, even if he didn’t know them.
One day he hugged a woman who, he said, avoided him every time he saw him so as not to have to be hugged again. There was no malice in Buscaglia’s hugs, but only the desire to share his enthusiasm for life and for people .
He knew very well that not everyone would have liked his way of being, but he was also convinced that the beauty of a hug was worth the risk of not being liked by everyone.
Today I want to make you observe this gesture in many respects, thanks to different experiences and points of view. Here’s what I offer you:
- We discover how the hug is the most powerful manifestation of love.
- What to do if you have no one to hug you (with demonstration video).
- How to hug without physical contact (perfect in covid-19 time).
- How to enjoy every hug without feeling the need.
- How to learn to embrace “properly”.
- My favorite hug.
Let’s start with the experience of Gianluca and his son.
Hugging is one of the most powerful manifestations of love
By Gianluca Soffietti .
I am often away from home for work and the other day I returned after 4 days of absence. My son, as soon as I opened the door of the house, ran towards me and hugged me tightly .
At that moment I was tired, I had my backpack on my shoulders and the suitcase in my hand. I couldn’t wait to put down all the things and take a nice shower.
My son upset my plans and hugged me very tightly.
I left my suitcase and returned the hug my son tightly.
Thanks to the hug I relaxed, I smiled, I closed my eyes tightly and I enjoyed the moment fully, I told my son that I loved him a lot, I asked him how he was and I filled him with kisses without never leave the embrace.
Together we laughed and hugged even stronger.
The hug lasted several seconds and was very intense. At that moment I felt a great happiness.
I was tired, sleepy, but I felt enormous happiness.
I wondered why.
The hug in my opinion is one of the concrete manifestations of the most POWERFUL love there is.
When I receive and give love I am happy and in the embrace two people give each other their love. It is an extraordinary power of happiness.
Above I wrote two people. But I’m wrong.
The hug can also take place between several people .
It comes to mind when my son was little.
Every time my wife and I hugged each other, he ran very hard towards us, he also called my daughter and hugged us all shouting: FAMILY HUG!
And the four of us hugged each other very hard, laughing like crazy.
The embrace has an extraordinary power: the power of love that makes you happy .
The power of the hug also affects animals. The same effect can be felt when hugging a dog, a cat, a horse …
How much happier we would all be if we chose to hug one or more people for tens of seconds.
I want to be happy and I understand that I hug too few times because I run, because I am always busy doing other things and also because I am a little afraid to lower my defenses by opening my arms.
But I have experienced that when I choose to lower these defenses, opening myself to embrace, it is beautiful: I welcome the other person and the other welcomes me.
Around me every day I see many unhappy people.
If we learn to hug, I am convinced that we will be happier.
With the hug, I say to the other person: you are important to me, I trust you and I lower my defenses, I welcome you, I am close to you and you can count on me .
It is not always easy: a sense of modesty, fear of lowering one’s defenses and being discovered vulnerable.
I have read that the positive effects of hugging have also been found on a scientific level. If a hug is sincere and lasts for several seconds (at least 20) it produces a therapeutic effect on the body and mind.
A sincere hug produces oxytocin (a hormone) and endorphins that provide an intense feeling of calm and well-being and strengthen bonds. It makes us feel stronger because we love and feel loved.
Why not experience happiness by embracing more?
I decided to do it and it WORKS!
I suggest a very simple exercise: every day commit to hugging two or more people at least twice for more than 20 seconds .
You choose the moments.
When you have trained the number of hugs and you will see that you will be happier and happier.
Reading these words from Gianluca it comes to my mind that there are many lonely people to whom this exercise could be difficult.
What do you do if you don’t have anyone who wants to hug you ?
In reality there is a creative solution, and Deborah suggests it , thanks also to the help of Juan …
All negative emotions come from fear
Fear is the basis of every negative emotion, and it is the one we feel most often, without perhaps recognizing it.
I made an ebook in which I explain what are the 4 roots that feed it and how to eliminate them . You will have several exercises and some stories to change your approach to fear and find that you don’t need it , and you can get to live a life without fear .
- What fear can do to you ( how it stops you).
- Why try it: the 4 roots(claims, addictions, selfishness and mental weakness).
- An exercise for each root.
- Some tests to find out if you are selfish.
- 2 tests (one really difficult) to understand if you are addicted to someone.
- I’ll explain how you can live a life without fear(showing you what steps you have to take).
I recommend it now because you can never get rid of your negative emotions if you don’t get rid of fear first .
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Free hugs!
By Deborah Cavalieri.
ATTENTION : it is better to wait for the end of the Covid-19 epidemic for this ?
Today I want to introduce you to Juan and give you a taste of what it can be like to hug a person. Let’s start immediately with one of his videos.
In this age of social disconnection and lack of human contact, the effects of the “Free Hugs” campaign have become phenomenal.
This symbol of human hope spread throughout the city.
Unfortunately, the police and officials ordered a ban on this Free Hugs initiative. But what we then witness is the true spirit of humanity coming together in what can only be described as impressive.
But now we come to Juan and I leave him the word that tells us in his words how this campaign was born:
I lived in London and had to go home. When my plane landed in Sydney, I was left with only one carry-on bag full of clothes and a world of problems. No one to welcome me back, no place to call home. I was a tourist in my hometown.
Standing there in the arrivals terminal, watching other passengers meet their waiting friends and family, with open arms and smiling faces, hugging and laughing together, I wanted someone out there waiting for me. Be happy to see me. To smile at me. To hug me.
So I took some cardboard and a marker and wrote. I found the busiest pedestrian intersection in the city and held that sign up, with the words “Free Hugs” on either side.
And for 15 minutes, people just looked at me.
The first person who stopped, patted me on the shoulder and told me how his dog had just died that morning. Like that morning had been the one-year anniversary of his only daughter who died in a car accident. Like what she needed now, when she felt the loneliest in the world, was a hug. I got down on one knee, we hugged and when we parted, she was smiling.
Everyone has problems and I have mine too. But seeing someone who was once frowning, smiling even for a moment, is worth it every time.
Why was it banned?
Fear and bureaucracy of public responsibility. But now everything is fine! Make sure to check your local laws before embarking on your Hugathon!
I think he’s just not only a wonderful guy, but also a smart one.
He could sit and wait and feel sorry for himself, for all that he was missing, but not. He took action even though that may mean going against the grain.
It is easy to go with the flow: to be more available with those who satisfy our tastes, to give space in life in general to those who show that they are keeping up with what society wants.
We like to offer our time and help only if we get something out of it .
And then we come to a point in our life and complain about a world without love.
And you?
What are you doing to improve it?
Are you capable of selfless love to stay close to a person, help him, hug him, make him feel loved?
Of course, unlike a small child who needs loving care otherwise the lack of love can lead to death, the human being can spend decades on a desert island.
But wow what energy is put into circulation if a person smiles at us, hugs us, says a kind word, gives us a sincere compliment, every little gesture of love has an additional power in our life that we often underestimate, because we are only focused not to love but to use others .
And unfortunately when one does not know how to love , he remains closed in his world of need according to his rules. And when you get to feel sad and empty , it’s because a need is tied to rules that have this effect.
If you know what it feels like to receive love, why don’t you transform your need into a form of good, that good you want to instill: give your love without an if and a but .
Our need should be “TO LOVE”.
I personally get emotional every time I see the video that Deborah suggested .
In people’s faces you see a conflict: fear of opening up, desire to give oneself warmth .
And when you choose to open up, to give a little of yourself, something melts and you feel that you can be without masks and veils, at least for a few minutes.
But not everyone likes hugs.
For example, Alessandra thinks differently and believes there is another way to embrace others. Very useful, as you will see, in times of covid-19!
Are you capable of living a happy life?
A few minutes and 10 questions that will allow you to understand if today you are capable of living a deeply happy life.
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The embrace of eyes and heart
By Alessandra Barigazzi.
The hug is something important.
Something substantial, substantial, which gives substance.
I am not a big hug , so when I hug, or I do it because at that moment it has to be done (and really bad, but luckily, little happens to me and when it happens to me, I try to turn it into something true, at least as an invitation and attempt ) or it is giving a gift of value.
Myself.
My body that doesn’t like being touched, except for a real reason.
My warmth, my discretion, an unusual closeness. One more step.
This is the hug for me.
I always remember with pleasure when, hugging a child who had just declared to me that he had taken a hard blow from his parent and being, as always, I started to give the hug with a little hesitation, at a certain point I felt like melt in my arms and take from that heat the strength to recreate .
That recreating himself, to say it now, may seem like an impression of me, but I remember well how concrete the perception of what was happening in him was.
Well, given these premises, today’s news is that we don’t just hug with our arms .
We reserved embrace a lot with the eyes and even more with the heart .
Which, by the way, for me is the most beautiful way because it is a hug that gives you superpowers: like Elastigirl from the Incredibles you can reach out and hug people thousands of kilometers away or even in the afterlife.
And don’t think that the recipient of hugs of the eyes or of the heart does not perceive him to be hugged: sooner or later he realizes it, believe me!
I agree with Alessandra : we can embrace with the eyes, with the heart .
I remember one day that I was in the post office and saw an elderly gentleman.
I watched him for a while: he could have been my grandfather.
Looking at him, I felt the desire to embrace him, to pass on my love, my joy.
I often see tired, worried, tense faces, and want to offer a hug that means: “ Don’t worry, everything will be fine! “.
At the beginning I told you how Buscaglia was very expansive in this sense.
Alessandra offers us a different opportunity: to embrace these people with heart and eyes .
And that day, in the post office, I did just that: I embrace that gentleman with my eyes and heart .
I don’t know if he will have noticed, maybe yes.
Certainly me and this is also the invitation that comes from the video I showed you earlier: act, love, hug you, in first person .
But we’re not done.
Better to hug or be hugged?
At this point let’s read what Megumì has to write about this.
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Hug or do I want to be hugged?
By Megumì Campanella .
I have always loved hugs and have always considered them the most intimate and warm expression of affection. I remember that as a child I often hugged myself with all my strength.
Lately, however, something has changed in my way of hugging. Until recently, I was looking for hugs, I “demanded” them. More than hugging, I wanted to be hugged.
It happened to me recently, during the first experiences of coaching, that a girl told me that the thing she missed most about her ex-partner was the hugs he gave her at night when they slept together.
Eh, how I understood her!
I’ve always been a huge fan of hugs too, even within a couple relationship. So lately I’ve often wondered why I wanted so much to be hugged.
The hug has always made me feel protected .
In those moments, tight in that embrace, I was not afraid of anything.
But was it true that a hug had all this power?
To protect me from my fears?
Or maybe in that embrace I found a momentary relief, a distraction from my problems, which always remained there anyway?
The hug served me as an anesthetic, I needed the hug in the illusion that another human being could give me strength, warmth, understanding .
But once the hug was over, my fears returned.
My problems always lay there, unsolved.
And, in the illusion of necessarily needing them, I demanded hugs .
I still remember as if it were yesterday when I read Giacomo’s beautiful newsletter on the demand for hugs.
You are walking by the sea with a friend.
You love hugs to death and hope with all your heart that your friend will hug you.
So you do everything to make that friend want to hug you: you measure words, gestures, behaviors.
You do not see that the final result (the hug) losing everything else.
The view, the feeling of walking on the sand, the sunset, the closeness of your friend.
You miss everything .
Even the love of your friend who may not hug you but shows his affection in a thousand other ways.
You lose everything for something that may never happen. And that anyway, now I know for sure, even if it happens, it will never give you the happiness you expect . The protection. The love.
I have been demanding hugs from my husband for a very long time.
Which is rather reluctant to physical contact.
If we are on the street, ” everyone is watching us ” (maybe there is no one within two kilometers … but who can ever know?), If we are at home, ” precious minutes, I have a lot of things to do and you do waste time “?
Learning to love has many paths.
Sometimes learning to love coincides with learning to open up to an embrace, overcoming one’s own blocks and fears, others means learning, as in my case, of that embrace, to know how to do without .
And you can only do this when you begin to understand deeply that you don’t really need it.
- If you are afraid, face your fear . It’s not a hug that will blow it away.
- If you have a problem, sit down and look it in the face and start looking for solutions right away . It will certainly not be a hug to solve them.
- If you need to feel loved and welcomed , start loving yourself first. Starting with yourself.
When my aunt moved into our house, she tried to get to know our (almost) six cats. She never had animals and was very fearful.
In order to try to overcome his fear and become familiar with them, I saw that he was trying to take advantage of every opportunity to approach them, touch them, caress them.
Cats love cuddling if you know how and where and when to pet them.
But above all if you know how to understand and respect that imperceptible moment when those caresses don’t like them anymore.
Letting them welcome him if and how they want.
And to think that many say that cats are anaffective !
They writhe in purring and pleasure for hours, sending you all their love, but only if they feel that there is true acceptance and understanding on your part. A wonderful communication without words.
In how many wonderful and countless ways can we embrace another living creature?
Have you ever had that ineffable and unrepeatable feeling of embracing without embracing ?
For example, it happened to me with Alessandra in Lamezia Terme!
Alessandra claims not to be particularly inclined to hugs, and I honestly don’t remember if we hugged each other, yet my feeling was that we hugged each other for all the time we spent together.
A wonderful feeling.
Through our gaze, the words we exchanged, the joy of sharing moments together (including shopping in the small supermarket near the station).
I can say the same with Gianluca , when we met for the first time live for an aperitif all’eur.
Since I realized deeply that I don’t “need” to be hugged, I am learning to hug others for the first time .
Before it was not I who was hugging, it was not I who was opening up and welcoming, but asking to be embraced, loved, protected .
And I couldn’t even recognize true love because I necessarily wanted the hug, which I considered among the highest demonstrations of love .
Today as in the past I really like hugs. I’m just not looking for them
today .
Because between the embrace and the Love I have chosen to want to learn to love.
And if the hug is to be an obstacle to love, as has happened in the past, I undoubtedly prefer to choose Love .
In fact, reading Megumì’s words , I notice that (almost) all animals seek physical contact.
As a child or as an adult it matters little.
They still look for a way to connect with others.
So I think that we too are looking for this harmony, this union, but just as a hen has much less pleasure in being caressed (mine don’t like it very much), we too are very varied in the way we want this sharing of warmth and love.
Before explaining to you which hug I prefer, I want you to read Serena’s words , which explains how to dissolve the fear of hugging, if this is your block.
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How to learn to really hug
By Serena Sironi .
These days I am helping a girl who has a lot of trouble expressing her emotions . She is strongly convinced that manifesting deep emotions is synonymous with weakness.
Avoid like the plague any possibility that this could happen, any situation that could make her feel something “beautiful”. If this happens, she lives it with modesty and hides from everyone, herself first, that she has experienced something.
He does not allow himself to feel emotions even with his mother, hiding everything behind a demonstration of great efficiency in which coldness, clarity and rationality are the masters.
Looking at this behavior now, I would wonder how we can get to this point, yet I was doing the exact same thing and for the same exact reason.
I didn’t allow myself to feel emotions and felt wrong when they went deep inside.
But do you know how I solved it? I hugged my father .
So, what do you think he advised that girl?
Hug your mother.
I know well what a step like that means and I know that behind a simple hug there will be a huge job to do on herself.
And the hug is not only good for those who receive it.
Think about its shape.
Isn’t the first thing you do is open your arms?
And this already feels good.
Have you ever tried this in front of a sunset or while running in the grass?
If you haven’t, do it as soon as you can and then you tell me.
Opening your arms means welcoming , that is, letting everything get inside you. At that point you can close them and with this what you have accepted becomes yours.
But that’s not enough.
I think hugging is an art.
The girl I’m helping took this step. She hugged her mother but, disappointed, told me she didn’t feel anything. But what was his hug like?
A mere mechanical gesture dominated by fear and in which what most important characterizes it is missing: a perfect contact .
A first fearful attempt while maintaining a certain safety distance, synonymous with just as much rigidity.
But in contact with the capital “C” an immense energy is unleashed.
Lorenzo Jovanotti also says it in his song ” Fango ” where the theme is precisely that of the fear of not being able to feel emotions anymore.
“ But the only fear you really feel is that of not being able to feel anything anymore ,” says Lorenzo.
And in this fear of not feeling anything, the fear of not feeling ” the energy that is unleashed in a contact ”
This energy is made up of heat, strength and physicality.
I have always liked handshakes “done right”, precisely because they transferred energy into these three components.
Yet the hug was something incredibly difficult for me.
And do you know why?
In a hug there are a couple of little things: the closeness and the quantity of the body of the people who come together in the action of hugging.
Think about it, in the embrace you hold the whole body and the bodies are literally united . In a well done hug they become practically complementary.
That’s why in a mechanical hug you won’t experience any of the powerful effect a hug done right could have.
But a hug like this can be scary.
It is the highest expression of oneself.
At the same time it says what I think and what I feel.
Without words it says who I am unequivocally, without shadows and without veils.
A hug strips you and makes you extremely vulnerable . For this it requires courage and self-confidence .
It requires strength.
Thus, it is necessary to understand where the strength of a person really lies.
In appearing iron, hard, impassive and efficient or in opening up showing that you have nothing to defend?
If you don’t have to defend anything, you are actually unassailable .
And if you have nothing to lose, you can only be a winner.
Always.
As I told you, it was very difficult for me to let myself go in a hug and I learned to do it by starting to open my arms to the beauty of nature.
Yes, because when you open your arms you welcome and everything can enter inside you with the risk that it can also hurt you.
Beauty is love for what it is. It is a natural source of gratitude.
He undoubtedly gives, and he undoubtedly wants nothing in return.
Retreating for long moments in nature, observing it in solitude, letting myself be excited and moved until I open up to its beauty, was the first step in learning to trust and then, little by little, opening my arms to the world.
Openness means love and trust is the basis.
By learning to love I am learning the art of hugging people and everything that comes my way. My hug has changed over time.
Now it is warm, vigorous and enveloping.
My hug now speaks more than a thousand words.
When I hug you I tell you that I am loving you .
This is why I am sure that the girl I told you about, if she continues to try and work on herself to learn to love, will be able to experience the taste of love and trust by hugging her mother.
Likewise, I am convinced that any of us can do it, even you.
And if you feel like you already know how to embrace others, remember that you can give maximum expression to your art by improving yourself in your ability to love.
Day after day, because learning to love is something that has no end .
Like Serena , I also went through a phase in my life in which I hardly embraced anyone.
Just a friend or my girlfriend.
Today I like to hug.
The other day I went to my mom and hugged her.
There is no reason.
Or rather, there is: I love it .
What other reason do you need to hug someone?
Be it with arms or with eyes and heart .
My favorite hug?
The one that lasts more than 5 seconds .
No, not for various oxytocins or scientific research.
Anyone who loves knows more than a scientist about emotions and the human mind.
But because if you go beyond 5 seconds, you relax and that hug is no longer a gesture in which you touch someone, but a soft expression of love in which you let yourself be who you really are.
The back is no longer stiff, the arms relax, you no longer hold your breath and you feel that you could stay there for as long as you want .
Test.
Over 5 seconds, let yourself slip into the embrace and you will see what a good feeling it can be.
But remember Serena’s words : hugging is also an art.
And remember those of Megumì : love counts more than the way you express it.
Good hugs to all!
