depression is on the rise is because touch is on the drop.
Studies indicate that touch has a beneficial effect on our perception of pain, treatment of disease, as well as emotional and physical development.
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.
Any health problem makes the sufferer feel vulnerable, frightened, angry, frustrated and helpless. The patient usually needs to educate himself to make certain life changes. Hugging can give him the positive emotional state necessary to make these changes. In one study, pet ownership was seen to contribute to the survival of heart patients. The inference: the cuddling of pets has a soothing effect that reduces the stress levels in heart attack victims.
Tactile contact is very important for people with certain handicaps and can even be therapeutic. Imran Ali, a visually impaired telephone operator at the Steel Authority of India office in Delhi, says that if somebody says "Hi!" to him, it means nothing to him—a hug does. In Mario Puzo's latest novel, The Last Don, the heroine named Athena provides her autistic daughter with "a hug box", lying in which gives the child a feeling of being hugged by a person without having to connect or relate to another human being, which is a problem with autistics.
The miraculous way in which hugging works is described in a touching story titled 'The Hugging Judge' in Chicken Soup for the Soulby Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen. It is 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.
Any health problem makes the sufferer feel vulnerable, frightened, angry, frustrated and helpless. The patient usually needs to educate himself to make certain life changes. Hugging can give him the positive emotional state necessary to make these changes. In one study, pet ownership was seen to contribute to the survival of heart patients. The inference: the cuddling of pets has a soothing effect that reduces the stress levels in heart attack victims.
Tactile contact is very important for people with certain handicaps and can even be therapeutic. Imran Ali, a visually impaired telephone operator at the Steel Authority of India office in Delhi, says that if somebody says "Hi!" to him, it means nothing to him—a hug does. In Mario Puzo's latest novel, The Last Don, the heroine named Athena provides her autistic daughter with "a hug box", lying in which gives the child a feeling of being hugged by a person without having to connect or relate to another human being, which is a problem with autistics.
The miraculous way in which hugging works is described in a touching story titled 'The Hugging Judge' in Chicken Soup for the Soulby Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen. It is 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.
Most people's lifestyle is more stressful and includes fewer opportunities for physical contact than ever before. Twenty years ago, teachers used to hug and touch their students and that was fine with parents. Touch was a sign of caring. Nowadays, concerns about sexual harassment and inappropriate touching make people overly cautious and reluctant to touch others. As a result, many of us find ourselves starved for simple, casual, warm touch from our families, friends and colleagues.
There's a whole new field now called psychoneuroimmunology, or PNI for short. It claims that when you feel good and you love yourself and you're being touched and you feel loved, your immune system gets stronger. Touching builds up the immune system (they now call this “libidinal refuelling”). When you hug somebody, you literally recharge your and the other person’s libido, the powerful energy of the body.
There's a whole new field now called psychoneuroimmunology, or PNI for short. It claims that when you feel good and you love yourself and you're being touched and you feel loved, your immune system gets stronger. Touching builds up the immune system (they now call this “libidinal refuelling”). When you hug somebody, you literally recharge your and the other person’s libido, the powerful energy of the body.
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