Here Is Why I Want To Hug You

If you are like me, I want to hug you. A friend sent this to me today (hat tip: Ronni : ).

It’s a real thing. I want to hug you. If you are missing hugs as much as I am, and are thinking “I want to hug you, but why?” this article from the University of Virginia will be an amazing read. The full article is here https://news.virginia.edu/content/do-you-miss-hugging-psychology-can-tell-you-why, and I’m only going to share a few diamonds. Like this first one, about the physics of it.

One of the reasons that hugging is so wonderful is because it allows us to conserve body heat. And body heat is, for a mammal, a really expensive thing to generate. Because we’re mammals, we need to have our core body temperature maintained within a very, very, very tight, stable window. If you get a little too hot, that’s a fever; get a little bit too cold and you start shutting down. So, we have to maintain our core body temperature. And there are a lot of theories that all mammals wound up being able to evolve a constant core body temperature by huddling.

“When you’re hugging someone, it allows your brain to do sort of maintenance things like fixing your leaky roof, shoring up your immune functioning, that sort of thing, rather than using its resources to be vigilant for potential danger. ” – JAMES COAN, UVA PSYCHOLOGIST

You can download a pretty cool poster of that here.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been particularly vigilant of potential danger lately. The second example, for me, spiritual.

“One of the first things about a hug that’s really, really powerful is that it’s one of the most unambiguous signals that you’re not alone. There’s nothing that makes it clearer that someone is with you than someone pressing their body against yours. And, your brain really likes to know that you’re not alone.”

The takeaway? Go hug someone quick.