Transforming Hugs into Art

Hugs are an example of how small acts of daily life can become a deep artistic journey.

At first, I knew only one kind of hug: the “East Coast” hug. Businesslike, efficient, reserved for family members. It was a pleasurable hug, brief, and occasionally a little awkward.

The next hug I added to my repertoire was the intimate hug. That was reserved for my girlfriend. It was close, with full-body contact, and went on a while longer.

Then, I started hanging out with people who had lived in communes. One of them held his hug quite long, but also gave you an upper-back massage while hugging, moving one flat palm in a small circle. That was very relaxing. I looked forward to his hugs very much!

In adulthood, I moved to California. There, I encountered the “West Coast” hug, the universal hug given by all to all. There was always a little gap at the chest, to signal that this was a hug of greeting and potential friendship, not deep intimacy.

At some point, I started a family. Carrying a toddler on front is no different than a prolonged hug. My back became arched from thrusting out my belly to help support my daughter from the front. Sometimes, I would effectively be hugging for two hours at a time.

Now living in Northern California, I indulged in the typical large-group encounters that were common in a past era. One of them involved being naked and hugging many people who were also naked. I had enjoyed hugs, even slightly craved hugs…but about my thousandth hug, I had had enough. I felt satiated, like I could happily never hug anyone ever again.

Except for my daughter. That is when I started to explore the energy of the hug, drawing on all my life experiences up to then. Eventually, I started bringing the same interest with evolving hugging to all my hugs, which in California are sometimes a practically mandatory greeting.

Having cultivated the art of hugging for more than a decade, my hugging has evolved to a rich experience. The following descriptions of my current art-of-hug all happen in micro-seconds…they are not a second-by-second checklist, but the result of an artistic intention in the development of my hug.

The first thing I do is drop attention that is fixated on anything other than the experience in front of me. A typical hug only lasts from 1 to 15 seconds, so I can have confidence that if it’s not an emergency now, whatever it is can probably wait. This is relaxation of the mind.

Next, there is expansion of my awareness to encompass our collective bodies as a unit. If you’ve driven a car, you know how the body map expands to include the car in it, allowing you to drive the car and, almost magically, knowing the exact distance from the side of the car to the edge of the lane. When your awareness expands to envelop another person, you become exquisitely sensitive to what they are communicating altogether, via every aspect of their body.

The next thing is a relaxation of my body. I know the other person can feel that I am mentally and physically relaxing into them. This usually results in a subtle increase in the transmission of weight from my body to theirs. This is what it means to “transmit a vibe”: your attention is reflected in subtle aspects of breathing and muscular tension and gaze. You can’t fake it: if you try too hard to relax, then attention turns inward, to the body, and the withdrawal of attention can be felt by the other person as subtle changes in muscle tension.

Now, I pour my heart energy into them. This is a way of being that is deeply connected. There is no need to take the phrase “heart-energy” literally. If you visualize warm, golden light flowing from your heart into their body, and the same flowing from their heart into your body, this will change subtle aspects of how you are standing, breathing, and so forth. It doesn’t matter “what’s really going on”, because a clear visualization will bring forth the communication envisioned. Think of how you can read the emotions of a dog or cat…you can communicate through every aspect of your body, gaze, and breath — not by trying to change these directly, which inevitably comes off as artificial, but rather by discovering new ways of inhabiting body, gaze and breath.

”Visualization” here can be done purely kinesthetically, if you have the capability. If you can imagine the feeling of having forearms twice as long as they usually are, then you can “visualize” kinesthetically. In that case, you can “visualize” the pouring out of warm love-sensation from the heart into the hugged person’s body, and the reciprocal towards you.

Finally, sometimes, a back massage is a nice addition: a rubbing of the upper back with the flat palm, in gentle circles. The key here is to be interested in what would give the recipient enjoyment. Particularly with this sort of motion, your deep intentions are telegraphed by the recipient’s sensitive perception of your touch. In more intimate relationships, your other hand can also rub the small of the back!

This becomes a simple real-time chain: drop anything except being here with this hug - include both of our bodies in awareness - relax my body into contact with their body - pour out energy from my heart and receive energy from their heart - and, optionally, give a back massage!

This is not some final and ultimate “right way to hug”. Rather, it is demonstrating one possibility, if hugging is transformed from just “something you do” into a pleasurable and pleasure-giving art.