Hugs for Life
My grandsons, Hudson and Clark, are fascinated by dinosaurs. Recently, Hudson wanted to learn more about the Carnosaurus, Megalosaurus and the Allosaurus depicted on the cards of a dinosaur matching game we played together. We did a search online to learn some facts and viewed a few animated videos on YouTube. Since then, I’ve received consistent notifications recommending similar dinosaur content from YouTube. I decided it would be cool for “Coco” to know more dinosaur facts to share with my grandsons on FaceTime calls and clicked on one such notification. To my inadvertent heart-struck surprise, this photo of “The Rescuing Hug” popped up. Clark spent time in the ICU upon his premature birth, and seeing first-hand any newborn wired to machines and monitors draws me into that tender heart space held for my super-hero grandson. My discovery took a turn from prehistoric dinosaurs to premature twin sisters, Brielle and Kyrie Jackson.
I was thrilled to learn the story behind “The Rescuing Hug” that changed medical history. When failing vital signs became evident that one twin was dying, she was put in the same incubator as her stronger more stable sister to say “goodbye.” Immediately, her temperature improved, her color returned, and her vital signs stabilized upon feeling her sister’s arm around her. Now, nearly 25 years later, Brielle and Kyrie are beautiful, thriving adults. This precious life-saving demonstration qualified human touch as a healing modality. The hug is now a documented form of medical therapy used and proven to raise wellbeing and help stabilize the central nervous system.
We humans have a difficult time regulating ourselves by ourselves. When distress signals are carried through our central nervous system - the information highway to the brain, we naturally address alerts by taking action. Misery, in this sense, really does love company. Not to perpetuate misery, but to share burdens and by human connection, offer reprieve. When we say, “we’re in this together,” we claim an alliance to our friends and family, but also to our entire species. We feel a need to react when compassion urges us to extend humankindness. By divine design, we were made for human connection. We need to be touched, we need to vent when overheated, we need to work it out when feeling stuck. We need to talk. We need to be heard. We need the hand, shoulder and arms of another to better navigate our necessarily turbulent existence to avoid the life of… well, a dinosaur.
Okay, maybe not quite that primitive, but “dinosapien” could qualify as the hybrid definition of our current pandemic existence! Did you know dinosaurs are believed to have been mesotherms - neither cold-blooded nor warm-blooded. I’d say that’s like not being vitally or productively alive, and yet definitely not dead. Many, when found in close proximity to their own species, treated this as a threat to their survival and battled one another to death. Most dinosaurs have tiny brains the size of a lime, and none are thought to have been any smarter than the crow - the smartest bird of their kind.
Dinosaurs have become a humungous study about prehistoric life and extinction on this planet. Meanwhile, these tiny babies disrupted medical science with an enormous discovery - the life-saving qualities of human touch. There’s healing power in each of us to help our own species thrive on this same planet - preventing the warm-blooded extinction of our race.
According to pihhealth.org, when you hug someone, it relaxes muscles, increases circulation and releases endorphins in your body. This can reduce tension and may even help soothe aches and pains. Hugging can also increase levels of dopamine and serotonin, which can boost your mood and relieve symptoms of depression as well as raise the levels of oxytocin in our brains that helps us know we’ll be okay during difficulties, and helps us feel great in good times - especially when shared with others.
“The Rescuing Hug” sensitizes me to our present pandemic. COVID has conditioned us to “be safely distanced” from one another and to feel space-invaded if we don’t abide by the 6-foot rule, or adhere to gathering quotas and restrictions. I’m all for obeying the regulations set for us to end this pandemic, but I am reminded that 6 is also the number of feet lifeless bodies get placed below ground. We currently use 6 feet as the measurement that keeps us safe. Six feet keeps us from dangerously breathing on or touching one another. Preserving our lives and health = 6 feet. I get the science during a pandemic behind the 6-foot rule; but it’s kind of mesothermic. It prevents us from warmly celebrating, supporting and memorializing life’s moments and events not only as we once knew them, but as we innately need them to be for our sense of wellbeing and community. 6. 6. 6. Hmmm, just feels anti-human.
Remember 2019 when we naturally greeted one another with a handshake or a hug? Will 2019 become a study of our evolution? What kind of humans lived up until that time? What kind of humans will we become post-pandemic? COVID-conditioned Dinosapiens - a lukewarm race unable to trust or comfortably engage in handshakes, hugs, and close human interaction over coffee, lunch or together breathing, of all things, in a yoga class?
I began my YouTube search to gain prehistoric knowledge and discovered “The Rescuing Hug.” I still learned a few dinosaur facts and these gave me great reminders to keep my warm-blooded vitals from flat-lining in the cold winter of this pandemic. Premature twins helped me realize the hug’s enormous contribution to our wellbeing as a society, and reminded me that the power to heal is innately within my reach! I feel like we need to rescue the “hug.” Maybe if we put it on an “endangered list” deemed necessary to prevent Cultural Cooling the hug would be embraced for it’s major contribution to our society. We all have the power to calm, heal, and stabilize our people simply by wrapping our arms around them.
I’m thinking of new ways to let my elderly parents, my children, my grandchildren, my friends, and fellow humans within my realm of influence to know, they’re in my circle, on my radar, in my thoughts, and that yes, “we’re in this together.” I’m here for them because I can’t be there with them…
During a pandemic, let’s dig deeper to better communicate our love and support in this touch-free society. In the meantime, I’ve been inspired by prehistoric creatures and premature twins to do all I can to keep the life-saving hug from extinction.
The Rescuing Hug: Photo Credit: Chris Christo via the "Worcester Telegram & Gazette" Click for more on this touching photo.
