What do you miss most from pre-COVID times?
For me it is definitely hugs. The way that I was brought up, we didn’t really hug other people. We mostly kept our hands to ourselves, but when I went to college in the Bronx at Fordham, I found that I was around a lot of huggers. As I got used to hugging, I really enjoyed it.
Social distancing doesn’t allow for hugging and I miss it a lot. I hug my husband and my kids every day and some friends, but not nearly as many folks as I used to.
When you hug someone, you both get a hit of Oxytocin, which has a lot of health benefits. Virginia Satir, a respected family therapist said, “We need four hugs a day for survival. We need eight hugs a day for maintenance. We need twelve hugs a day for growth.”
When you look up hugging on the internet, you find that hugging has a lot of benefits including:
• Protecting us from stress and infection—Carnegie Mellon University.
• Lowering blood pressure—National Institute for Health.
• Decreasing the fear of dying—VU University in Amsterdam study.
• Lowering heart rate—School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill
• Helping to tread insomnia—Temple Grandin, PhD.
• Assisting in losing weight—Alex Korb and Dr. Light
So, I don’t know about you, but I hope that when COVID is over we can go back to hugging because it just feels good to get and give a hug. For now, I will hug my family and dogs more.