8 Second Hug

Yes, eight seconds is a long time, and no, I am not recommending giving everyone an eight second hug.

The shell we put up, or mask we hide behind is made up of what we think logically think will keep us emotionally safe. Intuition is not fooled by shells or masks, intuition which is non-verbal communication bypasses whatever façade we put up. Intuition sees the world of meaning, not the physical world of logic, because of this intuition can by-pass externals.

Though heart-to-heart connection is what we want, because intuition works so fast and so well, even a glimpse into someone’s heart can show a lot. This makes us feel vulnerable, because we can’t hide out hopes and fears from being seen from other people’s intuition. We may not remember the last time we felt an overwhelming feeling of belonging, but likely it was when we were the most vulnerable; like being held as a newly born infant, not aware that we were naked, and nothing we could do about it even if we did know, being held tightly in someone’s arms who completely loved us.

It may not have been a parent or grandparent holding the newborn us, but if it wasn’t, for sure it was the nurse there at the delivery, responding to our cry to be held. We resist the one thing that allows someone into our life—vulnerability, by cutting off the intuitions communication which is non-verbal. We often avoid eye contact, avoid letting people see us cry, and avoid allowing ourselves to be held.

I wish I had known earlier in life, what C.S. Lewis put so well in his book The Four Loves, “There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

We live in a world of alphas, where we all want to prove we are worthy to be held by proving we can hold ourselves. When we hug what is said intuitively is, “I will hold your pieces together so you don’t have to worry about falling apart. Take a rest in my arms for a moment and remember that you are loved.”

                When we hug someone, at about eight seconds on average there is a deeper breath in and then an exhale as our body actually relaxes. You can definitely feel it, we are rigid, and then we melt. Don’t count while you are hugging, but if it is longer than about eight seconds before the other person relaxes, then they are really stressed out, and scared everything will crumble if they relax. If it is less than about five seconds, that means something else, not something consistent enough to be able to diagnose similar to taking longer to relax. You’ll just actually have to communicate and figure it out with the person. 

This is where “soft science” meets hard science. Cortisol is a stress hormone, it is made to reallocate energy in the body to what is vital when all the energy possible needs to be put towards something difficult. This mean things like the immune system, making neural connections for things like short term memory, and maintaining the high energy state of REM in the sleep cycle are all minimized. This means it is easier to get sick, we forget things, and don’t sleep well.

What else does cortisol do? It makes blood vessels more sensitive to hormones that regulate blood pressure—this is so that it can respond quicker in pumping blood. It also increases adrenaline, which increases the heart rate and blood pressure, but also helps us focus and stimulates the release of endorphins, which numb pain and produce euphoria. Because of this, it is possible to remain in a stressed state for a long time, and still be very productive, but it’s not sustainable. Cortisol also interacts with insulin and produces weight gain, and all that high blood pressure with a high heart rate wears out the heart faster.

If you held your arm straight out in front of you, after a minute it would start to burn, and eventually you couldn’t hold it up any longer. When we are using a muscle but not moving it, it is harder for the muscle to get rid of the lactic acid that builds up. We all hold our stress in different parts of our body, most people either hold stress in their neck or back. There is some muscle we don’t realize we tense, but do to keep our body in alert mode so it keeps pumping cortisol. At least once a day we should give someone a real hug so that at least for one second of that day, they can just relax. Relaxing the muscles is good, but a hug does more than just that, I can’t say for certain the exact neural pathway that is involved, but whatever the “belonging circuit” ends up being in our brain, it lights up and calms the cortisol driven alert mode.

The non-verbal communication of a hug or eye contact should precede the verbal communication of words. I would venture a bet that most marriages struggling don’t meet each other after work with at least an eight second hug before they ask how their day was. We shouldn’t expect words to be able to describe emotions, especially when we can just look someone in the eyes and then hug them and feel their emotion for ourselves. The part of hugging that is the best, is after we relax and allow ourselves to be loved, and so if our hugs with those we really love aren’t at least eight seconds, we are totally missing out.