Who doesn’t like a good cuddle?
With the isolation that came with the lockdowns across the world our need for touch became very apparent.
Scientists have been studying the effects of touch and touch deprivation on health for years. I remember reading one study on rats that showed that if rats were subjected to a novel situation their stress hormones would go up. No surprise there. However, if there were two of them and they could touch each other their stress hormones did not rise as much 1.
Which means, it wasn’t just the presence of a friend, a term scientists like to call social buffering, but the ability to touch them was key.
We intuitively know that we are social beings. That even if we pretend not to like our fellow ‘man’ we are generally better off with some sort of diary contact, one that preferably involves touch. Our very physiology supports this, a simple back rub can lower your stress hormone cortisol, lower heart rate, lower your blood pressure, increase in natural killer cells and help fight off coughs and colds.
Recent research by Professor Francis Mcglone out of Liverpool John Moores University, has identified a novel type of pain fibre. It is called the C/T fibre or C-tactile afferents.
In particular they found a slow stroking of the upper back can stimulate these nerves. The speed at which they were optimally stroked is the same speed you would stroke someones back if you wanted to calm them down, about 2-5cm a second.
Put another way, imagine you are trying to stroke someone’s back in order to help them go to sleep. Something my daughter absolutely loves. If I do it too fast or too slow she is very quick to tell me that I’m ‘doing it wrong’. How does she know what is right? My guess is that she is tuning into the relaxing sensation that comes about when these nerves are stimulated at just the right speed.
The highest concentration of those nerves are on our shoulders and upper back. Which is interesting because that’s a place where we can’t rub ourselves! Why would we have evolved to have the highest concentration of these nerves in a place we can’t stroke ourselves? To me the answer is strongly pointing at our need to be touched by someone else. It’s also not a coincidence that when we give someone a proper hug we usually end up rubbing their back? Why do we do that? No one taught me to do that but I do it anyway. I would say it’s an instinctual reflex that comes with hugging. We know that a hug is good, but it can be enhanced by a back rub as well! 2
I’m not the only one who thinks this. Recently there has been an increase in people who call themselves professional cuddlers. Samantha Hess recently set up a cuddling shop in Portland Oregon which, in the first week of opening, received 10,000 inquiries!
What? 10,000 people wanted to know how to get a hug in her first week of opening! That just shows how much touch is needed as part of wellness plans.
An experiment on 103 pairs of friends determined that, when it comes to cuddles, more is definitely more. The perfect hug should last five to 10 seconds with criss-crossed arms, psychologists have concluded 3.
They recommended the criss-crossed hug as being best for feelings of wellbeing. That means that if you were to hug someone you would put one of your arms over their shoulder and the other around their torso and they would do the same.
I would add to this and recommend you put your left arm over the person’s right shoulder. That means your head will go to your right which will bring the left side of your chest into contact with the left side of their chest. This allows the hearts to come closer together and as they have the biggest electrical field of any of our organs, even bigger than the brain, which can help us tune into the other person. Research at the Heart Math Institute has been looking at this energetic communication for many years and notes that heart to heart communication helps enhance empathy and sensitivity to others but also it may be useful in the promotion of health and healing 4.
Have you heard of the hugging saint?
Known simply as Amma (mother) she is a Indian Hindu spiritual leader who uses hugging as her method of communication. Many in India consider her a deity and people line up for hours to be hugged by her. Her influence isn’t limited to India, she has toured the world and the same thing happened in every country. People describe being hugged by her as a ‘religious experience’ because it is rare to be hugged unconditionally. Again she is filling a need, one that we all seem to have, the craving for human toughness. Amma also strokes backs and kisses cheeks – maybe she knows about the special nerves in the upper back…
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Over the last 10 years Ed has been building a YouTube library to help people manage their own pain or movement limitations and increase performance through exercise. He regularly adds videos so be sure to subscribe and visit regularly
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