Hugging is healthy

Hugging is healthy — try it out for yourself!

When was the last time you hugged your parents?

Can’t remember? Well, blame it on the culture that we grow up in, where the display of child-parent affection should be at its minimum, and most preferably subtle – such as a pat on the shoulder or a gentle touch on the hand.

The irony is that we find it easier to hug outsiders, such as when we wish a person bon voyage, or hug a girl to wish her a happy birthday, or even hugging a total stranger in a congratulatory gesture.

Why is it that hugging a stranger can be as easy and effortless as smiling, and yet when it comes to a parent, it can be difficult and awkward, maybe even the equivalent of having to sing on stage in a fluorescent bikini?

I have always wondered if parents and children were genetically created with the same magnetic field, therefore repelling each other.

During an English class when I was in Form Two, my teacher touched on the topic of showing affection for one’s parents. She asked when I last hugged my parents.

Startled by her sudden focus on me, I merely stared back at her partly because I wasn’t paying attention. She repeated her question.

I shook my head and said, “Don’t know.”

“Don’t know?” she asked me, as in “I can’t believe it!”

Another question from her: “When was the last time you kissed your parents?”

I shook my head. “Can’t remember,” I said.

She fixed her gaze on me for a few seconds before smiling knowingly.

My teacher said that this was the result of our upbringing and culture – that we weren’t accustomed to showing affection for our own parents. My teacher urged all of us to give our parents a hug as soon as they came home from work that day. She said not to be embarrassed to show our emotions.



If you look at photos in the newspapers a day or two after the SPM or STPM examination results are out, it’s common to see parents kissing and hugging their top-scoring children, and that’s when you notice the awkward faces of those students and their parents as affections flow for the camera. Sometimes you can even see them blushing.

A friend of mine, like many of us, wasn’t comfortable with hugging his parents.

But his perception changed after moving to another state to take up a job. He now makes it a point to give his parents a bear hug as soon as he gets home for a holiday, and doing the same before leaving home.

A simple piece of advice a friend gave was: “Each time you hug, it gets easier.”

Not only that, hugging is also therapeutic, and good for the body.

“Hugging is healthy! We need to be touched – and often,” says Andrew Matthews in his book, Making Friends. “You don’t have to hug everyone, but you have to get your share of hugs from somewhere.

“It also seems that as we become less self-conscious, we warm to the idea of being hugged.”

I remember reading somewhere that a good, genuine hug should never be less than three seconds.

For those people who are troubled by hugging their own parents, perhaps out of awkwardness and embarrassment, wait no more and do it now. After all, you were hugged by them when you were a kid!

And with Mother’s and Father’s Days just weeks away, surely these will be the best opportunities and occasions to hug it out.

Source: Courtesy of The Star