Deep Hugs, Neuroscience & Loving unafraid
“Admit something:
everyone you see, you say to them, “Love Me.”
Of course you do not do this out loud. Otherwise someone
would call the cops.
Still though, think about this: this great pull in us to connect.
Why not become the one who lives with the full moon in each eye, that is always saying, with that sweet moon language, what every other eye in this world is dying to hear”
~ Hafiz
Last week on Valentines, my “On the Left” hug video [ and article ] went crazy, went viral in my village – I had people coming up to me and going “oh I saw your video and I have to hug you on the left – right ?” They – family, friends, colleagues, “the butcher, baker, candlestick-maker” – kept reaching out to me for a “on the left” hug.
If you haven’t seen the video already I want to encourage you to see it
I want to talk to you about how to deepen that hug this week. Why? Because the relationship research on this is ridiculous. This hug is what now moves us from an old brains “fight/flight/freeze/fake/“everything’s fine” survival strategies of being out in the village all day – doing deals,looking after the kids, looking after the pets, looking after being a good student whatever it is that you do during the day to the new brains “Peace/Love/Joy” thrival strategies. So you want to get this deep hug when you come home. Or, if you live alone, you want to get this deep hug from somebody before you go home if you can.
Here’s how it works. Your partner ideally needs to meet you at the front door and you want to be able to step into your home knowing that your person is going to grab you on the left and hold you deeply in such a way that you literally AND metaphorically feel that they “have your back”
We all need to move from the old brain of our external daily lives trying to get life stuff done – moving and shaking and making money and being smart and being a mom and taking care of the family, the village, and all the things that we do – to the new brain of interior living with family, at home, in the evening time.
So when we come home, it’s all about feeling safe, secure, and we need to feel like we can relax into our environment. So we need to shift gears and change the tone. This deep hug that I want to tell you about changes the tone after you cross the threshold into your home environment.
If we are talking about this being the year that we want to learn how to “love unafraid” – or love fearlessly, then we need to change our home environment so that it becomes calming, warm and loving. And the way we do that right off the bat is to learn to share this “on the left” deep hug at the front door.
Right, that’s the on the left hug that you have already started – we’re just going to deepen this hug so that you feel safe and automatically be able to relax into your home and all the rituals of being at home.
Now, ideally, we need to make our home calm with candles, tea, a softer, more reflective and fierce gentleness external tone – and not the flashy tone of loud noises, lights, craziness everywhere, and phones, screens, computers, TV’s on 24/7/52.
Through this co-regulation “relationship technology,” we’re going to deliberately move from our old brain [ think back of head, lower down into the upper neck ] as a result of running around all day long – to now coming home and relaxing. By changing the home tone and changing the warmth of connectivity with each other through this deep hug, we have a great chance to love unafraid daily – and with our whole household. We need to feel as if our family has our backs, our partners have our backs, our dogs, cats and wee beasties have our backs.
Whatever the arrangement is at home, the idea and practice is that we meet each other at the front door. Why? The inter-neural-biology of relationship demonstrates extensively that when you meet your partner at the front door and you hold them with a on the left hug, and then hold them until you feel their body let go, and relax – you can sometimes feel a clunk of their body actually moving out of the old brain and into the new prefrontal cortex. They feel an actual drop, a clunk into a deeper part of themselves.
The “on the left deep hug” that clunks sounds weird but you feel your body is just letting go from all the running around and all the challenges of the day. But now you are home, and you are met by your partner at the front door, you and your partner get their clunks, now you can talk about money, sex, power, addictions or parenting styles [ some of the top marriage-killing topics ] that are difficult to talk about.
The research shows that 60, 70, or 80% of these post deep hug conversations – depending on who’s doing the research – go really really well. But 80% of them go really badly if no pre deep hug while talking to about these contentious topics.
Your challenge this week this is about loving unafraid by leaning into your “on the left deep hugs” as soon as you get home – or are leaving the house – and you are going to do this with fierce gentleness.
In other words, this week has got to be about fearlessly stepping into you walking with your head up, your heart open, your hands at your side – available for hugging and loving unafraid.
Hugging and walking with this tone of loving unafraid in your heart is what changes the world, one relationship at a time. So we do this in the morning and we do this at nighttime and we do this with our kids and we do this with our partners and we do it with our friends and we do this with our Village.
This is the “on the left” deep hugs 101 that gives you the power to change the world
Enjoy the sweetness, and the power
Michael/Mtk
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