Why not take the opportunity to see beyond the presents and the indulging food, and hug your loved ones over the holidays. Physical affection is healthy, really healthy, but only if you like those who touch you. When I learnt this I stopped telling my small kids to hug someone they didn’t know, or didn’t like, just to be polite. Physical affection can create a lot of stress and unhealthy inflammatory substances if we “have to”.
-“Hug auntie now, come on!”
We are probably meant to hug and cuddle our loved ones often, as Richard Dawkins argues in the Selfish Gene. In spite of the popular belief, it’s not necessarily the aggressive animals that survive. Mammals (and others) that like to cuddle will be more likely to survive as a species. Female animals that cuddle with their babies had more offspring that survived to adulthood. I think it makes total sense, especially if you see how important it is for our immune system, and it lowers blood pressure, it lowers stress hormones and raises the feel-good hormones. Cuddling with a pet works too.
Holding a hand of a dying person lowers the stress of both parties. Getting a hug or cuddling can even put you in a better mood the day after, at least in women. Even cuddling with oneself, holding one’s arm, feeling one’s skin, is better than nothing. All tactile contact is healthy. That makes my heart go out to all those cultures where cuddling often stops after the kids start school, like in SE Asia.
I have some extra time before our retreats start in Thailand so I started volunteering to cuddle with dogs at a new refuge here in Kao Tao. Dogs that last summer would bite anyone walking to fast or biking, were now calm and friendly. Cuddling with humans made them happy, healthy, and less aggressive towards other dogs and humans. What a quick change!
The only affectionate problem that can arise is when we think it requires a sexual act after. If we don’t want that we simply won’t cuddle in the first place, we often hold those hugging impulses back, even if we feel affectionate. A good healthy practice is to separate the two because that’s a cultural thing, not a sexual need, as we often have been made believe. When you want to express your affection, touch. Then stop, and be clear. It’s what they have always done in the Mediterranean countries.
Hug, hug, hug over Christmas, as much as you can!
Feel the touch, put your attention to it, a tactile meditation. Detox those stress hormones. 💚
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Published by O• L I V E
Naturopaths who deeply believe Natural Immunity is still the best, and therefore we work in defense of it.
Since 20+ years we have successfully been consultants in the natural health sector to support individuals and we are in particular working with entrepreneurs and professionals. Our mission is to defend natural health, the only one that really works so far. We mainly but not entirely use Eastern philosophy such as Ayurveda, TCM, Yoga, Thai chi, Falun Gong, and only honest modern science.
Everyone can heal naturally, it's what bodies and (free) minds want. Our O• Method is based on physics, chemistry and biology with emphasis on the first one as the rest often follow naturally. We divide our work in three parts: Body-Mind-Soul. To allow them all to detox and let go we work with energy (Prana, Xi, Vitality, Spirit, Pneuma or whatever you call the life force, it's the same force mentioned in ancient texts) to heal on all levels, i.e. from chronic disease, toxicity, depression and traumas using our own method, reaching 96% success rate which is unheard of by others in our sector. Would you know of anyone with that result, let us know.
Considering that we invented and dumped >120.000 (petro)chemically derived substances since 1945, of which many are very toxic, getting healthy will most likely include a good old body detox sooner or later.
My love for Ayurveda started in 1993 with Deepak Chopra and after a few turns in life I quit my job as a Nordic Brand Manager and BI strategist at the largest Nordic telecom operator and re-schooled in natural medicine. Besides Dr. Chopra I have studied Dr. Lad, Dr. Siva (Pune, India) and other prominent teachers in their field, but the real difference comes with a practiced. I added nutrition, Orthomolecular Medicine with Dr. Nielsen (USA/Spain) and herbalism.
Today we teach those whom want to continue our work and we love to dig down in etymology and the original (mainly Avestan, Pali and Sanskrit) scripts to understand the words fully and I fall in love with the concepts over and over again for every sutra. This love affair that created a few books (Amazon), presentations, essayes and many events and consultations, is still giving us Yang-Yin balance and inspiration. I guess with that we are recognizing the value of Dao De Ching 💚🌿💜
Workshops and about:
https://oliveretreat.com/about/
Books:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=cristina+azcarate&i=digital-text&ref=nb_sb_noss
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