Know your hugs on hugging day

A HUG can make us feel better no matter how bad we are feeling. Hugs have been shown to alleviate stress by increasing our endorphin levels and decreasing the stress hormones we carry in our bodies.

For these reasons, and just because sometimes it is good to just have a special day to remind people how important it is to be around others, Kevin Zaborney came up with the idea of National Hugging Day in 1986. Since its inception in the United States it has spread all over the world with web sites and pages popping up to celebrate the art of hugging and give people instructions and tips on how to do what should come naturally, but doesn’t due to our modern society’s increasing detachment and depersonalisation of human interactions.

Here are some interesting pictures from LittleThings.com about what different types of hugs might mean about your relationship with the person you are hugging. Author, Patti Wood, a body language expert writes a lot about hugging styles in A Guide to Reading Body Language.

The protector

The protector is a hug that is all about a sense of security. In this hug you wrap your arms around the waist of the person in front of you and in doing so provide both emotional and physical stability while taking on a protective role for the person being hugged.

This position shows a large amount of trust in the relationship and shows that taking care of one another is very important. “By covering your back, he’s conveying that he wants to shelter you,” writes Wood.

The back stroke

This hug is all about reassurance. Each person rubs the back of the other person, reminding each other just how much they truly care. This position is all about openness and vulnerability with one another. “The back is a very vulnerable part of the body. You can’t see your back, so being touched there is very startling,” writes Wood. The back stroke is your way of providing comfort to your hug partner.

The pat

The pat is a hug that is all about friendship and camaraderie. There’s not really a sense of intimacy involved in this hug.

In this hug each person literally gives the other a pat on the back as a signal of comfort. This is common in the way men hug each other and can be a sign that the relationship is not growing if a romantic partner is embracing you in this way regularly.

The slow dance

Contrasting to the the pat, the slow dance hug is all about romance, romance, and more romance. One partner wraps their arms around the partner’s waist, while the other wraps their around the neck, much in the way youngsters would at a high school dance.

This hug is typical for young love or early love. If you are still hugging this way years into a relationship, that certainly means the romance is still alive.

The reach around

The reach around is about two people who are truly partners in crime. One person puts a single arm around the other’s shoulder for a kind of half-hug. When you use it with a close friend, you are momentarily connecting yourselves together physically as tightly as you are connected emotionally.

The London bridge

The London bridge is a hug that is all about keeping as much distance from one another as possible. Each person hugs with their upper body, while keeping their lower body quite far apart, bums out! With a hug like this, you show that neither of you actually wants to be close to the other person. Some people are just not meant to be more than acquaintances.Read the full article about the body language of hugs at https://www.littlethings.com/hug-relationship-test/