The Whole Soul Hug

by Thich Nhat Hanh

In 1966, when a young woman poet (a colleague of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) drove me to the Atlanta Airport, she asked, "Is it all right to hug a Buddhist monk?" I thought to myself, "I am a Zen teacher; it should be no problem," so I said, "Why not?" In my country, we are not used to expressing ourselves that way, especially monks, and when she hugged me, I was quite stiff. While I was on the plane, I decided that if I wanted to work with friends in the West, I would have to learn Western culture, so I invented hugging meditation.

Hugging meditation is a combination of East and West. According to the practice, you have to really hug the person you are hugging. You have to make him or her very real in your arms, not just for the sake of appearances — patting him on the back to pretend you are there — but breathing consciously and hugging with your whole body, heart, and spirit. This is a practice of mindfulness: "Breathing in, I know my dear one is in my arms, alive. Breathing out, she is so precious to me." If you breathe deeply like that, holding the person you love, you are really there, and she is really there also. The energy of care, love, and mindfulness will penetrate into the other person, and she will be nourished and bloom like a flower.

At a retreat for psychotherapists in Colorado, we practiced hugging meditation. Afterwards, one retreatant hugged his wife at the airport in Philadelphia in a way he had never hugged her before. Because of that, his wife attended our next retreat, in Chicago.

To be really there, you only need to breathe mindfully, and suddenly both of you become real. It may be one of the best moments in your life.

— From Teachings on Love by Thich Nhat Hanh (Parallax Press).