Cuddle Nama

Vithal C Nadkarni

Drew Barrymore loves hugging so much that she wishes she could be an octopus. "So I could hug 10 people at a time," the actress says. Octopussy or not, Barrymore, who just became a mama, should be prepared to get as good as she gives because a hug has rightly been described as a boomerang in disguise, it's something that comes right back at you!

Of course, the reaction would also depend on who (or what) one is hugging. For, no matter how hard you hug your money, it will never, alas, hug you back. Otherwise, "everybody needs a hug. (For) it changes your metabolism," says Leo Buscaglia, the motivational speaker also known as 'Dr Love', in his best-selling treatise, titled Love.

Buscaglia was elaborating on the so-called golden rule or the ethic of reciprocity that is found in some form or other in almost every culture on the planet.

The golden rule describes a two-way relationship between two parties where both agree to act in an equally or mutually positive manner towards one another. Recent research has revealed another 'golden' subscript of the rule: being kind to others seems to be a sure-fire way of boosting self-compassion.

"Being kind to yourself is not the same thing as having high self-esteem, a trait that can shade off into narcissism," says Kristin Neff, a leading researcher in the field. One can cultivate self-compassion through meditation or even more simple techniques such as pressing your hand against your heart, she adds, or hiding this gesture in a 'surreptitious self-hug'. For, as the Gita says, the self is the friend of the self.