(8 minutes reading time)
Something strange has happened to us. Although we are social beings, wired for warmth and touch, and for the steady comfort of another body close to ours, most of us move through life in a kind of invisible cage.
Sometimes, we may reach for connection, but then pull back, unsure whether it is permitted.
We have learned, with impressive thoroughness, that closeness belongs to one of only two categories: the casual and quick hello-and-goodbye hug, or the committed romantic relationship with possessiveness, expectations and prohibitions. Nothing in between feels quite safe. And so we live largely untouched, and largely unaware that it could be different.
How the Cage Was Built
This is not a natural way of life. For most of human history, people lived in small, interwoven communities where physical closeness was simply part of daily life: sharing sleep, work and comfort. Bodies were close together. Hands rested on each other. People were held.
This was changed by power. When religious institutions and kings wished to control how people formed their relationships and families, they built walls of shame around physical closeness. Touch either became sacred, reserved for marriage and blessed by the Church, or dangerous, seen as a threat to order, morality, the bloodline and the social hierarchy. Gradually, these restrictions became law and custom. Finally, we stopped questioning them altogether because we grew up inside these rigid structures.
We trained each other to think this way. Generation after generation has repeated the same unspoken lesson: closeness means romantic interest, and romance means ownership. Anyone who touched outside of these rigid definitions was viewed with suspicion – as being either naive, needy, inappropriate or a threat. The black-and-white approach was cemented: it was either ‘just friends’ or ‘in a relationship’. There was nothing in between.
The Longing That Lives in the Shadow
And yet, the longing didn’t disappear. It went underground.
Many of us carry an aching void that we cannot name. It’s not simply loneliness or heartbreak, but something more diffuse. Like a longing for more affection that we feel slightly ashamed to admit. We have long since learned to translate our wish to be held into something more acceptable: work, entertainment, scrolling through social media, or the short dopamine high of a quick greeting hug.
This is what happens when a basic human need is repressed: it doesn’t just disappear. Instead, it adapts and pretends to be something else, slowly chipping away at our sense of wholeness over years. We don’t experience it as a single wound. Instead, we experience it as a constant underlying sense of emptiness or restlessness that we cannot quite explain.
The greeting and farewell hug – that brief moment when two bodies touch – is the last surviving fragment of something much larger. It has somehow survived every ban on intimacy. It is a leftover, a faint memory of what human closeness once was and could be again. Most people don’t realise that they are performing a ritual whose complete form they have never experienced.
Why It’s So Hard to Step Outside the Pattern
Intellectual understanding of all this changes very little on its own. The real difficulty is a body problem, a nervous system problem, a What will they think of me? problem.
These patterns are encoded in us at a level that reason cannot easily access. A man holding a female friend’s hand in public or giving a very long hug, even without caressing, can feel almost threatening to some, triggered by a protective reflex completely out of proportion to the touch itself. This is the internalised voice of a thousand years of social policing.
There is also the fear of being misunderstood. In a world where touch has become largely sexualised, a long hug between friends can easily be misinterpreted. People have therefore learned to protect themselves by staying within the expected social norms. Stepping outside these expectations requires a courage that most people have simply never been able to develop.
Underneath all of this lies something even more vulnerable: the fear of wanting too much, of being too needy and of wanting more than others are prepared to give. So the longing is tucked away again. The distance is maintained. The cage remains intact, and we call it respect for boundaries!
What Becomes Possible
Touch was our first language. Long before we could speak, we understood the world through our skin – through being held and the warmth of another body close to ours. When we explore conscious closeness again, we are not inventing something new, but simply remembering something ancient.
Imagine two friends for whom holding hands during quiet moments together feels completely natural. It’s not charged or loaded with intentions; it’s simply a way of being together and feeling deeply connected. Their hands are not just sharing comfort; they are exchanging frequencies, balancing energies and allowing the astral bodies to communicate directly in a way that no amount of talking ever quite can. I call it the ‘mini-hug’: a wonderful and simple way of connecting with others that most of us have simply forgotten. Yet we can enjoy it with those humans who matter to us.
Making Human Connection Even More Beautiful
In the context of modern life, a long hug that lasts several minutes rather than a few seconds is already a small revolution.
Hugging meditations are an even deeper experience. We can either stand or sit in the yab yum posture (one body is nestled in the other’s lap and legs are wrapped around their waist). We bring our chests close together and breathe together through the heart centres for twenty or thirty minutes, or longer.
There is no caressing and no agenda. Just the extraordinary stillness of two souls fully present with each other, their energy centres quietly conversing and their nervous systems finding a shared balance.
The sense of time disappears. Thoughts grow quiet. The aura of each body expands and merges with the other’s, creating what feels like one luminous sphere. This creates a sense of inner wholeness and a feeling of being deeply cared for. It is one of the most profound healing experiences that two human beings can share.
The exchange of energies leaves both feeling lighter, more balanced and more whole. There is no giving and taking, as both are only receiving.
A Network Built on Trust and Care
The deeper vision goes beyond individual moments of closeness, beautiful as they are. Imagine creating a living web of trusted souls who care deeply for one another. In such a network, no single relationship needs to fulfil all your needs. When one connection goes through challenging times, others can provide stability and compassion. The load is shared, the energies circulate, and the whole Network of LOVE becomes stronger and more resilient than any single bond could be on its own.
This begins with choosing honesty and presence: expressing openly the kind of closeness you want to welcome with whom. Your stable network can grow slowly, like a mycelium network underground, nourishing everything it touches and asking nothing in return.
Something We Need to Work On
None of this can be achieved simply by deciding to hug more often. True change only comes when something shifts inside.
Allowing ourselves to become closer to others requires us to forgive ourselves for having needs and to forgive others for the many times closeness went wrong or was used as a way to control or manipulate. It requires us to confront the fear of being misunderstood, acknowledge our vulnerability in being seen, and empower ourselves to stand up for what we want without shame.
Heart centre breathing is a simple, practical tool that shifts consciousness from the ego’s anxious patterns to the wider wisdom of the heart. This makes it possible to trust more easily and break free from black-and-white thinking. From the heart, we see infinite colours.
We also need to develop our fluency in honest communication, so that we can ask, ‘Shall we connect and hold hands?’ Or, ‘Shall we share a long hug together?’ Can we do so without allowing the weight of expectation or the fear of rejection make us retreat before the words have even formed? This skill is learnt through small, courageous steps. To do this, we need people who are willing to practise it alongside us.
At Finca Sanuela, You Can Learn This
All of this is easier in a space where it is already the norm.
Finca Sanuela in Tenerife is becoming a place where those who long for authentic connection can come to practise it in a safe, guided setting. It is a retreat space where heart-centred breathing, holding hands, hugging meditations and honest communication about closeness are simply part of the daily experience. You can arrive knowing that something is missing without being able to name it, and leave having experienced what it is like to be held without conditions, to hold someone else with honest care and to leave after a long embrace feeling more like yourself than when you arrived.
The New World we are building is one where it is normal for friends to hold hands when sitting or walking together and where really long hugs are as natural as sharing a meal. This is a world that humans have always longed for. For a very long time, we have simply been talked out of it.
We will find our way back. One opening heart after another.
