To learn to hug, to learn to love

The experience of hug
The workshop in Art School at Kapalua, Maui, Hawaii, where I had five-day workshop with Fabrizio and Ateeka. In an area where whales sing and tropical fish swim, it was challenging to stick to the workshops for five mornings. However I was tempted, I am proud that I didn't cut any sessions for whale watching or snorkeling. I am writing this article in English because I want to share this experience with Ateeka and Fabrizio, who taught me how to hug and how to love.

Where I come from hugging is reserved for lovers. Parents don't hug their school-aged kids. Friends don't hug each other. I started hugging when I studied yoga with western teachers yet I never truely enjoyed it. Fabrizio and Ateeaka are big huggers and they taught the art of hugging on the fourth day of the workshops. It was a lesson for me. From this hugging workshop, I learned to breathe in intimacy and to love without controlling.



On this forth day, Fabrizio started a lecture on how and why he hugs. The Italian way of hugging is a lot more stronger than the American way. He invited us to hug everybody in the workshop and to BREATHE in hugging. When I was hugging Tim as in the left picture, I enjoyed his warmth and his uncle-like energy. Yet he kept telling me, I was not breathing. I never knew until then that I have a pattern of holding breaths in physical proximaty with another person even when I enjoy their company. No wonder I always feel suffocated in intimacy as well as social gatherings. This provides an important clue for me. I now learn to BREATHE whenever I am with people and that worked really well. This kind of cured my social phobia. Here comes an instant example: on the 11-hour flight returning Taiwan from Honolulu, I reminded myself to breathe in this full cabin before I started feeling suffocated. This worked. I enjoyed the flight more and I didn't become fatigued at the end of the 11 hour flight. Miraculous! All I need to do is remember to BREATHE and this cured my discomfort and panic in crowds as simple as that.


The second part of the forth workshop is cradling which is bodywork as the left picture shows. Though I am not a bodyworker, I learned in this cradling session how to express love without controlling the loved one and to provide a nurturing experience for the giver and the received. My partner was Leslie who is a bodyworker and a yoga teacher. She has a fit body and passionate soul. I felt 100% received by her and enjoyed her cradling. When it's my turn to play the role of a giver and to cradle Leslie, I remembered what Fabrizio said in his demonstration: stay connected to my own breath and fluid system. My hand was on Leslie's left shoulder and her left arm seemed to be tingling. I literally did NOTHING except for staying connected with my own breath for as long as I remembered. When the session was over, Leslie told me to my amazement that I had CURED her left shoulder, which used to be in chronic pains. Honestly, there was very little I did. I was simply there and present for her, and that was all it took to activate the body's healing systems. This revealed a revelutionary lesson to me: to love a person is to simply to be present for her/him. as simple as that. I was used to DO lot for a person to express love, but this created strangling relationship and frustrations. Being simply present is nurturing enough for the loved one. My mother is used to express love through control and that's what I picked up in intimacy. No wonder no one wants to marry me. I had a pattern of expressing love through control which didn't produce any happy results. Applied to teaching, to express love for students is not by DOING a lot but by BEING present and breathe with them. Students get nurtured better in the latter situation and that is, what I belive to be, the secret to yoga teaching.

How to be loved and how to love is a big issue throughout the entire life, though never seriously taught in school. Ganga White, the founder of White Lotus Foundation, said in my teacher training that the more he studies yoga the more he is convinced that yoga is love. In Ganga's context, both the term yoga and love were abstract to me but I kept what he said in mind. In Fabrizio's workshop, I had a taste of what is love and how to love. To me learning how to love matters more than mastering all the tricks in asanas in yoga practice .