The Power of the Enchanted Embrace
Part Seven — The Magic and Mystery of Spiritual Healing
Thich Nhat Hanh, global spiritual leader, and peace activist, tells this story:
In 1966, a friend drove me to the Atlanta airport, and when we were saying goodbye, she asked, “Is it all right to hug a Buddhist monk?” In my country, we are not used to expressing ourselves this way in public. But I thought, “I am a Zen teacher. It shouldn’t be a problem for me to do this.” So, I said, “Why not?” and she hugged me, but I was rather stiff. Later, on the plane, I decided that if I wanted to work with friends in the West, I would have to learn the culture of the West. That is why I invented hugging meditation.
Hugging in public is a Western practice. Meditation, conscious breathing, is an Eastern practice. The two come together in hugging meditation. I think it’s a good combination. For Buddhist practice to be rooted in the West, new dharma doors should be opened. I think hugging meditation can be considered one of these doors.
I (Paul) first learned to do this years ago with a tree, a good start for an uptight Baptist preacher! While running in the park, I would stop at my favorite tree, an old friend, glance around to see if anyone was looking, then put my head, body, and feet up against the tree and wrap my arms around it as far as they would go. Back then, I did it as a grounding exercise. It always felt superbly energizing. Later on, I dropped looking around and just went ahead and hugged. I figured the people who knew what I was doing were fine, and the people who didn’t and thought I was weird were just missing out!
Thich Nhat Hanh says, “We may practice hugging meditation with a friend, our child, a parent, our partner, or a tree. The hugging can be very deep. Life is there. Happiness is there. Sometimes the hugging is not very deep, and the hugger only pretends to be there, perhaps by patting you on the back—I have some experience of this! When someone hugs you with all their heart and presence, you feel it. When someone takes your hands in mindfulness, with their presence, their concern, you feel it. So, hug like that—make life real and deep. It will heal both of you. When we’re mindful and present, hugging has a deep power to heal and transform.”
Until recently, I had not yet been bold enough to engage in this healing practice with another person. Then a pastor friend with whom I share and meditate invited me to an online embrace while we meditated. I say “bold enough” because hugging someone who is not a relative for longer than a few seconds can be interpreted as a sexual advance. He is a straight man with a wife and two grown children. On the other hand, I am a gay man living with my male partner of twenty years. I brought this up, we talked about it, set our boundaries, and went ahead with a mindful embrace (over Zoom). It was powerful for both of us. Finding Thich Nhat Hanh’s practice and teaching seemed to affirm what I had been moving toward and resulted in the practice I describe below.
Meditative embrace Engages and Aligns the Four Centers of Spiritual Knowing and Structures of Consciousness
During meditation, touching another person can be an integral prayer practice that can powerfully energize all four centers of spiritual knowing simultaneously.
When I was doing a meditative embrace with my pastor friend, I experienced a rush of energy all over me. It included my head, which was aware of the deeply integrated consciousness of seeing with and through my heart, gut, and feet. It connected with my heart space, which was touching his. Our hearts seemed to melt into one another just as it does when I experience Jesus embracing me in meditative prayer. My gut seemed to explode with an indescribable sense that I think Jesus was talking about when he said, “From your womb will flow rivers of living water.”
When we embrace in Mystical-Body Awakening mode, our heads, hearts, wombs, and feet are connected, and our centers of knowing are compellingly activated.
When embracing another person who is attuned to their body, the mental structures are activated by the touching of heads, the mythic structures by the touching of hearts, the magic structure by the touching of spiritual wombs, bodily integration by the mutual grounding in the touch of feet – all leading to see with and through the integral structure of consciousness.
In Whole-Body Mystical Awakening meditative embrace, when we connect in our heads, hearts, tummies, and feet, we know that we are not separate beings.
Embrace and Eros
Since then, in further practice with my pastor friend and also Luke, there has been an increase of three dimensions of the energy of Jesus in my gut. In the womb, I encounter the eros of Jesus, the magic Jesus, and the healing Jesus. The same is true of Mary and other spiritual guides. In the womb, I encounter the eros of Mary, the magic Mary, and the healing Mary. Yes, I know, Jesus and Mary have been so desexualized that it may be shocking to think of connecting to their eros energy. But that is religious dogma, not physical reality or spiritual reality. Eros has an important place in mystical spirituality (You can read more about Eros Spirituality here).
The above is a way of saying that I also encounter the erotic me, the magic me, and the healing me in my womb. I can’t describe how liberating this has been and continues to be and unfold.
The diffuse (not genital-focused) eros energy of the gut or womb provides part of the vitality that powers the flow of healing energy from this center of spiritual knowing. The magic Jesus and Mary (and other guides) open us to the more profound and wilder mystical reality. The healing Jesus and Mary allow us to transmit healing wherever we are and where we intentionally direct it.
Denying or repressing this energy will be to lose much of the possible healing power and liberation that is so desperately needed today.
(*More about Eros and healthy boundaries at the bottom of this post.)
A Mystical Meditative Prayer Embrace
This can be done with a spiritual guide or another person, when physically present to one another or online through a computer or device. Online we are visually, emotionally, and spiritually present to one another in our subtle bodies. Sometimes this is called a “virtual” event. I don’t use that word since the antonym to virtual is “actual.” So, when we say something is virtual, we are also implying that it is essentially not actual. That it isn’t real. I can assure you that this practice is very real because our subtle bodies carry a reality as actual as our physical bodies. Those who have been in an online WeSpace group or other relational-embodied practice soon learn that the shared energy field is very real.
The meditative prayer embrace utilizes the touch of whole-body to whole-body and not other forms of embracing such as the A-frame or side-to-side embraces. It can beneficially begin as a form of the sacred gazing of Visio Divina. On the internet, one sees the other person as an expression of God’s presence. In individual meditative prayer practice, you may also begin by gazing at an icon, painting, or picture of a friend, guide, or celestial being. As one of my favorite artists, Mark Rothko said, “A painting is not a picture of an experience but is the experience.”
Or you may visualize the other’s spiritual presence. Remember that in the magic structure of consciousness, the symbol of the person on the computer screen, icon, painting, or picture becomes the reality of that person.
Hugging meditation is more than hugging and more than meditation. When the two are combined, it transforms and awakens.
WBMA Meditative Embrace Practice
Before beginning this practice, make sure that you have set up mutually agreed upon boundaries, also including a safe way to indicate an end to the embrace. See further notes below about Healthy and Unhealthy Embrace. *
Here are the steps I follow that differ slightly from Thich Nhat Hanh since mine are in the context of Whole-Body Mystical Awakening. I will assume you are doing this online. If you and your embracing partner are physically present to one another, it will be obvious you should take the instructions in that way. I use images of men in the next three illustrations since straight men are perhaps more likely to be uncomfortable with this practice—but of course this embrace can be done with anyone regardless of gender identity.
Step One
Close your eyes and practice breathing in and out mindfully in whatever usual way you breathe. Begin with grounding, rooting your feet to the earth and your physical presence. Then attune to the person across from you and welcome their presence in this meditative time. Remember, both the online image of a person on the internet and the one in your head are symbols of the real person. The symbol becomes the real person in the magic structure if you allow yourself to move into non-ordinary consciousness, which frees up your mystical self to a deeper reality.
Step Two
After a few moments of settling in, or perhaps an agreed amount of time, begin to see yourself and your partner embracing. You can be physically sitting or standing in this practice while you internally see and feel your subtle energy body touching your partner’s subtle energy body. Take one another in your arms. Move up close so that all your centers of spiritual knowing are touching – head, heart, gut, and feet.
Step Three
As in Whole-Body Mystical Awakening, let your attention focus on each center of spiritual knowing. You may find one or more centers incredibly energized. Let the energy flow back and forth. Soak in it. Do that as long as you wish.
Become aware of your head touching the other person. If your mind is empty, enjoy the vibrant stillness. If images, words, intuitions come to your mind, enjoy them, too. If you find you are moving out and up to vast, infinite space timelessness, enjoy that, also!
What is your heart center experiencing? Stay with that feeling, no matter how small, and intensify it by sinking into it.
Let yourself feel the energy moving around in your spiritual womb. Be aware of how you let the embrace draw that energy from you to another. Be mindful of how the gut energy of the other draws you to them.
You might also notice any energy in your feet next to one another or your connected roots going down into the earth, entangling amongst the shared energy of material reality.
While the practice is relational, especially at first it is helpful to remain mindfully anchored to your own experience. This is not sending love or energy to the other, but letting the contact and shared embrace bring up spiritual knowing in you.
Step Four
This practice’s most common length is brief, just 20 seconds or three deep meditative breaths. Of course, you and your partner can stay together longer, as long as you both are comfortable. With a little more time, it can create more ease as you both sink into the holding. But starting with a brief embrace is recommended before moving on to longer practices together.
When you are both ready, or after the agreed upon amount of time, release each other with gratitude. Sit for as long as you need, continuing to take in and move with the healing energy that has been created. If you need, connect again to your grounding, sending any excess or disorienting energy down into the earth. It is very helpful and even essential to the process to share and reflect with one another what you experienced and may often still be experiencing.
*Healthy Embrace and Harmful Embrace
There is such a thing as harmful embracing. This has nothing to do with sexual feelings. It has to do with two things: The first is values — the value of not invading one another’s boundaries. It is any attempt to control the other person, crossing physical, sexual, and/or comfort boundaries. One of these is the value of maintaining the commitment pledged in any sexual partnership.
A healthy embrace holds the spiritual connection while enjoying the physical connection. Eros is a part of womb energy, spiritual energy, and human energy and a resource for all three. So, there is no avoiding eros, nor should we want to. But we can maintain mutually agreed upon boundaries that frees up eros to be a resource rather than a focus. In a sexual relationship, it becomes the focus. It a spiritual relationship, it is a spiritual resource, contributing energy and joy.
There is a second dimension to healthy embrace. This is the awareness that not everyone is comfortable with touching, from a handshake to a hug. Touching can be a trigger. All healthy meditative touch must be non-sexual and consensual. Although, as mentioned previously, it is common and healthy for embracing to engage and activate a diffuse, non-genital, eros energy. However, to keep the eros diffuse, there are no massaging movements, everyone should be clothed, and there can be no touching in areas which would be covered by a swimsuit. The touching of lips is not advisable but touching of noses can be helpful.
Occasionally, meditative embracers are sexually aroused, usually unintentionally. When this happens in a physical setting, both parties may take a break or reposition themselves. In a subtle energy setting either via the internet or in an individual’s inner meditative practice, one can withdraw briefly to reorient.
Remember, when invited to join in a meditative embrace with someone, you do not have to participate if you do not want to. Whether it is concern about past trauma and the trigger in embracing that can be activated, or simply personal preference, you are not obligated in any way to share your reason. Rather you are obligated to yourself to be selective about who you let into your physical space, as well in subtle energy embracing via the internet.
In meditative prayer embrace with another living person, whether with them in physical or subtle/mystical space, you should get their permission to embrace. Even with a spiritual guide, it’s always good to ask for consent beforehand.