BY ZOË KORS

As the daughter of a Jewish mother and a Norwegian father, I learned as a kid that there were two distinct kinds of hugs. There was the bone-crushing embrace of my Bubbe, which was accompanied by a series of kisses literally smacked onto my cheek, forehead, and (if aimed poorly) eyelid. With her lips pursed over clenched teeth she would lunge, dying to sneak a bite of me as if I were an irresistible piece of chocolate babka.

Visits to the other side of the family concluded differently. Grandma Dagny would stiffen her body like a wooden board and awkwardly proffer her cheek to fend off any potential kisses that could make lip contact. She was not a cold woman, but her warmth and affection were expressed through coffee and conversation, not physical contact. Uff da. Very Scandinavian.

A defining childhood experience involved a hug from my dad. When I was six, we had a green-and-yellow parakeet named Barney who walked around the kitchen floor like a dog, catching crumbs and occasionally hitching a ride on a passing foot. One day while rushing to ballet class I stepped on Barney. I was wearing big fat waffle-patterned rubber-soled sandals and l felt him crunch under my foot. What I saw and heard is permanently seared into my memory. Barney was immobilized on the floor with his back broken, squawking in pain but not dead. Recognizing there was no way to save him, my father knelt down and took me in his arms. Safe in the sheltered world of my father’s embrace I buried my face in his shoulder and sobbed just a few feet from our suffering Barney, waiting for him to finally die.

I didn’t go to ballet that day. Dad made sure I knew it wasn’t my fault and took me for an ice cream to soothe my aching heart, but not before disposing of the shoes with the blood and feathers adhered to the waffle soles.

Many years later when my daughter was born, I became reacquainted with the importance of hugging. Any woman who has had a baby is familiar with the bizarrely wondrous feeling of having a human being growing inside her body. And when it’s time to give birth the transition from inside to outside mixes feelings of relief and loss. I am curious what the experience is like for the baby.

In the earliest days after birth, we replace the warm, tight containment of the womb with the swaddling of a blanket. In fact, the basic ways we soothe our babies are rooted in mimicking the conditions in utero. We cradle them in our arms, holding them tightly to our chest where they can hear our hearts beating and feel surrounded . . . contained . . . held. In the world outside the womb, our first language is hugging.

I love hugs. I give good hug. In fact, I consider hugging a practice, a healing modality, a form of meditation. I rarely am at a loss for a lover, but what I truly crave more often than sex is a long, quality hug—the kind you sink into so long you forget that you are actually two people.

Recently I asked my 1,500 Facebook friends what they love about hugs. The responses were plentiful and all about safety, warmth, comfort, security, heartbeats, connection to each other, and connection through each other to Source or Oneness. To me that sounds a lot like the bonding that happens at the dawn of our consciousness. Our love of a proper hug is not superficial or silly. It speaks to our need for the kind of existential homeostasis programmed in early infancy, or reaching even further back in the tight embrace of our mother’s womb, when the two bodies actually were one.

As my colleague Bryan Reeves so eloquently states in his article The Eightfold Path to a Truly Great Hug, “A truly great hug is a rich experience that has you pull another human body deliciously tight into yours as a way of saying, ‘I so deeply value your presence that I’m taking this exact moment to feel you, smell you, breathe with you—essentially stamp your being into my cellular memory so that even though we may soon part, you will in fact always be with me in the living fabric of my existence.’”

Consider this article an invitation to join me in bringing deep healing to someone by giving them a truly great hug. Reset their nervous system. Allow them to dissolve into pure existence where there is no thought. Let them surrender and fall into your loving embrace and into the pathway of connection. Let’s make this our practice. You know—saving the world, one hug at a time.

Zoë Kors is a sought-after thought leader in intimacy and women’s sexuality. She is committed to transforming the way we hold our sexuality—both individually and culturally—and to creating a compassionate, loving world through the cultivation of a sisterhood of wildly expressed women. ZoeKors.com

Throughout my years of working with women, I have a conversation over and over. An enormous number of women have lost their desire for physical intimacy. We are too tired, too busy, too angry at our partners—at the end of the day, the last thing we want is to let someone into our bodies. For many women, sex has become another thing on our to-do list—an obligation, a favor. What is most surprising and disheartening about this pervasive attitude is the idea that sex is not important for women. Culturally, we give our brothers permission to want sex, to claim its importance, but we don’t do the same for our sisters.

There are many things that shape our sexuality without us even realizing it, among them the way our parents expressed affection with each other when we were young and the way nudity was treated in the household. Did you hear comments about being so pretty your father would need a gun when boys started to want to date you? What does that say about sexual desire in general, and how are we affected by being told we need one man to protect us from another?

Much has been written about how the media shape our feelings about ourselves—the advertising industry portrays women in a very specific way. What if we fall outside the range of what we hear is hot? From booty-licious to thigh gap, we have many criteria by which to judge ourselves. From the time we are young, we receive a constant stream of mixed messages about our sexuality. With all the noise, it’s nearly impossible to cultivate a healthy relationship with a very tender part of ourselves. We are given little context for our identities as sexual creatures. And yet, it is exactly this expression that spawns life—lest we forget, the survival of the species depends on women wanting to have sex.

There is scientific evidence of the physiological benefits of sex for women. Engaging in sex regularly:

» Increases DHEA, a hormone that boosts the immune system, produces healthier skin, and decreases depression.

» Increases oxytocin, a hormone that causes the release of endorphins, natural opiates that relieves pain.

» Increases immunoglobulin A, an antibody that boosts immunity. Women who have sex twice a week have a 30% higher level of immunoglobulin A.

» Reduces cortisol, which means more balanced blood sugar, blood pressure, and lower acidity in the abdomen.

» Promotes structural health of a woman’s pelvic floor, according to some studies, through the increased blood flow and muscular contractions that occurs with regular penetration and orgasm.

Though the facts are compelling, ironically the very nature of looking to science to prove we should be having sex is a symptom of why we are not having it. We are so caught up in a world that worships the masculine that we have neglected the feminine. The most powerful evidence that sex is important for women is arrived at intuitively.

As women, we play many roles: partners, daughters, bosses, employees, mothers. We deliver, nurture, manage, and please. We are accomplished jugglers, master manifestors; we make things happen. The byproduct of navigating our hyperconnected, multitasking lives with poise and grace is the suppression of raw emotion. To perform these many roles effectively, we contain, conform, and control our feelings, our words, our behavior. As a matter of survival we adapt to a culture that values our rational minds. In the process we become alienated from our innate, intuitive nature, often feeling unseen, unappreciated, and misunderstood. When we lose our sense of self in this way, we suffer in our relationships. We get angry and shut down. Our confidence takes a hit, along with our self-esteem, self-care, and our precious sex lives—the very thing that should be our source of power.

We can measure hormones and proteins in our bodies in connection with sexual activity, but what is even more powerful is the energetic, psychological, and spiritual benefits of sex as a form of creative self-expression.

There is a fire that burns inside each one of us. It is the flame of passion, of desire. It glows, it roars, it’s wild. It is our birthright. This fire is our feminine essence. It is the stuff that is uniquely ours, that gives us eyes in the back of our heads, that makes our hearts twinge when a loved one thousands of miles away is hurting, the way we can heal with a hug, our ability to feel when a decision is the right one.

When we step away from our contained, controlled lives and soften into the expansive formlessness of sexual arousal, we create a space for the feminine to rise. Passion is a necessary nutrient, desire, an essential ingredient. To pretend otherwise is to deny ourselves—and the world—a vital part of who we are and how we can serve. Whether we are in the kitchen, the boardroom, or the bedroom, our practiced access to our feminine fire is a source of vitality for ourselves and in turn for our families, communities, and organizations.

So if you feel like the only reason to have sex is out of obligation to your partner, consider this: it’s not about getting someone else off. It’s about turning ourselves on so that we can light up the world.

Also, it might be helpful to know that self-pleasuring counts!

Zoë Kors is a writer, speaker, coach, and sexologist. She is committed to shifting the way we hold our sexuality, both individually and culturally, and to creating a more loving, compassionate world by cultivating a sisterhood of wildly expressed women. ZoeKors.com