Evening friends. Spent the afternoon enjoying the company of friends and family. Including enjoying a lecture from the “love doctor,” Paul Zak PhD. Dr. Zak gave us a practice run on his upcoming lecture for TED in Scotland. He told us about the amazing hormone, oxytocin, which Dr. Zak tells us is the morality hormone. It increases any time we have increased social connection. Oxytocin makes people trust, empathize and have increased moral behaviors. Dr. Zak’s prescription is eight hugs a day (hugs increase oxytocin). Awesome.
Friend to Yourself 
I am sorry but I can not leave it alone. If we feel too huggy, might we lactate? (please just tell me to shut up).
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not that kind of huggy.
u did get a smile though. smile
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I’m with you ASKIRTAWEEK, the first thing I think of when I hear the word oxytocin is the incredible feeling of well-being I experienced while nursing my child. 🙂
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Well here’s one, Doc {hug} 🙂
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let go cin. u can let go now. hey. how do i get this lady to let go? smile. that’s a funny i like to do w my nieces. we hug and i won’t stop hugging them but act like it’s the other way around. it’s my smothering hold on u apparently that we r feeling here. hugs.
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Started the day with hugs from my granddaughter who is staying with us for several days. Those are the BEST hugs, although any hugs are wonderful!! Hard to believe there was a time when I didn’t want to be touched!!
Hugs to you, Sana. Have a hug-filled day.
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thank u dear nance. u remind me of my grandma’s, “give me some sugar!”
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I love this post and this information. I have read this before, but didn’t know that it actually inreases oxytocin and what that does.
Thanks, Dr. S
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thank u determined! that made me super happy to hear
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Count me in!
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i’ve been fighting saying “dirty old man” all d cuz u r’nt but it’s so funny
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Big Hugs. Marie.
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oxytocin rush! awesome
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here’s to hugs! hear! hear!
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clang!
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I just wrote about my belief in God. Then I listened, again, to Dr. Zak. I did both having just read in our local newspaper about a 19 year old man who so badly abused a year old baby boy whom he was baby sitting that the child will probably live his whole life with the colostomy the surgeons had to put on him after they tried, in vain, to repair the damage. And I wonder, as the tears flow, why? It hasn’t shaken my belief but it certainly has left me shaken. Makes me believe that God cries, too.
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i have often thought about God’s grief too nancy.
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I know this is supposed to be a happy, joyful place to post…but reading this brought me great sadness. It seems to me that if you are blessed with faces brilliantly reflecting love as a child…and that becomes a part of you…then you are able to recreate that experience again and again…more and more hugs. But if you have…ok, if I have abandonment burned into my being…I recreate it wherever I go. These days there are few hugs to find. And so the cycle continues…
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reexperiencing trauma is not something we choose. sorry u r suffering. keep on.
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