Praise for Hug Therapy
“Hug Therapy disrupts the simple act of a hug, turning it into a way to spark connection within you, your community, with strangers…and it may just end up bringing our planet to awareness of being one. Crazy, awesome hugs—of course you should become a part of this movement!”
—Mich Hancock, cofounder of TEDxGatewayArch, Host of MichMash Podcast
“I’m excited to say I have now completed my 21-Day Hugging Journey. I found it powerful and useful. Stone has created a deceptively simple sounding twenty-one-day challenge that is in fact a genius concept when you understand how all the pieces he brings to it fit and work together. I have started to view each day differently in terms of how I interact with the people in my life. We can’t get enough kindness and caring in the world. I am now starting to see how improvements with friends and family could ripple out to people in my neighborhood and much further into the world.”
—Brian Lunt, Medici cofounder, inspiration behind Top-50 STL
“Before I was introduced to the twenty-one-day hugging challenge, I was depressed, anxious, and struggling with fibromyalgia. It wouldn’t be too strong to say that I felt ready to nosedive into the pavement. Believe it or not, seven days after going on the 21-Day Hugging Journey on Facebook Live and reading Hug Therapy, I felt like a new man. I chronicled it all on Facebook and I would love for you to check it out. My life was transformed. I felt supercharged—no, wait—I am supercharged. I believe it’s not a journey; it’s a lifestyle. The biggest takeaway for me from the book was being radically transparent in everything I do. It totally freed me up to do greater good and be inspired in the process. I was made for this. Come with us on this journey. It meets you where you are, and you can create whatever really matters to you!”
—Gary Havel Jr. mailman, war hero, and hugging ambassador
“Dr. Stone has taken us far beyond the everyday hug. With his 21-Second hug, virtual hug, and ‘space of a hug,’ he invites us on a 21-Day Hugging Journey of discovery that opens up a whole universe of new windows into empathy, sharing, transforming, building community, and deeply being with other humans. So, if you see people walking down the street stopping for conversation, asking permission, breaking out into spontaneous, longer hugs, you will know that they have been reading this engaging, surprising, concise, and thought-provoking book. Join the fun and take the personal challenges. Get this book today. You just might see yourself and encounter others in a new, beautiful way.”
—Lou Agosta, faculty member, Illinois School of Professional Psychology, and author of A Rumor of Empathy
Hug Therapy
A 21-Day Journey
to Embracing Yourself,
Your Life, and Everyone
Around You
Dr. Stone Kraushaar
Coral Gables, FL
Copyright © 2019 Dr. Stone Kraushaar
Published by Mango Publishing Group, a division of Mango Media Inc.
Cover Design: Morgane Leoni
Layout & Design: Morgane Leoni
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Hug Therapy: A 21-Day Journey to Embracing Yourself, Your Life, and Everyone Around You
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication number: 2019941764
ISBN: (print) 978-1-64250-070-7, (ebook) 978-1-64250-071-4
BISAC: PSY031000—PSYCHOLOGY / Social Psychology
Printed in the United States of America
Please note that Hug Therapy, The Hug Doctor, and National Hugging Day are all trademarked.
Hug Therapy is dedicated to my mother Judy, whom I lost to cancer when I was twenty-five and she was fifty-two. Every hug I had with her was so precious and I didn’t even realize how important they were.
“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
—Carl Jung
Contents
Part II
How to Hug
Part III
Embrace Yourself
Part IV
Embrace Life
Part V
Embrace Others
Part VI
Summing Up and Moving Forward
Why I Wrote Hug Therapy
Afterword
Appendix
About the Author
Dr. Stone and I share a wonderful distinction: we are both professional huggers. A hug is powerful and has the ability to turn every interaction into an opportunity for achieving profound richness. I chose the word richness instead of another word you might have expected—riches. Some of the richest people I’ve met are really the most deprived, because their financial abundance spotlights the lack of love and connection they feel. On the other hand, simple people who love and support each other often forget their financial lack in favor of a deeper, richer abundance—one where hugs are natural, welcomed, and often transformative.
When I heard about this amazing book, I practically jumped out of my seat. The benefits of this simple practice are at last being extolled by a man who not only appreciates