CUDDLE PARTIES SOOTHE CALGARY
Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t say I’ve ever really wanted to spoon a stranger.
It didn’t stop my editor, though, from suggesting I attend a cuddle party on Friday, in which Calgarians of every stripe will show up in their pyjamas to a home and, for $25 a person, have the honour of massaging shoulders, stroking ponytails and learning the basics of Cuddling 101.
While spooning is something most of us do with our significant others, the idea of partaking in the practice with someone I don’t know sparks memories of John Candy and Steve Martin in the movie Planes, Trains and Auto- mobiles. In other words, I can’t imagine that it would be anything other than an extremely awkward experience, barring a surprise visit from Clive Owen at said cuddle party.
All of which doesn’t faze Rovena Skye in the least. “You should come. It’s an incredibly joyful experience,” says the 38-year-old Calgary cuddle party facilitator.
“We have a wonderful community of people who have benefited so much.”
I realize I should have known about this a lot sooner. After all, the cuddle party trend has been around for nearly a decade, started — of course — in New York City.
It’s since spread to other major American cities, Canada, Europe and Australia.
Today, with its website cuddleparty.com, it’s an international force, with thousands testifying to the healing powers of touch.
Skye, who came to Canada from Russia 13 years ago, hosted the first cuddle party in this city in the fall of 2011. Since then, two other facilitators have joined her, hosting several cuddle parties throughout the year. One of them, Libby Eastman, is holding an “End of the World” cuddle party on Friday, in homage to the Mayan calendar end of days.
“The world needs more love, connection and kindness,” says Skye, who decided to kick-start the trend in Calgary after hearing about it in other cities from friends in the movement.
Her day job for the past several years has been as a self-described “sexual healer,” eschewing her master’s degree in mathematics and physics for a career as a certified tantric counsellor. At her cuddle parties, though, there is no funny business.
“This is about non-sexual intimacy,” she says, acknowledging that a major- ity of her clients are single or divorced, people who find themselves suddenly without daily touch. “It is one of the most basic human needs — we need at least three hugs a day to survive.”
Not everyone is enamoured with the hugging sensation sweeping the nations. One U.K. columnist blasted it as “a hideous American invention ... a three-hour, strictly nonsexual grope fest of touching, massaging, tickling, stroking, fondling and — hang about, I’m really going to chuck now — ‘spooning.’”
TV personality Bill Maher described it as skipping the sex act and going “right to the boring part afterwards.”
Still, Skye and her fellow proponents have a growing body of scientific evidence to back their conviction that you can’t get too many hugs.
More than a century after famed pediatrician Luther Emmet Holt was urging mothers not to even play with their babies, we know that depriving a child of affectionate touch causes irreparable damage to vital parts of the brain; in adults, regular hugs are associated with decreased blood pressure, as well as better sleep and improved memory.
But can touch-deprived Westerners, I ask Skye, really leave the snogging out of snuggling? That’s when she recites the long list of cuddle party rules that include the necessity of asking for permission before touching and the wearing of pyjama-style clothing.
“I’ve never had a single problem,” with overly enthusiastic cuddlers, she says, although she does admit with a chuckle that unexpected issues can arise, so to speak. “We’re human beings.”
At his first cuddle party, Clayton Warholm wasn’t worried about getting carried away. “I’m more into motorcycles, martial arts, tequila than needing a hug,” says the 49-year-old, who last year attended one at the urging of his ex. “I was pretty shut down that first time, but I knew I would come back.”
Warholm says he got back in touch with his affectionate side, thanks to “being with people when I needed it most.” He also fell in love, but not with anyone he was cuddling. He and Skye began dating a few months after his first cuddle party and now live together.
“People say, ‘Why would I cuddle with strangers?’ ” Skye says of her most common question. “They stop being strangers very quickly.”
I’ll have to take her word on that, along with a cuddle-cheque: in this busy Christmas season, I’m already booked for Friday.