My 2 cents on hugging. TL;DR: have friends who hug, go to warm cultures and metta meditation A friend of mine years ago went to an alternative school for a ye

My 2 cents on hugging. TL;DR: have friends who hug, go to warm cultures and metta meditation A friend of mine years ago went to an alternative school for a year. He transformed as a person and made it a principle to hug his friends. While I was skeptical at first, I quite quickly had the same principle. If I am within my circle of friends I always say beforehand that I am going to hug them if I don't know them well enough. When they refuse, fine, when they don't, I hug them. It is different when I am in other social circles, then I judge it more on a per social circle basis. If I meet someone by myself and had a good time, there is always a hug. If you want to get some 'practice' in, I suggest going on vacation to Italy and make some Italian friends. Hugging is normal if you let it be normal. What also might help is metta meditation. I remember that before metta meditation I did not hug my parents. But then I read the book Search Inside Yourself written by a Google employee. I took the instructions for metta there a bit too much on the intense side, since I was really putting myself in the shoes of my parents and I envisioned how their whole life must've been like and kept asking myself what made them happy. After that I noticed that I wanted to tell them that I love them every time I saw them, but that's a bit too cheesy to my taste, so I decided to hug them instead. Interestingly, even after a few weeks my dad still felt a bit uncomfortable with it, so I dropped the practice with him. But I still hug my mom. For me personally, it has been a mini transformation because I never used to hug her, and now I hug her every time I see her. Reading this, I'm quite surprised on how I transformed from a completely non-touchy person to a hugger. As a result, I am not experiencing a hugging crisis. I get my 2 hugs per day in :)