Why we all need to enhance our human commection

Enhance #5 Human beings need Human beings

What is human?

Just have a think now what human means to you? How do you define human?

Look back at your conditioning and learning - what is human in that context?

Are there some humans more human than others?

Look at history - are all biped homo sapiens denoted as humans by all? 

Important questions in terms of all humans being able to be the best that they can be in the quest to be human

Human beings are the most highly evolved inhabitants of earth’s ecosystem. Like everything else on the planet, we are the product of time and chance, of evolution and survival. When it comes down to it, human beings have nothing special but our highly evolved brains.

But even those brains—although capable of imagination, language, creativity, art, music, self-reflection, and reason—are themselves merely the workings of biochemical processes and electrical impulses. 

We are elemental beings.

We have basic ingredients that we share with other species, we need to connect with our bodies more than we do.

Often just considering what makes us human helps us become more human 

What do you think about the fact that we are almost ⅔ Oxygen?

Almost ⅔ a gas?

Does respiration take on a new meaning now?

Why are human’s not connecting as much anymore?

Important nerves — known as C tactile or CT afferents — and their importance to our emotions and connections has been studied for over a decade.

Neuroscientist Helena Wasling - “What struck me very early on in the pandemic, in the first week of being told that we were restricted from touch,  was that people no longer knew how to behave,” 

Even if you don’t consider yourself to be a tactile person, touch is — or was — embedded in the social structure of our lives. From meeting a new colleague and evaluating their handshake to giving a friend a long hug when we haven’t seen them in a while, it is one of the fundamental ways we have all learned to relate to one another. “To take it away is a very big intervention,” 

Touch is something we associate with emotional closeness, and we associate the absence of it with emotional distance. We may not fully appreciate it, but in pre-pandemic life there were literally dozens of small moments of touch throughout the day.

This is significant not just in the landscape of our minds, but that of our bodies. Being emotionally and socially responsive to touch is so biologically fundamental to us that CT afferents are present over almost every inch of our skin, absent only from the palms of our hands and the soles of our feet.

We need connection and/or touch to generate oxytocin, when we do not have it then this leads to deficits in social behaviours.

More than that there are further implications of oxytocin deprivation -

Affects brain function in the limbic system

Endocrine function impaired

Cardiovascular system impaired

Stress management impaired 

Reproductive system impaired

Human needs do not include having to be mindlessly entertained but does include less toxicity and more connection 

How can you introduce more connection into your daily routine? Both connection with yourself and what you need plus connection with others and how you can support each person.

Commit now to at least one thing to make you more human.

Think about your humanness - are you less human than you were? Are you less touchy feely, do you fear other humans, do you actively seek out connection?

It is so important that we consider the concept of connection.

We do not connect enough and it is making humans unwell.

Enhance your connection. Enhance your wellbeing.

Nothing eases suffering like human touch