Heart Hugs

Early in the morning when I’m sitting in my third-grade classroom, usually after math class and during silent reading, I get a warm feeling, a cozy feeling, a feeling that I am loved. When this happens, I know that my grandmother, Gram, is taking her morning walk and has sent me a heart hug.

I live in Tucson, Arizona, and my gram lives in northern Wisconsin. According to MapQuest, we live 1,893.3 miles apart. However, my gram’s heart hug travels all that way and finds me.

You might be thinking that this is impossible, but it is beyond possible, I believe it is REAL and amazingly interesting. Let me explain some of the things I’ve learned about heart hugs and how they work.

Last summer, I flew from Arizona to Wisconsin to visit Gram. She and Grampa John live in a little log cabin next to a beautiful lake. Every morning Gram takes a long walk, a very long walk all the way around the lake, and when I visited, I walked with her. During one of our walks Gram told me that every morning while on her walk she sent heart hugs to her children and grandchildren. She explained, “When I send a heart hug to you, I think about how you look and who you are. Then I fill my heart with love, smile, and send you a heart hug.”

I told her I liked the idea, and she said it was more than an idea, that it scientists called physicist say it’s scientifically possible.”

“How does it work?” I asked.

“Like a cell phone,” she replied. “When you talk on your cell phone, your voice changes to an electrical signal that travels on radio waves to another phone. You can’t see the radio waves. They’re invisible, but they are real.”

“Do computers work the same way?” I asked.

“Yes, basically. Both rely on electrical signals, invisible electrical signals, that can travel around the world and over 200,000 miles to satellite stations in space.”

“The people who figured out how to do it had to be very smart,” I observed.”

“For sure,” Gram agreed. “But,” she continued, “I believe it’s possible for people to send messages with just their minds.”

“Really?”

“Yup. Some people are able to send thought signals. It’s called telepathy, and scientists are studying how it works. It’s also called brain-to-brain-communication. Australian Aborigines have talked to each other this way for very long time, but they call it heart-head talking.”

“How do they do it?” I asked.

“From what I understand, they think about what they want to say and send messages with their minds. They also believe that it’s not enough to think something, you have to feel it in your heart because they believe the heart is a transmitter and a receiver of feelings. Aborigines also believe that if someone is not being truthful when sending a message, the connection will break and they won’t be able to communicate using head-heart talking.

“But, how do they do it?” I asked again.

“Well, all living things, plants and animals, are made of cells, think of cells as building blocks of the body, and every cell has electrical energy. This energy is what keeps us alive and makes it possible for us to move, think, and feel. We are actually run by electricity.”

“Sort of like robots?”

“I suppose you could say that, but a robot uses very few electrical signals compared to a human, and a human doesn’t need to be plugged in or charged the way a robot does. Comparing robots to humans is kind of like comparing cars to horses; the life force operates in a very different and much more complex way with living beings.”

“I understand, a robot is a machine, but a human is alive,” I replied.

“That’s correct. You are made of living cells. There are around 37 trillion cells in your body, and each cell has an invisible electrical signal.”

“There’s electricity inside of me?”

“Yes, there is, but invisible electrical signals are everywhere. They are in our bodies, in the air around us, in outer space. And there are even more electrical signals now because of computers and telephones. Think of these signals like electrical paths or trails that build a very intricate web of pulsating energy.”

“Do you think the air could be filled with too many signals?” I asked.

“Some scientists think so. They even think that electric signals cause migrating birds to get confused and that this might actually be what is causing some species to become extinct.”

“That’s terrible!”

“I agree, it is a big problem that needs to be solved! And in order to solve a problem, we first need to understand the problem and what contributes to it. One thing Scientists have determined is that migrating birds have tiny magnetic particles in their brains that act like compasses. You know what a compass is?”

“My dad showed me how it works. The black end of the needle always points north.”

“You’re right, and these magnetic brain particles help tbirds determine which direction is north; this helps them figure out where to fly. But now that the air is filled with so many invisible electrical signals, the particles have become jumbled and so some birds can’t tell where north is.”

“Oh, that’s awful! I wish there was a way to keep that from happening.”

“I agree, and maybe you and other kids like you will care enough and work to figure out some way of helping fix the problems that these electrical signals are causing. But as sad as this is, it does help to prove the fact that invisible electrical signals fill the air and effect all living organisms. Understanding this helps explain why heart hugs work. Basically, a heart hug is a very subtle electrical signal sent from someone’s brain and heart to another person. It’s not the same type of electrical signal as a phone or computer. The brain heart signal wouldn’t cause a bird to get confused, probably because it is gentle and has a softer energy frequency,” Gram explained.

“But how does the brain know which path to use to send a message? To send a heart hug?”

“I believe something else makes this possible. I might be wrong, but it makes sense to me,” Gram answered.

“What?”

“Well, scientists using powerful microscopes have discovered that inside every cell are extremely small things called molecules. There are millions of molecules in just one cell, and every cell of every living thing has these very, very tiny molecules.

“So, our body is made up of how many cells?” I asked.

“About thirty-seven trillion,” Gram replied.

“Trillion? How big is a trillion?”

“It’s so huge that it’s almost impossible to imagine, but we can try! One trillion is a million millions or one thousand billions, and if you write it as a number, it is a one with twelve zeros after it. One way to think of it is with time. One trillion seconds is about thirty-two thousand years. And think of this, if you spent one dollar every second - - not every minute but every second, it would take you thirty-two THOUSAND YEARS to spend one trillion dollars!”

“Holy cow! A trillion is a huge number!”

“It sure is,” Gram agreed. “But there’s more. There are thirty-seven trillion cells, and each cell has molecules. A human cell can have as many as two trillion molecules!”

“Holy moly! Trillions of trillions of trillions! Molecules must be very tiny! How do they know there are that many?”

“I don’t understand it,” Gram replied. “But there are scientists called physicists who calculate this type of thing using special microscopes, electron microscopes. But there’s something else. Inside molecules are even smaller particles called atoms. Physicists estimate the average cell contains 100 trillion atoms. The number of atoms in a molecule is about the same as the number of cells in a body.”

“Holy moly, moly! That’s a lot of atoms! They must be very, very, very tiny!”

“Yes, there are a lot of really tiny atoms! But these tiny atoms are made up of even smaller things called electrons, neutrons, and protons. So, inside a cell are molecules, and inside molecules are atoms, and inside atoms are electrons, neutrons, and protons.”

“It’s kind of like a Russian Nesting Doll,” I suggested. “You know, one doll inside of another, inside of another, and how the dolls get smaller and smaller?”

“That’s a good way to remember it, Gram agreed. “But just because they are small doesn’t mean they aren’t important. Actually, the movement of the electrons inside the atoms causes the electrical spark that keeps every living thing alive. The electrons move from one atom to another, and when this happens, a tiny electrical path or current is made. This is why you and I and every living plant and animal are loaded with electricity.”

“Is that why I can make a spark when I touch the doorknob after sliding my feet across the floor?”

“It might be related, but there’s something more, and this something is what I believe makes it possible for me to send a heart hug to you. Atomic physicists, the scientists who study atoms, discovered that tiny particles inside of atoms twist around each other. They call this entanglement.”

“Sort of like when my hair gets tangled?”

“Well, sort of, but tangled hair is just a mess. However, there is something about entangled atoms that is fascinating. If an entangled atom is split, cut in half in some way, and each part is separated over a long distance, even thousands of miles apart, when one of the entangled parts is poked, the other part immediately reacts as though it was also poked. Somehow the halves communicate with each other at the exact same moment, faster than the speed of light, instantaneously!”

“You mean, like if I had an orange and I cut it in half and sent half to my dad, if I squeezed it here in Wisconsin, juice would squeeze out of the other half in Tucson?”

Well, that’s a way to think a very mysterious fact. Now, I’m going to return to talking about heart hugs - - I believe this entanglement fact proves why it’s possible to send heart hugs to family members and friends. I believe it’s because we share entangled electrical pathways with people we love. Remember I explained how Aborigines send mind-heart messages? Well, long before there were molecular scientists and atomic physicists studying cell entanglement, Aborigines knew that their hearts and minds were connected to people they love. Poets know this too. Poems have been written about people being connected with what poets call “heart strings.”

“Are heart strings like electric pathways?”

“Same thing,” Gram stated. “I know this is mighty complicated. It is for me. Are you sort of understanding why I’m able to send you a heart hug?”

“Yes, it’s sent on an electrical path from you to me.”

“Yup, that’s the way heart hugs work,” Gram agreed.

Gram and I didn’t talk for a while. We just walked. Then suddenly an amazing idea flashed into my mind. I stopped walking, looked at Gram and said, “I think prayers are sent on electrical pathways the same as heart hugs.”

Gram looked at me and smiled.

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