A pro cuddling “shop” has opened in Portland, Oregon. Yes, it’s a place where you can have a cuddle buddy, professional cuddler Samantha Hess, for a fee.

We all love a good cuddle buddy, but a cuddling shop brings both quaint and creepy implications.

On the one hand, yes, we could all use a good cuddle. Hess says she’s getting 10,000 cuddle buddy email requests a week, an indicator of our overwhelming need for connection. For a $60 hour-long cuddle, customers get hair strokes, handholding and their choice of cuddle positions. It’s not sexual—at least not for Hess—who says the idea came to her “during a low point in her life,” the Independent reports.

“I was at a place where I thought paying someone to hug me and not have ulterior motives sounded like a great idea,” she added. “I decided why can’t this be a thing that we can easily and safely reach for?”

Customers have said a cuddle session with Hess has given them “a new outlook on life.” That’s a pretty big statement for a cuddle.

But perhaps Hess’s success is revealing something deeper about our cultural loneliness.

We spend more time than ever before “connecting” with each other online, until our necks are strained from scrolling through Facebook and Instagram feeds on our phones. We text constantly, but yet we’re lonely—sometimes even if we’re in relationships. It’s almost as if knowing there are so many people we’re connected to but not connecting with creates a deeper sense of loneliness.

Salon explores the popular internet thread “i am lonely will anyone speak to me” that went so viral it ranked at the top of Google’s search for “I am lonely” and has its own Wikipedia page. It has become “a decade-long anthem to the phenomenon of loneliness in the Internet age,” reports Salon. “[It’s] a poignant record of a certain type of Catch-22 loneliness: the isolation of people who turn to the Internet to make them feel less alone.”

People are lonely, and as more jobs become home-based, it’s likely more people will experience these confounding feelings of being hyper-connected, yet totally isolated.

Whether or not we should pay for nonsexual intimacy delivers a whole new set of questions about what risks and benefits there are. Oxytocin, the chemical associated with love, is released through physical contact—a deep hug will do it. Does this rush of chemicals have the potential to put professional huggers at risk of unwanted sexual advances or threats? It’s certainly likely to happen.

And just like paying for sex doesn’t deliver much more than the mechanics, could paying for cuddles bring about even more loneliness and despair after the session ends? What does going home to an empty apartment do to an oxytocin rush?

Or, if we made cuddling purchases as common as buying a cup of coffee, could we bust through our loneliness epidemic and help usher in a kinder, more compassionate culture where we solve our problems by getting into our pajamas and giving strangers hugs? If we take away the perception that we’re all “strangers”, hugging and cuddling with anyone could have health implications beyond our imagination.

Find Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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EcoSalon’s favorite 40 quotes about the joys of being alone.

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity. -Albert Einstein

The whole value of solitude depends upon one’s self; it may be a sanctuary or a prison, a haven of repose or a place of punishment, a heaven or a hell, as we ourselves make it. -John Lubbock

I have a huge, active imagination, [and] I think I’m really scared of being alone; because if I’m left to my own devices, I’ll just turn into a madwoman. -Claire Danes

What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be. -Ellen Burstyn

It is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it. -Rainer Maria Rilke

Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine. -Honoré de Balzac

Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man. -Thomas Wolfe

Solitude is strength; to depend on the presence of the crowd is weakness. The man who needs a mob to nerve him is much more alone than he imagines. -Paul Brunton

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. -Henry David Thoreau

Language… has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone. -Paul Johannes Tillich

Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself. –Thomas Browne

Being solitary is being alone well: being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice, aware of the fullness of your own presence rather than of the absence of others. Because solitude is an achievement. -Alice Koller

It is only when we silent the blaring sounds of our daily existence that we can finally hear the whispers of truth that life reveals to us, as it stands knocking on the doorsteps of our hearts. -K.T. Jong

Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul. -Marcus Aurelius 

Without great solitude no serious work is possible. -Pablo Picasso 

A man can be himself alone so long as he is alone… if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free. -Arthur Schopenhauer

When I’m by myself, I can be myself, which is what I want to be. Not just a part of someone else. -Jean Culligan

That I am totally devoid of sympathy for, or interest in, the world of groups is directly attributable to the fact that my two greatest needs and desires – smoking cigarettes and plotting revenge – are basically solitary pursuits. -Fran Lebowitz

I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least – and it is commonly more than that – sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements. -Henry David Thoreau

There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall. -Colette

Children love to be alone because alone is where they know themselves, and where they dream. –Roger Rosenblatt

Living alone, though it may not be the state you ultimately desire for yourself, affords an unparalleled opportunity to know yourself, to be yourself, and to develop yourself as a unique and interesting individual. -Phyllis Hobe

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

The things one experiences alone with oneself are very much stronger and purer. -Eugene Delacroix

People who cannot bear to be alone are generally the worst company. -Albert Guino

Loners, if you catch them, are well worth the trouble. Not dulled by excess human contact, nor blasé or focused on your crotch while jabbering about themselves, loners are curious, vigilant, full of surprises. They do not cling. Separate wherever they go, awake or asleep, they shimmer with the iridescence of hidden things seldom seen. -Anneli Rufus

A little while alone in your room will prove more valuable than anything else that could ever be given you. -Rumi

The great omission in American life is solitude; not loneliness, for this is an alienation that thrives most in the midst of crowds, but that zone of time and space, free from the outside pressures, which is the incubator of the spirit. -Marya Mannes

True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment. -William Penn

No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength. -Jack Kerouac

Isolation is aloneness that feels forced upon you, like a punishment. Solitude is aloneness you choose and embrace. I think great things can come out of solitude, out of going to a place where all is quiet except the beating of your heart. -Jeanne Marie Laskas

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking… in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet. -Franz Kafka

The person who has not learned to be happy and content while completely alone for an hour a day, or a week has missed life’s greatest serenity. -H. Clay Tate

Solitude can be frightening because it invites us to meet a stranger we think we may not want to know – ourselves. -Melvyn Kinder

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude. -Aldous Huxley

Women need real moments of solitude and self-reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away. -Barbara De Angelis

You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with. -Wayne Dyer

You only grow when you are alone. –Paul Newman

I love people. I love my family, my children… but inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that’s where you renew your springs that never dry up. –Pearl S. Buck

When they are alone they want to be with others, and when they are with others they want to be alone. After all, human beings are like that. –Gertrude Stein

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Images: Shandi-lee, moriza, Pink Sherbet Photography, Casey David, VonSchnauzer

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In an idyllic world, you could file your stress along with completed assignments when the clock strikes five. In reality, it tends to follow you home after a taxing day at work. If throwing on a pair of cozy pajamas and sinking into your sofa with a good book just isn’t enough to rid your mind of worries, try aromatherapy. This fragrant method of therapy can alleviate much more than just anxiety:

If humdrum routines have faded your passion into apathy, take a bath enhanced with peppermint essential oil to awaken your zest for life.

We all feel out of touch with the world sometimes, so combat those occasional sentiments of loneliness by mixing a little marjoram essential oil into your body lotion.

Have minor disputes caused you to fly off the handle lately? Well, you don’t need a counseling session to abate your heightened sense of irritability. Just burn some lavender incense and let the calm wash over you.

Whenever you’re feeling blue, add several drops of neroli essential oil to a bowl filled with steaming water, cover your head with a towel and inhale this uplifting scent.

You’re always up to speed on the latest trends, but scanning through all those fashion magazines is hardly a ticket for high self-esteem. Light a sandalwood essential oil soy candle and show your insecurities (and the magazine) the recycling bin.

Interested in around-the-clock relief? Make your own essential oil perfume with these aromas and soothe these emotions all day long.

Image: estrilda

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