Three hours and $30 to cuddle with strangers at a cuddle party. No sex allowed.
Gary Nash was feeling just a tad out of touch when he decided to attend his first cuddle party.
Nash, a New Jersey native who now works in the world of New York finance, walked into a yoga studio in Manhattan six weeks ago to attend his first cuddle party.
He felt a little nervous but also more than a little curious.
"It was very nerve-wracking because I didn't know what to expect," he said. "It just seemed like some type of weird psychedelic type of thing, but I said, "Eh, let's give it a try.'"
Nash's experience was overwhelmingly positive, and he has since become a cuddle-party regular or "cuddle monster."
"By going to one, it validated why I think something like that is needed," Nash said.
Nash is one of more than an estimated 5,000 people who have been cuddled in the last three years, thanks to the growing phenomenon of cuddle parties.
From New York to Los Angeles and from Australia to London, cuddle parties seem to be taking the world by storm.
Founded in New York in 2004 by two relationship coaches, Reid Mihalko and Marcia Baczynski, cuddle parties are defined on the official Cuddle Party Web site, www.cuddleparty.com, as "a workshop for people to rediscover non-sexual touch and affection," in a structured and safe environment.
Basically, though, cuddle parties are places where consenting grown-ups, most often strangers, can shake off the armor of adulthood and play.
Whether that includes touching or not is completely up to them.
"It's really an intimacy party," Mihalko said. "But if we called it that, people would never come."
"You learn how to create a safe space for yourself and then you can extend it and invite other people into it," he said. "With cuddle party we've been very successful at finding a great place for people to explore this and get in touch with playing again."
The environment of the 3½- hour cuddle party is a mix between a communications workshop and what Mihalko likes to call "freestyle cuddling," with participants paying a fee of $30 for a 3½- hour session.
