1. Medium of Mata Amritanandamayi (also known as Amma) hugging man
2. Close up of Amma hugging man
3. Wide of crowd
4. Close up of woman crying as she is hugged
5. Close up of woman crying
6. Wide of Amma hugging people
7. SOUNDBITE: (English) Allison Calhoun, hug-ee:
“It feels like your mum’s hug when you fall down and scrape your knee and she’s there to come kiss it and make it better.”
8. SOUNDBITE: (English) Lindsey Angel, hug-ee:
“The hug. It was warmth, heat and there was peace. I felt very peaceful. She whispered something over and over again in my ear and I just let go into that and it felt really peaceful.”
9. Close up of Amma
10. Close up of her hands hugging man, zoom out to medium shot
11.SOUNDBITE: (English) Richard Butler, hug-ee:
“With all the strife that we are having in the world now it’s nice to have somebody to support who’s a tradition of Ghandi and people like that who are a non violent way of bringing change to the world.”
12. Medium of Amma hugging man.
13. SOUNDBITE (Malayalam) Mata Amritanandamayi (also known as Amma), the “hugging saint”:
“Motherhood is disappearing from this world and that’s what I am trying to awaken. People are kings of love and they have forgotten that and are living like beggars.”
14. Wide of crowd.
STORYLINE:
In Los Angeles, thousands of people from all walks of life have been lining up for a life-enhancing free hug and pat on the back.
Devotees queued up at a hotel auditorium to get a hug from an Indian spiritual leader whose followers say they feel uplifted when she embraces them.
Mata Amritanandamayi, also known as “Ammachi” or “Amma” (mother) – a humble Hindu woman with a diamond stud in her nose – is fast becoming a world-renowned spiritual leader.
Very much a hands-on spiritualist, she has been known to spend as many as 20 hours a day hugging attendees at her services.
Each hug – or darshan – resembles an embrace between two old friends who haven’t seen each other in years.
Most hugs included a kiss on the cheek, an encouraging whisper in the ear, and loving caresses on the back and arms.
People say it’s not just a hug though – they describe it as the mother of all embraces from the “Mother of Immortal Bliss”, as Amritanandamayi is known.
Amritanandamayi was born in the Indian state of Kerala state in 1953.
She was taken out of school at a young age to look after her family and soon began watching over others in her village. She began her spiritual endeavours as a young woman, encouraging people to devote themselves to others.
Later she set up a programme in which people could go to her and receive her blessing.
In 1993, Amritanandamayi served as president of the Centenary Parliament of World Religions in Chicago.
In 1995, she was a speaker at the United Nations’ 50th anniversary commemoration.
In New York last month, she was honoured with a humanitarian award, along with Mohamed ElBaradei, the current Peace Laureate, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, and actor-activist Richard Gere.
This James Parks Morton award had previously gone to Nobel Laureates Desmond Tutu, Shirin Ebadi, The Dalai Lama, and former President Bill Clinton.
She is appearing in Los Angeles as part of a 10-week US tour spreading her physical message of peace and love –
something she says she hopes will help ease tensions in the world by awakening motherhood.
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