A Premature Baby Survived Because a Nurse Ignored Protocol.

And Why Most Leaders Miss the One Biological Signal That Actually Matters

Kyrie and Brielle Jackson, premature twins in 1995. Moments after being placed together, Brielle stabilised. The image became known worldwide as The Rescuing Hug.

Just before Christmas, at the end of the year, people often ask me what really matters. If I had one wish for you, after everything life threw at you this year, it would be this story.

It almost sounds like a Christmas tale. A long time ago, in a faraway land.

No, just kidding.

A High-Tech Protocol That Was Supposed To Do Everything Right

It was 1995, in a very modern neonatal intensive care unit in the United States. High-tech for the time. Monitors everywhere. Sterile incubators. Strict rules, all designed with one goal in mind: keep premature babies alive.

On 17 October that year, twin girls were born twelve weeks too early. Kyrie and Brielle Jackson. Each weighed just over two pounds, about the weight of a small bag of sugar. Tiny, fragile, and immediately separated into their own incubators.

That separation made sense back then. Infection risk. Control. Monitoring. Knowing exactly what went in and what came out. Everything organised. Everything measured.

At first, it looked like it was working. Kyrie slowly became stronger. She gained weight. You could say she was doing well, considering the circumstances. But Brielle, her little sister, was not. She did not gain weight. She did not grow stronger. And the more the machines tried to help, the worse it seemed to get.

Then, on 12 November, the straw that broke the camel’s back arrived.

Brielle went into crisis. Her oxygen levels dropped. Her heart rate jumped all over the place. Her breathing became shallow and panicked. Her skin turned a greyish blue. None of these is a good sign. Her tiny body was shutting down.

Her mother watched, completely helpless. I can easily imagine her in a state of total despair. I know I would be. The medical staff understood what this usually meant. No one dared to say it out loud.

The Nurse Who Stepped Outside The System And Saved Brielle’s Life

And then one nurse did something unusual.

Her name was Gayle Kasparian. She broke protocol, not because she was careless or impulsive, but because she wanted this baby to live. She knew about techniques used in parts of Europe, like placing premature twins together. Double bedding. Skin-to-skin contact. Twin contact.

These methods were not common in the United States at the time. They were not really accepted. They were certainly not standard. But logic had already failed. So she followed something else. Her human instinct. I would say her heart.

She placed Brielle next to her sister Kyrie. Almost immediately, something changed.

Brielle’s breathing calmed. Her colour returned. Her heart rate stabilised. It was as if she had come home again, back to something familiar. For months, she had been skin-to-skin with her sister in her mother’s womb. Now her body recognised that same intimacy. We are together. It is safe.

And Kyrie did something beautiful. She placed her tiny arm around Brielle, as if she wanted to say, “I am here for you, little sis.” A protective hug.

The photo travelled the world and became known as The Rescuing Hug. It appeared in magazines like Life and Reader’s Digest in 1996.

People called it a miracle. If you look at biology, it really is not. It is normal.

Why This Was Not A Miracle?

When we connect, things settle, especially in the body. The Heart Brain has its own neural network, its own memory, its own intelligence. We can even measure the electromagnetic field of the heart metres outside the body. Put two babies skin-to-skin, and their heart rhythms begin to synchronise. That is not mystical. It is evolutionary biology, and it is measurable.

You see the same effect in other settings. In monasteries, women who live together often synchronise their menstrual cycles. The same happens in prisons. Bodies communicate. Hearts communicate.

So Brielle’s heart began to synchronise with her sister’s. She borrowed strength. Regulation. Safety.

Today, more than thirty years later, both twins are healthy adults. Nothing in their lives suggests how close they came to losing one another.

Machines helped keep Brielle alive.

Connection helped her heal.

This Is Where The Story Becomes About Us

What do we do in 2025, as leaders, parents, and human beings?

Look at how we live now. Instead of calling someone, we send a WhatsApp or Telegram message. Instead of sitting together, we work behind screens. In companies, people are monitored through software. Output is measured. Time is tracked. Tasks are sent by email. When performance drops, we add systems, protocols, and assessments.

Parents track their children through mobile phones and message them instead of talking. Go to a restaurant and be stupefied: almost everybody is looking at their mobile instead of talking to the person at the same table. Teenagers spend hours online rather than with friends.

We are not forced into isolation. We voluntarily step into it, often without realising the cost.

We rarely sit down with someone and ask, honestly, what is really going on.

How Modern Leadership Still Works With The Incubator System

I have trained and coached many leaders who saw performance reviews or appraisal talks as a nuisance, something that interrupts “real work”. And yet, this story shows that connection is not a luxury. It is essential. For life. For health. For happiness. And yes, also for results, profit, bonuses, and long-term success.

What is the worst punishment in prison?

Isolation.

Let’s just say it. Isolation is poison. For babies. For teenagers. For adults. For leaders. For teams. For health. For happiness. And for success.

We are wired for connection. From the moment we are born, if no one cares for us, we do not survive. Almost the first thing a baby does is try to find its parents’ eyes to make contact. Touch, presence, and eye contact regulate our nervous system. Hormones shift. Oxytocin is released, one of the body’s healthiest substances.

Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, and FaceTime are excellent, quick, and efficient, but they release only a fraction of the oxytocin our bodies produce in real human contact.

From A 3 Brains Perspective, It Is Simple.

The Heart Brain says: I know you. I feel you. I am safe.

The Gut Brain relaxes and stops fighting. Energy becomes available again for our immune system and for achieving the success we aspire to.

Only then does the Head Brain come online, bringing clarity, logic, and direction.

This is why so much leadership development, coaching, and even therapy do not bring the success they could. They start headfirst. Logic. Tools. Models. Techniques. While ignoring the need to sit with people, be with them, and connect.

Books like "Good to Great" already wrote about this more than 20 years ago. Paul Zak’s "The Trust Factor "confirms it with hundreds of research documents. People, teams, and organisations flourish when the Heart Brain connection is present, with a functioning Gut Brain focused on real needs, and a Head Brain that brings the logical steps to follow.

And no, this is not “flower power”. A healthy Heart Brain connection is not about people-pleasing or approval-seeking. Gabor Maté shows clearly in "When the Body Says No" that living only from the Heart, without boundaries and Gut strength, leads to illness and worse.

A Different Wish For 2026

So if I have one wish for you, especially at the end of the year, it is this.

Let your heart connect first.

Let your Gut and Head follow.

Because sometimes the most powerful change does not come from another system or protocol. Sometimes it comes from a simple human gesture that says, without words:

You are not alone.

For all of you a happy healthy succesful and 3 Brains 2026

Christoffel