14/11/2023
A great article on the hands. They are a gateway to our inner self and our environment.
Feldenkrais UK released new lessons as part of International Feldenkrais Week. If you missed them here is another opportunity to try Curiosity and the Hands
Curiosity can create learning in many ways. It leads us to ask questions: one of the main stimuli for learning (along with a desire for new understanding or knowledge). When we are curious about something, we are more likely to pay attention. We’re also more likely to process and retain it better when we sought it out for ourselves. Curiosity is something we’re born and wired with.
Curiosity pushes us to connect, find out more, or to see what’s around the corner. It’s what propelled our ancestors to travel around the oceans on tiny boats to discover new lands.
And it starts early. Around 3 months babies begin exploring themselves using their hands. As a baby wiggles its fingers in play, it slowly senses the connections. This is accidental at first, and then later, more intentional. After time it senses the fingers connect to the hand, which connects to the arm. And that the hand and arm are theirs to move and play with. The explorative experience allows our senses and co-ordination to develop. The hands take up a massive amount of neural real estate in the brain. Perhaps it’s understandable that the process needs to start early!
In exploration a baby develops the basis for her gross and fine motor skills: for hand-eye co-ordination. Curiosity also leads to progress in attention and concentration. S/he’ll need that for creating ability or mastery in any subject.
We interact with the world around us with our hands. We create community and trust with touch. Mostly through the hands. We bring things towards us, or keep them at arm's length. Touching, holding, grabbing, releasing, letting go. All of which need hand control. Our habits around how we use our hands start early too. As we automate the use of touch, we think less about how we use them. With that habituation come habits that serve us well, and others that don’t.
As we age, we can lose softness and mobility in the arches of the hands and fingers. When we’re stressed, our hands show this in their rising level of tension and muscular tone. The years of using our hands with excess force shows up as stiffness and clumsiness. Bands of fascia, or arches in the hands, (like the feet) create structure. They work together to balance and stabilise the hand, whilst maintaining flexibility. They allow precise holds needed for writing, or grasping. Or more complex pastimes such as drawing or playing a musical instrument. We need strength in our hands, but also mobility. Without flexibility it's difficult to adjust our tightness or size of hold. If our hands are stiff, it's tricky to use our fingers with great dexterity.
But it's possible to rediscover this freedom of movement by going back to the explorative methods we used as infants. It’s something we do in every Feldenkrais lesson. We use our curiosity to learn in the same organic way we did as babies: Exploring and moving ourselves with attention. Sensing ourselves to re-awaken the nervous system. Growing the skill of awareness so our motor controls gives’ us greater co-ordination and freedom. An improvement of awareness lets us feel ourselves in clearer detail. As if we added more pixels to our internal 3D picture of ourselves in the brain. When we can sense ourselves more directly, we are able to move ourselves with greater skill.
As one of my clients said after a Feldenkrais lesson we did on the hands, “They feel so much more fluid, so much softer, and responsive. Today I fell back in love with my hands”.
To read the full article go here: https://www.feldenkrais.co.uk/2023/05/09/curiosity-and-the-hands/
To listen to the lesson: https://feldenkraisuk.podbean.com/e/curiosity-and-the-hands/
Emma Alter is a Feldenkrais Practioner based in London. She can be found via her website: https://www.themovingbrain.com
For more information on the Feldenkrais Method, International Feldenkrais Week 2023, access to lessons, teachers or classes go to https://www.feldenkrais.co.uk
Photo by Ana Klipper on Unsplash
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