Breath is life. We breathe through our lungs, but did you know that our hands are breathing too? Instead of exchanging carbon dioxide and oxygen, the breath of life, our hands “breathe” life force itself. This energy, known as chi, has a powerful influence on our health, our emotions, and the way we experience the world. When we open and close our hands or move our fingers in different ways, we are experiencing an intricately complex exchange with all the energy of the universe. The direction of our palms, the extension and contraction of our fingers, all of these create a form in the universe like that of a prayer, a ripple of energy shaping and being shaped by everything that surrounds it.
In Aikido, one of the nine movement forms of Nia, we learn that the arms can actually spiral energy. Energy comes in through the fingertips, spiraling into the forearms, which contain the only two bones of the body to spiral, the radius and the ulna. Without this spiraling movement, our arm and hand movements would be stiff and robotic. Mindful movement practices like the Franklin Method®, Nia, Gyrotonic®, and Pilates emphasize the importance of using our hands and fingers with clarity and precision. With our hands, we express ourselves, body, mind, and spirit. With our hands we can give or take, lead or be led.
In the physical realm, our hands sense a world of information through our fingers, which are rich with delicate, sensitive nerve endings and proprioceptors that feed us a constant stream of information, helping us sense pain, pleasure, where our bodies are in space, and much, much more.
Delicate as they may seem, the wrists and hands are powerhouses that transform infinite possibility into concrete action. If you surrender to their delicate grace, your hands may take you to all kinds of beautiful places.
Check out this video to watch the following wrist embodiment video!
Create strength and flexibility with this fun (and slightly spooky!) Pilates exercise for the flexor and extensor muscles of the wrist.
Attach a sandbag or other weight to a theraband wrapped around a dowel. Use your hands to lower and lift the weight. Repeat twice a day to keep your wrists ready for texting, typing, praying, and hugging. Enjoy!
Contributed by Jamie Skinner
Jamie Michelle Skinner is an extroverted introvert, occasional hermit, writer, dancer, and somatic educator. After losing over 100 pounds through her passion for dance, her mission is to inspire dancers from all walks of life to find freedom, joy, and health through “writing” their own story on the dance floor, using a vocabulary of mellifluous movement creativity that is both universal and unique, and grounded in the body’s own natural intelligence.
Jamie is a graduate of the University of Maryland’s prestigious Philip Merrill College of Journalism, where she studied news reporting and literary journalism under greats like Judith Hillman Paterson, author of Sweet Mystery: A Book of Remembering. Jamie also studied art history and literature at the University of Ireland’s Dublin campus.
Recently, Jamie has become an avid practitioner of Nia, a movement form encompassing dance arts, martial arts, and healing arts, that is adaptable to many levels and abilities. Since completing her white belt in October 2014, she has undergone three specialized Nia trainings, and is now certified to teach Moving to Heal Nia, Nia FreeDance, and Nia 5 Stages, a developmental movement practice for self-healing. In addition, she is a Pilates Sports Center teacher-in-training. Jamie lives in Santa Barbara, California.