March/April 2008 - Body/Mind Corner: What Your Hands May Be Telling You

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Have you noticed any pain, stiffness or discomfort in your hands? Do you know that your body is talking to you every minute? If you want to know what you feel and believe, learn to tune into your body because your body has a lot to say! Unresolved emotions and thoughts show up as health issues in your body. Below is an excerpt from a wonderful book: “Your Body Speaks Your Mind”, by Deb Shapiro.

“Children develop their mental capacities by working with their hands. In adults, when brain activity diminishes, as with a stroke, so does dexterity. The hands are where you create, so they represent all the ways you do things and all the feelings you have about what you are doing.

We touch each other with our hands. Touching is fundamental to life. Without touch we feel unwanted and insecure; we may even stop developing. In one study, baby monkeys, separated from their mothers by a sheet of glass so they could see them, hear them, and even smell them, but could not touch them, had retarded growth.

You are connected through touch. You bring healing through touch, releasing loneliness and pain. Are you longing to touch or be touched? Conflict in your hands may be showing that you want to reach out and touch but fear or insecurity is holding you back.

Stiff hands indicate a stiff or resistant attitude toward your activity or expression of feelings. Painful hands imply that what you are doing is causing discomfort, or something being done is hurting you. Is someone cramping your style? Arthritic join pain in the hand often implies an overly critical attitude about what you are doing, or what is being done to you. Conflict arises because your nature is to reach outward, but the energy is turning in on itself.

Excessively sweaty hands indicate that you are nervous, anxious, even scared, about what you are doing. Very cold hands may show that you are withdrawing feelings from your activity – perhaps withdrawing love or emotional involvement – or are feeling fearful of participating or being involved.

The hands go ahead of you to meet the world. They symbolize how you are handling life or are being handled. They are the most outward expression of the heart energy, where you touch, caress, show love, or form a fist and express dislike.

• Are you touching the right person? In the right way?
• Do you really want to punch someone?
• Are you feeling resentful at giving someone else a hand and then not getting the help you need?

Hands are “wrung in anguish,” “gripped in desperation,” or “clenched in anger,” perhaps enacting the movement you would like to make toward someone. You can “let things slip through your hands” or you can grasp them, perhaps too tightly.

• Are you fearful of letting go?
• Are you holding on to someone too tight for fear they will leave?
• How strong a grasp do you have on your world?

Fingers
The fingers show you where you are being insensitive to subtler or smaller issues. The thumb has to do with control and power, as well as anxiety and fear. The index finger is pointed when you blame someone else, perhaps without recognizing your own involvement.

Fingers, which are extensions of your hands, stretch out into the world and often get damaged before other parts of your body.

If you have health issues with your fingers, ask yourself this:

• Are you extending too far?
• Are you reaching out inappropriately?
• Are you moving too quickly and in the process not being aware of the details along the way?

If the fingers are becoming bent or crooked, follow that movement and see where it wants to go.

• What is the movement trying to tell you?
• Does it make a fist and, if so, doe the fist want to hit out at someone or something?
• Do the fingers point away, as if reaching out to new areas of experience?
• Are they going in different directions, as if unity of purpose has been lost?”

Thank your body for its infinite wisdom, because it has a lot to say and can point you in the direction that needs healing. If you have health issues and would like to explore the root cause, so you can release and heal, hypnosis and the power of your unconscious mind is a powerful tool.

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