Hand Power by Tine Frellesen
Working with our hands is a need that lies deep within us and enables us to create the most amazing things. I have always loved working with my hands — cooking, drawing, painting, making furniture, sewing clothes and making jewelry. Creating things with my hands, and the satisfaction it gives, has made me more and more interested in hands, and in everything that the hands can do. Hands are fascinating — so familiar and so mysterious at the same time.
The hands are constantly in our field of vision, they are an integral part of our actions and our thinking. The hands automatically shape and adapt to the things we hold — a pen, a ball, a steering wheel, the mobile phone, etc. The hands are our most important sensory organ, with thousands of receptors in each finger. The hand has a reaction time of 1/10 second — it can catch a falling object before our thoughts have registered what is actually happening.
The anatomy of the hands is a miracle of bones, ligaments, muscles, tendons, blood vessels, nerves, skin and nails. The hands consist of 20 muscles, 27 bones and the bones have beautiful names such as the moon bone, the trapezium bone, and the pea bone. The muscles of the arm control the hand and fingers. There are also tiny muscles in the palm of the hand, but in the fingers themselves there are no muscles. The fingers have tendons that run from the muscles in the arm and out into the fingers. It is hard to grasp that the fingers don’t have muscles, when rock climbers are able to hang over an abyss by a single finger.
THINKING WITH OUR HANDS
When we create with your hands, we experience the phenomenon of thinking with our hands — that the hands have an intelligence of their own. There is a certain feeling when you draw or paint, model in clay or carve wood, type on a keyboard or play an instrument etc. — the hands seem to have a life of their own, they move before you have consciously instructed them to do so. There is a manual intelligence that works directly from our subconscious or from within our soul. It is the experience of flow. Working with our hands transports us from the mind to a more body centered awareness.
When we work with our hands and create a product or we fix or mend something, it gives us a natural sense of pride. This pride is rooted in the satisfaction of having expressed ourselves and of having engaged in an ancient and deeply human endeavor — creating with our hands.
Although the hand is such an integral part of ourselves, it is also surrounded by a certain amount of mystery. A graphologist can expose a person's psyche by studying their handwriting. A palm reader can read past, present and future by looking at the lines. The healer can heal the patient with the electromagnetic radiation emanating from the hands.
Try massaging the point in the middle of the palm one centimeter slightly towards the thumb. Massage the point first on one hand and then on the other. Then hold the palms facing each other at a distance of 20 cm. You will feel the energy between the hands becoming “thicker” and beginning to pulsate. What you are feeling is the body’s electromagnetic energy.
THE CREATIVE HAND
Our ability to build and to create with our hands is deeply satisfying, and yet we seem to become more and more “hand illiterate”. In this digital age - and digital means finger — we have new ways of using our fingers. We press, scroll, swipe, click, tap, pinch and zoom in and out. The hands have a natural restlessness, they need to be active. Where before we might have written a letter, knitted or sewn, fixed the car engine or played an instrument, much of the intelligence and creative energy of the hands is now lost in tapping on the mobile phone.
Handwriting is a personal aesthetic expression that has been a part of our lives for centuries. The process of writing a letter is a fusion of thought, reflection and fine motor skills. But is handwriting a skill that will one day disappear? And what consequences would that have for our mental processes if we spend less and less time shaping fine motor movements and more time typing in mechanical and staccato rhythms? The typewriter was invented for the blind, but became popular in the mid-1800s due to its speed. People were worried then, about going from shaping the words with the hand to tapping standardized letters. When we tap or press, we do not experience the same organic creation as when shaping the letters by hand. When we press on a machine instead of using a pen we hold in our hand, we experience alienation and loss of control. Our personal physical imprint has vanished.
In the past homemade was a negative term, but now, fortunately, homemade has gained an increasingly positive meaning and is even becoming a status symbol. Things that are made by hand have soul and history and this is important to us. Surrounding ourselves with handmade objects in our home creates a sense of well being, the objects have an inherent humanity that has a positive effect on us. The things we inherit, that were made by our family members, and the gifts we receive from children that they themselves have made, give us a special joy. The human imprint has authenticity and this has great value to us. Hand-painted porcelain, embroidered pillows, hardcover books and handwritten letters are some of the most valuable heirlooms I have in my home, because they were made by my ancestors and thus contain their life force.
Now that we are living in a digital age, it is important not to be reduced to viewers and consumers, but that we still continue to create with our own two hands. It gives us peace of mind to use our hands, it raises our self-esteem and it connects us to our inner creator.
Instagram: @tinefrellesen
