Within our Hands

 We hold tremendous power and energy within our human hands. Reflexology and other alternative medicine practices posit that life energy (chi) can be manipulated by human hands, and in human hands and feet as well as other areas of the body, to release blockages that prevent healing. These ideas are generally rejected by traditional medicine due to a lack of scientific evidence, however practices such as Healing Touch, therapeutic massage, and acupressure continue to steadily gain ground as a solid presence within the medical community.

If you consider it from a physiology perspective...our hands are innervated by three sets of nerves: the median, the ulnar, and the radius nerves.  These nerves course through the arm all the way up to the spinal cord and midbrain via the brachial plexus. As in other sensory and motor systems of the human body, both afferent and efferent signals are communicated to and from the cortex, specifically the premotor and primary motor cortex located and the juncture between the frontal and parietal lobes of the cerebrum. From this point a sensory feedback loop is initiated via the basal ganglia, the thalamus, and the cerebellum. This feedback loop is primarily thought to be responsible for motor planning and execution. It would be preposterous to think that the electrical energy produced by the efferent neural feedback simply disappears when it reaches one's fingertips.  This takes me into a gray area since as a scientist, it is of utmost concern that there is no scientific evidence or even a testable method by which to support any theory about what happens to this efferent energy, specifically whether it courses beyond the confines of an individual's fingertips. However, if not, I would like an explanation otherwise as to why the practices of touch based therapies are so incredibly successful.

A universal law of physics that may be implicated or further support this idea is the Law of Resonance. If you have ever worked with tuning forks, or handbells, or even glasses of water filled to different levels, you are familiar with this concept. If an object vibrates at a certain rate of vibration (frequency or Hz), everything in its vicinity that has the same vibration as a dormant possibility will start vibrating at that frequency. This law applies to everything in the physical world, from sub-atomic particles to cosmic proportion. In this sense, I have a very preliminary, nebulous haze of a theory about some kind of resonance transfer function occuring in the neurovascular system, similar to what happens in an electrical circuit when energy is transmitted wirelessly between two resonant coils.

Whatever the explanation, I am certain that there is SOME scientific reason for this phenomenon that we are not yet advanced enough to understand. This gift to humanity is constantly present in our everyday interactions, when we shake hands with each other, when we place our hand on the shoulder of a friend in need, when we hold hands, when we kiss the open palm of a newborn or toddler. The potential contained in these actions is overwhelming. I am amazed at the power we hold within our hands. 

And with that I share with you a lovely poem written by a fabulous and accomplished poet, New york native Jane Hirschfield.

A Hand
by Jane Hirshfield
A hand is not four fingers and a thumb.Nor is it palm and knuckles, not ligaments or the fat's yellow pillow, not tendons, star of the wristbone, meander of veins. A hand is not the thick thatch of its lines with their infinite dramas, nor what it has written, not on the page, not on the ecstatic body. Nor is the hand its meadows of holding, of shaping— not sponge of rising yeast-bread, not rotor pin's smoothness, not ink. The maple's green hands do not cup the proliferant rain. What empties itself falls into the place that is open. A hand turned upward holds only a single, transparent question. Unanswerable, humming like bees, it rises, swarms, departs.