This post quotes Mark Nepo’s lovely book, The Book of Awakening, which has a reading for each day of the year.
The reading for May 2 starts with this:
Live in your hands
and your mind will learn
to bow like a root.
Nepo’s friend had studied in depth the heart and the mind and the give/take and push/pull between them. A very old sage’s last instructions to her were to “Live in your hands.”
His friend, who didn’t know anything about stonework, found herself building a stone chapel, the chapel that had been waiting in her heart.
Another friend must touch flowers she sees. He watches and notices that doing this opens her a little further.
“To live in our hands humbles our mind into accepting something other than itself. It is how we heal each other and ourselves. We call come alive through a Braille of heart.”
This speaks to me so deeply. I work with my hands. I didn’t used to. When I work, I live in them. I am so much more alive and connected to life than I was before.
The hands are extensions of the heart.
Go touch some flowers. Give someone a foot or neck massage. Touch a tree. Pick up a stone. Bring your hands together in prayer position.
Or just close your eyes and pay attention to your hands’ sensations.