Hold Your Own Hand

We hold someone else's hand when we are in love, or when we care for them in their hour of sorrow. But do we ever hold our own hand this way?

We wring our hands in anxiety. Or we clap our hands for someone else. But do we hold our hand?

For just a minute, stop what you're doing and look deeply at your hand. Gaze into its architecture, its worn crevices, its ancient lines. Breathe in the work, the pain, the giving your hand has offered. Breathe this hand all the way into your heart. Be grateful for your hand.

Become aware of the cells in your hand, the molecules of DNA containing your mother and father, your ancestors, and all who have worked so hard to grant you this body. Hold them all in your hand. Breathe in their wisdom. Breathe out compassion.

Now very gently, place this hand in your other hand. Close your eyes and feel the warmth, the texture of one hand in the other. As you would hold the hand of your own child, pour pure love from one hand to the other. If thoughts of resistance appear in your mind, just observe them and accept them with the same pure love.

In the West when we pray, we put our hands together. In the meditation posture of the East, we lay one hand gently in the other. Why not make this very joining of our hands a meditation?

Now touch someone else this way. Then go back to work with your ancient, wise, beautiful hands.

Hands at Work

What are your hands doing this very moment? Washing a dish, typing at a keyboard, hammering a nail, throwing a frisbie? Are you aware of the energy in your hands while you work?

In body-work, we often learn grounding through our feet, but seldom learn grounding through our hands. All the nourishment we absorb from earth, sun and stars reconnects with the cosmos through the work of our hands. Through our hands we complete the circuit of receiving and offering.

Your whole body celebrates through your hands. The energy of the earth dances through your fingers - painting, writing, healing, caressing, planting seeds, shoveling dirt. If we don't complete the gesture of our incarnation in our fingertips, our body is stillborn.

Give awareness to your hand right now! Notice that you don't really have a hand: you have a complex inter-woven dance of wrist bones, knuckles, finger joints and finger tips. You hand is a whole community of destinations and beginnings.

We turn our working hands into praying hands simply by being aware of them. Pause for a moment at work or play to become aware of your hands. Don't look at them, just sense the energy flowing around and through each bone, joint, tendon, fiber. Take a gentle breath in. As you let it go out, allow your attention to sink down your arms to your fingertips.

Spend a few breaths gently connecting your heart to your hands. Many people only experience this sacred connection when the have a heart attack. Don't wait until then! Breathe from heart to hands right now. Inhaling, awareness flows from the palm up the arm into your heart. Breathing out, awareness flows back down the arm, right out into the air through the fingertips.

Now gently return to your work, keeping some awareness in the hands. Several times a day, right in the midst of your daily tasks, rest awareness in the hands.