Full Employment for Your Translators

Figures In Natural History Museum, London - Somatosensory and Motor Homunculus

Your Hands and your Mouth are the destinations for the majority of information coming from your brain. They translate the impulses coming from different parts of the brain to the outside world. Wish the ears had a "size matters" role here too. But, Oh Well!

When I ask people which part of the body receives the the dominant source of information from the brain, I get answers like the feet, the skin. Some get the idea about complicated translation and they name the hands.

So what kind of information makes this part of our body so dominant? Think about what you do every day - I am typing words coming from my brain right now. I gesticulate to make a point. I use my fine motor skills to create the crafts I love to do. I sense HOT, COLD, SMOOTH, ROUGH and decide if I like it, if it hurts, if it is ready....you get the idea.

The special area designated for sense and fine motor skills are the somato-sensory cortex and the motor cortex. This is our hands domain. They RULE.

I am going to stick my hand out a bit and propose that the disproportionate size of our hands as a well of information point to why they are such an essential extension of our brain and why they change over time. Yes, every aspect of you fingers, lines, palms can change over time; your fingerprints, on the other hand, do not. We'll save that story for another time.

They can change because of the neuroplasticity of the brain. We hit up against life and we change and our brain gets reconfigured. So too our hands.... We could leave the subject with confidence that hands rule in the fine motor and sensing arenas. I propose that they are like a unique super highway of information....back and forth back and forth from hand to brain and back. We have a base personality archetype, a unique way of relating to others and thinking etc. This means our hands reflect ways we might experience the world. It's a two way street or maybe it's just one street. Our hands being the mirror of our unique brain chemistry.

Something to ponder and translate. While you do it....sense the energy coursing through your hands. Move your hands and notice how relaxed, stiff, pain free, painful they are. All markers of who you are and how you experience the world.