Use Your Hands

Use Your Hands

From a neuro-developmental perspective, intelligence co-develops through refinement of use of the hands. Although it hasn't yet been identified neuro-physiologically, when the in vivo tracing mechanisms become nuanced enough, we will discover that sets of motor gestural patterns linked through the arms and hands are wired into our ventral vagal physiology. Regulation is instantiated, in part, through the hands. Our ancestral work always involved the hands. It is part of what humans do. We weave baskets and nets. We hold digging sticks, and implements. We carress one another. More recently, we began to write. We type. Complex patterned movement of the hands is regulatory, and it is something that we are losing collectively when we do not engage in hand-work. Our brains work differently when we write with a pen as compared to when we type. Craft could be defined as hand-work. Be it the making of furniture, objects, knitting, pottery, sculpture, the plastic arts, what all have in common is refined use of the hands. Maria Montessori deeply understood the importance of the hands in the learning of children, which is why the Montessori model makes such active use of them. Their neuro-developmental learning materials anchor abstract concepts in the realm of physical objects, so that learning can be more embodied. Mathematics becomes spatial and tactile. This video explores the use of the hands in regulation and restorative practice.