"Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain."
-  Carl G. Jung 

"We have to understand that the world can only be grasped by action not by contemplation.  The hand is more important than the eye... The hand is the cutting edge of the mind."
-  Jacob Bronowski

"The mind has exactly the same power as the hands: not merely to grasp the world, but to change it."
-  Colin Wilson

"I think it's a pretty good day if I can get through it without lifting a finger."
-  Jane Kaczmarek

"One sees more with one's fingers than with one's glasses.
Man sihet jtzund mer durch die finger denn durch die brillen"  

"Love as it exists in society is merely the mingling of two fantasies and the contact of two skins."
-  S. R. N. Chamfort

"Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it."
-  Lily Tomlin

"Touch has been defined as the variety of sensations evoked by stimulation of the skin by mechanical, thermal, chemical, or electrical events. Even Aristotle, in dividing our contact with the world into the five senses, was doubtful that "touch" described but a single sense. Because there is such a variety of sensations aroused by stimuli interacting with the skin, it might be more appropriate to describe this modality as the "senses of touch." And, as befits such a symphony of sensations, there are a multitude of instruments contributing their voices, each in its own fashion. The mechanical and physiological characteristics of the skin and these receptor structures, as with those in other senses, define and limit the sensitivity of the skin to stimuli."
-  Morton A. Heller, The Psychology of Touch

"The mind's first step to self-awareness must be through the body."
-  George Sheehan

"A callused palm and dirty fingernails precede a Green Thumb.
When the hoe handle is loose, you will have misplaced the steel wedges.   
Not to move either hand, nor clap, nor think too much are all good for zen gardening. 
As you move your hands so you move your mind.  
Why is it that you can find four gloves for the left hand, and none for the right? 
As with most arts, gardening is an expression of our hands.
Your hand hoe will always find its way to the bottom of the weeding barrel. 
Civilization is rooted in the hands of the gardeners.
You can sometimes get a handle on life, but it often breaks.
The eyes of a gardener are usually bigger than her hands.  
Gardening helps us to carefully attend to the close at hand.  
Chop the weeds and hose the water ... the sounds of two hands clapping - with delight. 
Your rich, famous, and handsome; and, your garden doesn't care.
The difference between a pile of rocks and a rock garden - the eyes and hands of the gardener.
Getting your hands dirty," applies to more than gardening. 
Better to lend a helping hand than just to point a finger.   
Put your hands on the earth and feel the sorrows of the world. 
Hold your hoe in your hand, sharpen it, and fully sense its meaning. 
I see my hand more often than my face, and there is a lesson here to grasp somehow. 
Unclench your fist to give a hand."
-  Michael P. Garofalo, Pulling Onions

"There is a lovable quality about the actual tools.  One feels so kindly to the thing that enables the hand to obey the brain.  Moreover, one feels a good deal of respect for it; without it the brain and the hand would be helpless."
-  Gertrude Jekyll

“The hands that help are better far than lips that pray.”
-  Robert G. Ingersoll 

"The art of life is to show your hand."
-  E. V. Lucas

"If you'd rather live surrounded by pristine objects than by the traces of happy memories, stay focused on tangible things.  Otherwise, stop fixating on stuff you can touch and start caring about stuff that touches you."
-  Martha Beck

"Spade!  with which Wilkinson hath tilled his lands,
And shaped these pleasant walks by Emont's side,
Thou art a tool of honor in my hands,
I press thee, through a yielding soil, with pride."
-  William Wordsworth

"Touch has a memory."
-  John Keats 

"The only additional point I would emphasize concerning this stage when the thought-language nexus is building is that something very important is happening in the hand itself.  At about the age of one year the child's hands are rapidly becoming manipulative organs with fingers that will soon be able to move independently.  The world of objects, and knowledge of the action of those objects, will increase rapidly, and distinctive actions which can be taken with objects in the hand will also increase.  In other words, the thought-language nexus is becoming a hand-thought-language nexus.  The child learns with real objects, by trial and error, to make constructions that are inevitably composed of discrete events unified through a sequence of actions.  Playing with anything to make something is always paralleled in cognition by the creation of a story.  Front > Middle > Back.  Beginning > Middle > End.   Steven > Store > Record."
-  Frank R. Wilson, The Hand, p.195 

Makenna, my granddaughter, ran around a 6ft couch and coffee table 100 times once while having fun and showing off in my living room.  I think she was a 3 year old at the time.  She held different things in her hands while she circled the obstacles, but I can't recall what she held as she ran.  Walk or run around the couch game = [Start > Walk in Circle around actual obstacles > Walk to Front > Walk to Side > Walk to Back > Walk to Front > Repeat Circle Walking 100 times > Stop.]  

Describe the flow of hand movements in the Chen Taijiquan Short 18 Form?  Practice the the Chen Taijiquan 18 Form.  Follow an ordered sequence of hand movements.  Move the hands in many ways during your Taijiquan practice.  Use formulas for action sequences, e.g., Chen Taijiquan Short 18 Form = [Start Beginning  Wuji > Beginning Tai Chi > Buddha's Warrior Attendant Pounds the Mortar > Lazily Tying One's Coat > Six Sealing and Four Closing > Single Whip > Proceed step by step to Posture 18 > Stop.]  Each Taijiquan movement is a story― an orderly tale, part mimicry, part dance, part marital applications, part memories of muscles and mind united, part metaphor, part shamanic ritual magic, and partly a repeatable play of the hands.   
-  Mike Garofalo, Hands On

"There are several basic kinds of touch that you may experience:  Intimate -- Here, your pressure receptors respond to a handshake, hug or kiss. If the person giving the touch is someone you care about, you'll probably feel warm and comforted. Your pressure sensors send the feeling of how hard the embrace is, and your brain interprets the nature of the touch as soothing.  Healing or therapeutic -- This type of touch is often associated with massage or acupuncture. Sometimes, the pressure is gentle and meant to soothe sore muscles. Other times, the pressure is deep in order to work out knots. Despite differences in severity of pressure, you likely to be aware that the outcome is healing, so your body allows you to relax.  Exploratory or inquisitive -- We all learn about the world through our sense of touch. Many people test out foods, fabrics or other objects by feeling different textures. Sometimes it's possible to rely solely on the sense of touch. This is why it's easy for you to reach into your bag and find a pair of keys without looking. You know the cold feeling of the metal key and hard smooth feel of your plastic key chain.  Aggressive or painful -- Of course, we all know that touch can also equate to pain if the pressure is too much and the intent is wrong. A handshake that's too firm can be uncomfortable instead of reassuring."
-  Psychology of Touching

"There is a lovable quality about the actual tools.   One feels so kindly to the thing that enables the hand to obey the brain.   Moreover, one feels a good deal of respect for it; without it the brain and the hand would be helpless."
-  Gertrude Jekyll

"The object of our lives is to look at, listen to, touch, taste things.  Without them, - these sticks, stones, feathers, shells, - there is no Deity."
-  R. H. Blyth, Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics, p. 144.

"Movement is a medicine for creating change in a person's physical, emotional, and mental states."
-  Carol Welch 

"Holding onto and manipulating physical objects is one of the things we learn earliest and do the most.  It should not be surprising that object control is the basis of one of the five most fundamental metaphors for our inner life.  To control objects, we must learn to control our bodies.  We learn both forms of control together.  Self-control and object control are inseparable experiences from earliest childhood.  It is no surprise that we should have as a metaphor─a primary metaphor─Self Control is Object Control."
-   George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh, 1999, p.270

"We recognize a condition of morbid susceptibility of the sense of touch which makes it shrink back in horror from every contact, every gasping of a firm object.  Translate such a psychological habitus into its ultimate logic - as instinctive hatred of every reality, as flight into the 'ungraspable', into the 'inconceivable', as antipathy towards every form, every spatial and temporal concept, towards everything firm ... as being at home in a world undisturbed by reality of any kind, a merely 'inner world', a 'real' world, an 'eternal world' ... 'The kingdom of God is within you' ..."
-  Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, p. 141 

“The experience of touch is basic to discovering who we are and who is other and how we dance this life together…”
-  Bonnie B. Cohen, 1993.

"Men have become the tools of their tools."
-  Henry David Thoreau

“Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.”
-  Margaret Atwood, Der blinde Mörder

"The index finger, (also referred to as forefinger, pointer finger, trigger finger, digitus secundus, digitus II, and many other terms), is the first finger and the second digit of a human hand. It is located between the first and third digits, between the thumb and the middle finger. It is usually the most dextrous and sensitive finger of the hand, though not the longest – it is shorter than the middle finger, and may be shorter or longer than the ring finger – see digit ratio.  "Index finger" literally means "pointing finger", from the same Latin source as indicate; its anatomical names are either "index finger" or "second digit".  A lone index finger held vertically is often used to represent the number 1, or when held up or moved side to side (finger-wagging), it can be an admonitory gesture. With the hand held palm out and the thumb and middle fingers touching, it represents the letter d in the American Sign Language alphabet. In sports, it can also represent victory, as some championship-winning teams raise their index finger (often saying "We're number one!") while posing for a championship team photo – oversized foam hands with a single upraised index are also used for this purpose; compare with the victory sign. For the vast majority of computer users, it is the finger most often used to click a mouse, as well as the finger used in the untrained 'hunt and peck' typing style.  Pointing one's index finger at a person is considered rude in certain cultures; amore polite way to indicate another person would be to raise a hand in their direction, as if holding a platter."
-  Index Finger

"Green fingers are the extension of a verdant heart."
-  Russell Page 

"I can prove now, for instance, that two human hands exist.  How?  By holding up my two hands, and saying, as I make a certain gesture with the right hand, 'Here is one hand', and adding, as I make a certain gesture with the left, 'and here is another.'"
-  Professor G. E. Moore, Proof of an External World

"An expression has meaning only in the stream of life.  To understand an expression is to be prepared for one of its uses.  If we can't think of any use use for it at all, then we don't understand it at all.  Moore's saying that 'I know that this is a hand' may be a misuse of language if Moore himself doesn't know how he is using it.  However, it isn't difficult to think of usages for "I know that this is a hand."
-  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Comments to Norman Malcolm in 1949 

"I remember the time I was kidnapped and they sent a piece of my finger to my father. He said he wanted more proof."
-  Rodney Dangerfield

“It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.”
-  David Hume

"The paved highway of belief through touch
And sight leads straightest into the human heart
And the precincts of the mind."
-  Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Verse 105

“I've got my fingers crossed that the worst of it is over.” 
-  Bob Schrieber

"The intellect is only one among several fundamental psychic functions and therefore does not suffice to give a complete picture of the world.  For this another function― feeling― is needed to.  Feeling often arrives at convictions that are different from those of the intellect, and we cannot always prove that the convictions of feeling are necessarily inferior."
-  Carl G. Jung, M.D., Psychological Reflections, p.276

"The hand is so widely represented in the brain, the hand's neurologic and biomechanical elements are so prone to spontaneous interaction and reorganization, and the motivations and efforts which give rise to individual use of the hand are so deeply and widely rooted, that we must admit that we are trying to explain a basic imperative of human life."
-  Frank R. Wilson, M.D., The Hand, p. 10

"Dear middle finger, thank you for sticking up for me."
-  Author unknown

"It is clear that the decisive form of our intercourse with things is in fact touch.  And if this is so, touch and contact are necessarily the most conclusive factor in determining the structure of our world."
-  Ortega y Gasset 

"I'm struck by the insidious, computer-driven tendency to take things out of the domain of muscular activity and put them into the domain of mental activity.  The transfer is not paying off.  Sure, muscles are unreliable, but they represent several million years of accumulated finesse."
-  Brian Eno, musician and composer, Wired 1/99, p. 176 

Touching - Thoughts and Quotations for Gardeners

Tools - Thoughts and Quotations for Gardeners

Pulling Onions: Thoughts of a Gardener

Hands and Touching: Reflections, Studies, Bibliography, Quotations

Self-Massage Techniques, Practices, Theories: Bibliography, Links, Resources, Quotations

Strings on Your Fingers: String Figures, String Art, String Crafts, Native Crafts

T'ai Chi Ch'uan (Taijiquan, Tai Chi, Yang & Chen): Lessons, Research, Studies, Bibliography

Yoga: Studies, Bibliography, Resources

Chi Kung (Qigong, Dao Yin, Chinese Yoga): Lessons, Research, Studies, Bibliography 

Strength Training for Seniors

How to Live a Good Life: Advice from Wise Persons

The Virtuous Life

Index to a A Philosopher's Notebooks

“If a thing can be said to be, to exist, then such is the nature of these expansive times that this thing which is must suffer to be touched. Ours is a time of connection; the private, and we must accept this, and it’s a hard thing to accept, the private is gone. All must be touched. All touch corrupts. All must be corrupted."
-  Tony Kushner, Homebody/Kabul

"Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together."
-  John Ruskin 

"Chironomia is the art of using gesticulations or hand gestures to good effect in traditional rhetoric or oratory.  Effective use of the hands, with or without the use of the voice, is a practice of great antiquity, which was developed and systematized by the Greeks and the Romans.  Various gestures had conventionalized meanings which were commonly understood, either within certain class or professional groups, or broadly among dramatic and oratorical audiences.  Gilbert Austin was a well-known author on chironomia."

"There's something about the theater which makes my fingertips tingle."
-  Wole Soyinka

"On the other hand, you have different fingers."
-  Stephen Wright

The human hand has been used as mnemonic (remembering, memory) or calculating device for many centuries:  1) The Guidonian hand scheme was used by singers to help them sight sing.  2)  Chisanbop is an abacus-like finger counting method, invented in Korea, used to perform basic mathematical operations; sometimes called
Finger Math.  3.  Measuring: Food portion serving sizes.  

"The moving finger writes, and having written moves on. 
Nor all thy piety nor all thy wit, can cancel half a line of it."
-  Omar Khayyam

"It's so beautifully arranged on the plate - you know someone's fingers have been all over it."
-  Julia Child 

"Without the body, the wisdom of the larger self cannot be known."
-  John Conger

"And the hand, the beauty of the hands, is that they speak a universal primary language.  It is the language of newborns.  That's the language before words.  Everybody had that language or we wouldn't be alive.  People who do the research say that touching premature babies fifteen minutes a day increased their growth rate by forty-five percent."
-  Anat Baniel

"Touch receptors, called Meissner's corpuscles, are the receptor cells for detecting light touch.  Though taste and smell receptor cells are located only in small areas of the body, the receptor cells for touch are located all over the body, in your skin. Where there are many receptors, or the cells are more concentrated, your sense of touch is heightened. So, the greater the number of receptors a body part has, the more sensitive it will be.  It is true that the lips do have many of these touch receptors. When scientists list the top areas of the body in terms of sensitivity, the lips and fingertips are often ranked as the areas with the highest concentrations of receptor cells.  This sensitivity is also connected to the brain. The areas of the brain that receive messages from touch receptors in the lips and hands are much larger than the areas for receiving messages from less sensitive places, such as the back. More brain power is spent interpreting sensations of touch from the lips and fingers than from other areas that contain these cells.  So, yes, lips are one of the most sensitive parts of the body.  Depending on your particular arrangement of nerves, however, your lips may or may not be more sensitive than your hands."
-  Touch Sensitivity of Lips and Fingers

"The human body is vapor materialized by sunshine mixed with the life of the stars."
-  Paracelsus 

“For Rudolf Laban, touch enables the relationship between movement and space to be discerned within bodily-experience.  Laban viewed touch as the precursor to our sensory ability, describing touch as the perceived change in the relationship of our bodies to the space-time continuum.  Laban describes all our senses as fundamentally tactile impressions perceiving changes in space: changes in air pressure, in the light spectrum, or in the chemical fluctuation of bodily fluid.  Each of the senses and sensory receptors is tuned or ‘sensitive’ to change within a different range of vibrational frequencies.  The modulation of frequency enables the body to perceive tactile impressions or differences in rhythmic changes in space.  Laban refers to touch as a property of condensing matter, the displacement of space within the flux of time.  Our body is always in contact with space even as it disappears between our self and another.  Within our body, certain movements created by our muscular energy can create condensation (contraction) that generates both inner and outer tactile impressions.  Rudolph Laban made an enormous contribution to the systematic application of movement analysis, notion and the symbolic models of movement language.  His work combines biomechanics with the underlying qualities, meanings and interpretations of movement in space.  Laban perceived all movement as following different rhythms, and the difference in these rhythms relate of varying effort qualities.  For Laban effort, rhythm and space are interconnected, and touch is the unifying sensual property within all perception.”
-  Thecla Schiphorst, The Somaesthetics of Touch

"Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse."
-  Adam Smith

"Firmly clenching the right hand for ninety seconds when you are trying to memorize something, followed by an equivalent left hand clench when you want to recall the information again, could improve your chances of success, new research has revealed."
-  Hand Clench Improves Memory

"In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God's existence."
-  Sir Isaac Newton

"The fork is the most powerful tool ever placed in our hands."
-  John Robbins, Diet for a Small Planet

"From early days,
Beginning not long after that first time
In which, a Babe, by intercourse of touch,
I held mute dialogues with my Mother's heart
I have endeavored to display the means
Whereby this infant sensibility,
Great birthright of our Being, was in me
Augmented and sustained."
-  William Wordsworth, The Prelude, II, 265

“Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers."
-  Gustave Flaubert

"We could even say that this role of the tactile senses in establishing a fuller and fuller sense of self is their primary function.  An infant approaches objects not with an initial idea of research into and manipulation of externals, but with an idea of self-stimulation; and it discovers its own anatomical parts in exactly the same way (at at the same moments) that it discovers other objects.  We can never touch just one thing; we always touch two at the same instant, an object and ourselves, and it is in the simultaneous interplay between these two contiguities that the internal sense of self― different from both the collection of body parts and the collections of external objects is encountered.  My tactile surface is not only the interface between my body and the world, it is the interface between my thought processes and my physical existence as well.  By rubbing up against the world, I define myself to myself."
-  Deane Juhan, Job's Body, p. 34

“The pages and the words are my world, spread out before your eyes and for your hand to touch.  Vaguely, I can see your face looking down into me, as I look back.  Do you see my eyes?”
-  Markus Zusak, Underdog

"I'm struck by the insidious, computer-driven tendency to take things out of the domain of muscular activity and put them into the domain of mental activity.  The transfer is not paying off.  Sure, muscles are unreliable, but they represent several million years of accumulated finesse."
-  Brian Eno, Wired 1/99, p. 176

"When you make a decision, you need facts. If those facts are in your brain, they're at your fingertips. If they're all in Google somewhere, you may not make the right decision on the spur of the moment."
-  Ken Jennings

"Few of us have lost our minds, but most of us have long ago lost our bodies."
-  Ken Wilbur 

"I touch the future. I teach."
-  Christa McAuliffe

"Handedness is a human attribute defined by unequal distribution of fine motor skills between the left and right hands. An individual who is more able with the right hand is called right-handed or a righty and one who is more skilled with the left is said to be left-handed or a lefty. The majority of infants have developed hand preference by 6 months of age.  Right-handedness is is most common. Right-handed people are more dexterous with their right hands when performing tasks. A variety of studies suggest that 70–90% of the world population is right-handed, rather than left-handed or any other form of handedness.  A minority of adult people are equally skilled with both hands, and are termed ambidextrous.  The reasons for handedness, and why right-handedness is dominant are not known for certain, but a number of theories have been proposed."
-  Wikipedia - Handedness

"Movement, to be experienced, has to be found in the body, not put on like a dress or a coat."
-  Mary Starks Whitehouse

“I felt that if he touched me, I'd die. And then the thought crawled into my brain that if he didn't touch me, I'd die.”
-  Kitty Thomas, The Auction

"Note that hand control involves, for the first time in evolution, a coming together of visual, tactile, and proprioceptive feedback on the same action system.  Hand control may be regarded as the crossing of a biological Rubicon in that a dominant distal sense - vision - comes to contorl and modulate actions directly."
-  Merlin Donald, Origins, p.147

"I never had little brothers, so I was totally not used to hearing a lot of cussing at a young age!  I learned what 'pull my finger' meant the hard way."
-  Danica McKellar

"The pressure of the hands causes the springs of life to flow."
-  Tokujiro Namikoshi 

"Fingerprints can be inferred to have a function. The ridges are not random in size and distribution, but show a distinctive pattern. Although a design inference seems obvious, it is not at all clear what functionality fingerprints provide. Two hypotheses are to be found in the literature. The first is that fingerprints improve grip (analogous to the tread on car tires). The second is to enhance tactile perception by "increasing the subsurface strain with respect to the surface deformation." The new research validates the second hypothesis.  After describing the experimental work and the findings, the authors present three conclusions. First, and most significant, is that the regular ridged topography of finger skin is an effective amplifier of the minute vibrations generated by surface sliding. Amplification factors of up to 100 are reported.  Furthermore, the inter-ridge distances are optimized to amplify the relevant frequencies. Secondly, observations are reported which are suggestive of why our fingerprints are not straight (we can compare ourselves with "macaque monkeys [that] have ridges parallel to the long axis of their fingers").  Experiments show that the amplification effect is "strongly dependent on the orientation of the ridges with respect to the scanning direction". So, at the level of hypothesis, it is suggested that our elliptical ridges respond well, whatever the direction of sliding.  Thirdly, the observed response behavior of the sensory system is suggestive of several other valuable performance characteristics, described as "interesting functional consequences of fingerprints".
-  Understanding the Exquisite Tactile Sensitivity of Our Fingertips

“The only spot of comfort was the lingering impression of her fingertips through the fabric of his shirt, a reminder of the good side of having skin.  He cultivated that square-inch patch, tilled and tended it into a full-body embrace.”
-  Alex Shakar, Luminarium

The cortical homunculus was
devised by Dr. Wilder Penfield in 1958.

"The close association between the skin and the central nervous system could not have more concrete anatomical and physiological connections.  All tissues and organs of the body develop from three primitive layers of cells that make up the early embryo: The endoderm produces the internal organs, the mesoderm produces the connective tissues, the bones and the skeletal muscles, while the ectoderm produces both the skin and the nervous system.
    Skin and brain develop from exactly the same primitive cells.  Depending upon how you look at it, the skin is the outer surface of the brain, or the brain is the deepest layer of the skin.  Surface and innermost core spring from the same mother tissues, and throughout the life of the organism they function as a single unit, divisible only by dissection or analytical abstraction.  Every touch initiates a variety of mental responses, and nowhere along the line can I draw a sharp distinction between a periphery which purely responds as opposed to a central nervous system which purely thinks.  My tactile experience is just as central to my thought processes as are language skills or categories of thought."
-  Deane Juhan, Job's Body, p. 35 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

“For Rudolf Laban, touch enables the relationship between movement and space to be discerned within bodily-experience.  Laban viewed touch as the precursor to our sensory ability, describing touch as the perceived change in the relationship of our bodies to the space-time continuum.  Laban describes all our senses as fundamentally tactile impressions perceiving changes in space: changes in air pressure, in the light spectrum, or in the chemical fluctuation of bodily fluid.  Each of the senses and sensory receptors is tuned or ‘sensitive’ to change within a different range of vibrational frequencies.  The modulation of frequency enables the body to perceive tactile impressions or differences in rhythmic changes in space.  Laban refers to touch as a property of condensing matter, the displacement of space within the flux of time.  Our body is always in contact with space even as it disappears between our self and another.  Within our body, certain movements created by our muscular energy can create condensation (contraction) that generates both inner and outer tactile impressions.  Rudolph Laban made an enormous contribution to the systematic application of movement analysis, notion and the symbolic models of movement language.  His work combines biomechanics with the underlying qualities, meanings and interpretations of movement in space.  Laban perceived all movement as following different rhythms, and the difference in these rhythms relate of varying effort qualities.  For Laban effort, rhythm and space are interconnected, and touch is the unifying sensual property within all perception.”
-  Thecla Schiphorst, The Somaesthetics of Touch

"I would have touched it like a child
But knew my finger could but have touched
Cold stone and water.   I grew wild,
Even accusing heaven because
It had set down among its laws:
Nothing that we love over-much
Is ponderable to our touch."
-  W. B. Yeats 

"The power of love to change bodies is legendary, built into folklore, common sense, and everyday experience.  Love moves the flesh, it pushes matter around ...  Throughout history, "tender loving care" has uniformly been recognized as a valuable element in healing."
-  Larry Dossey

"Never burn your fingers to snuff another's candle."
-  Author Unknown

“We leave traces of ourselves wherever we go, on whatever we touch.”
-  Lewis Thomas

"Our hands are trained by personal activity and practice.  Our hand skill levels, and hand-eye coordination, enable us to engage with the world, explore, pretend, work, habit repeat, play.  With my hands I can feel the level of pressure of some object touching me, I can vary the pressure of my fingers on objects.  My hands have sensed a wide range of temperatures, from the bitter cold to injury level hot.  I can detect the feel of water or oils on my fingers.  My fingers and palms can sense the various surface textures of objects: soft, rough, hard, etc..  I have felt painful sensations in my hand, saw lots of blood come out of a stab wound in my hand, my hand has hurt, my hand has been in pain from a serious sprain and tendonitis, my hand has been burned, etc..'
-  Mike Garofalo, Hands On

"Hands are the heart's landscape."
-  Pope John Paul II

"The body is like the earth ... as vulnerable to overbuilding, being carved into parcels, cut off, overmined, and shorn of its power as any landscape."
-  Clarissa Pinkola Estes

"Fate gives you the finger and you accept."
-  William Shatner

"Today, if you have an Internet connection, you have at your fingertips an amount of information previously available only to those with access to the world's greatest libraries - indeed, in most respects what is available through the Internet dwarfs those libraries, and it is incomparably easier to find what you need."
-  Peter Singer

"In many ways, people growing up with the Web and now the Semantic Web take the power at their fingertips for granted."
-  Tim Berners Lee

"The best helping hand that you will ever receive is the one at the end of your own arm."
-  Fred Dehner

"The human body is not an instrument to be used, but a realm of one's being to be experienced, explored, enriched and, thereby, educated."
-  Thomas Hanna

"I dream that someday the step between my mind and my finger will no longer be needed. And that simply by blinking my eyes, I shall make pictures. Then, I think, I shall really have become a photographer."
-  Alfred Eisenstaedt

"We've always been a bit out of touch with reality."
-  Jarvis Cocker

"The greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses."
-  Hanna Rion

“I remember that feeling of skin.  It's strange to remember touch more than thought.  But my fingers still tingle with it.”
-  Lucy Christopher

"Can I show the difference between 'Touching X' and 'Touching the X'?"
    Touching the Void, Touching the Clouds, Touching the Mind, Touching the Sky, Touching the Heart ...
    Touching Wonder, Touching Evil, Touching Enlightenment, Touching Her, Touching God ...
-  Mike Garofalo, Hands On

"Although humans rely heavily on the sense of vision to detect and recognize objects, the sense of touch is also very important. Touch can provide information about an object, such as surface texture, that is not easily detectable by vision. Touch experiences are triggered by mechanical disturbance of the skin produced by physical contact with an object. The human skin contains mechanoreceptors, or receptors that are sensitive to mechanical pressure or deformation of the skin. However, the concentration of mechanoreceptors within the skin is not uniform. Rather, the highly sensitive areas of skin, such as the lips and fingertips, contain densely packed mechanoreceptors, while insensitive areas, such as the stomach and back, contain lower concentrations of mechanoreceptors. More sensitive areas of the skin also project to a larger proportion of the somatosensory cortex than less sensitive areas. Thus, the area of the brain which receives touch sensations (for example, from the fingertip) is proportional to the actual sensitivity of the skin area."
-  Touch Acuity Experiment

"We need four hugs a day for survival.  We need eight hugs a day for maintenance.  We need twelve hugs a day for growth." 
-  Virginia Satir

“The fingers of your thoughts are molding your face ceaselessly” 
-  Charles Reznikoff

"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin."
-  William Shakespeare

"The messages that make up our emotional and mental life must be routed through the tissues of the body."
-  Robert Marrone

"So let's not use a stylus. We're going to use the best pointing device in the world.  We're going to use a pointing device that we're all born with - born with ten of them.  We're going to use our fingers.  We're going to touch this with our fingers.  And we have invented a new technology called multi-touch, which is phenomenal.  It works like magic."
-  Steve Jobs

"Emotional release and muscular release are interdependent - one does not occur without the other."
-  Elaine Mayland 

"Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men."
-  George Bernard Shaw

"Love is like quicksilver in the hand.  Leave the fingers open at it stays.  Clutch it, and it darts away."
-  Dorothy Parker

"Play certainly seems to facilitate an animal's ability to move in a more deftly coordinated and responsive way.  Chasing, tumbling, and scrambling about are a requisite part of strengthening muscles, honing eye-limb coordination, and laying down essential synaptic pathways to the brain.  Limb and eye-limb movements are coordinated in the cerebellum, and the number of cerebellar synapes is significantly influences by behavior.  Not surprisingly, there is a relationship between play and synaptic growth.  ...  Physical skills, such as those involved in hunting or defense, stem at least in part from the complex behaviors learned and practiced during play.  Most young mammals play with objects, an activity which, among other things, teaches them how to catch prey and how to explore the physical world.  Many species― including our own, nonhuman primates, rats, and those in the mustelid family― show a preference for complex and novel play rather than simple object manipulation."
-  Kay Redfield Jamison M.D., Exuberance, p.51

"Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers."
-  Isaac Asimov

“Civilization has taught us to eat with a fork, but even now if nobody is around we use our fingers.”
- Will Rogers

"A child's hand in yours -- what tenderness and power it arouses.  You are instantly the very touchstone of wisdom and strength."
-  Marjorie Holmes

"The association of gesture with human thought is a slightly different but closely related question.  Here, developmental observations may hold the answer: cognitive and developmental psychologists regard the appearance in children of pointing as a "gesture of intentionality" (at about fourteen months) to be an important milestone in their mental development and consider its exclusive use by humans a demarcation from chimpanzee cognitive potential.  Chimpanzees neigh spontaneously produce this gesture nor acquire it through learning."
-  D. McNeill

"The fragrance always remains in the hand that gives the rose."
-  Heda Bejar

“Who taught you to write in blood on my back? Who taught you to use your hands as branding irons? You have scored your name into my shoulders, referenced me with your mark. The pads of your fingers have become printing blocks, you tap a message on to my skin, tap meaning into my body. Your morse code interferes with my heart beat. I had a steady heart before I met you, I relied upon it, it had seen active service and grown strong. Now you alter its pace with your own rhythm, you play upon me, drumming me taut.”
-  Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

"No matter how closely we look, it is difficult to find a mental act that can take place without the support of some physical function."
-  Moshe Feldenkrais

"The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered... deeply,...finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people."
-  George Washington, First Inaugural Address, Apr. 30, 1789

Somatosense - any of the sensory systems that mediate sensations of pressure and tickle and warmth and cold and vibration and limb position and limb movement and pain

Somatosense - any of the sensory systems that mediate sensations of pressure and tickle and warmth and cold and vibration and limb position and limb movement and pain

"The universe is a continuous web.  Touch it at any point and the whole web quivers."
-  Stanley Kunitz

"If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger."
-  Frank Lloyd Wright

"No animal has hands as well developed as those of man. The sculptor Auguste Rodin considered the hand to be the proof of the "divine creative force". He paid homage to this idea in his sculpture "The Cathedral", representing two hands facing each other, creating the shape of a vaulted arch. The hand is the organ devoted to prehension and touch. Touch can be sensed all over the body, but the real tact is concentrated in the hand and fingers, which move over an object to determine its volume, temperature, and nature. The fingers of man have epidermal and dermal folds which we call the fingerprint. These fingerprints are unique to each individual, and allow an increase in the surface area of the skin at the ends of the fingers greatly raising the number of sensory receptors present. The hand is also an organ which allows us to communicate. Deaf-mutes employ a sign language using their hands, the blind read Braille with their fingertips."
-  Reading Your Fingertips

"He that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools."
-  Confucius

"Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven."
-  Henry Ward Beecher

"If someone won't lift a finger to call you, see you and spend time with you then its time to lift your five fingers and wave goodbye."
-  Author Unknown 

"The hand gives the upper limb its importance and originality."
-  Raoul Tubiana

The Five Senses

"When one is out of touch with oneself, one cannot touch others."
-  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"Knowledge is invariably a matter of degree: you cannot put your finger upon even the simplest datum and say this we know."
-  T. S. Eliot

“Your fingers can't be of the same length.”
-  Chinese Proverb

"A ring is a halo on your finger."
-  Doug Coupland

"Silence is a power only in the hands of enlightened minds, but weakness in the mind of helpless hands."
-  Anuj Somany 

"Now join your hands, and with your hands your hearts."
-  William Shakespeare

"The somatosensory system is a diverse sensory system comprising the receptors and processing centres to produce the sensory modalities such as touch, temperature, proprioception (body position), and nociception (pain). The sensory receptors cover the skin and epithelia, skeletal muscles, bones and joints, internal organs, and the cardiovascular system.  While touch is considered one of the five traditional senses, the impression of touch is formed from several modalities. In medicine, the colloquial term "touch" is usually replaced with "somatic senses" to better reflect the variety of mechanisms involved.  Somatic senses are sometimes referred to as somesthetic senses, with the understanding that somesthesis includes touch, proprioception and (depending on usage) also haptic perception.  The system reacts to diverse stimuli using different receptors: thermoreceptors, nociceptors, mechanoreceptors and chemoreceptors. Transmission of information from the receptors passes via sensory nerves through tracts in the spinal cord and into the brain.  Processing primarily occurs in the primary somatosensory area in the parietal lobe of the cerebral cortex.  At its simplest, the system works when activity in a sensory neuron is triggered by a specific stimulus such as heat; this signal eventually passes to an area in the brain uniquely attributed to that area on the body—this allows the processed stimulus to be felt at the correct location.  The point-to-point mapping of the body surfaces in the brain is called a homunculus and is essential in the creation of a body image.  This brain-surface ("cortical") map is not immutable, however.  Dramatic shifts can occur in response to stroke or injury."
-  Somatosensory System - Wikipedia

"Haptic perception is the process of recognizing objects through touch. It involves a combination of somatosensory perception of patterns on the skin surface (e.g., edges, curvature, and texture) and proprioception of hand position and conformation.  People can rapidly and accurately identify three-dimensional objects by touch.  They do so through the use of exploratory procedures, such as moving the fingers over the outer surface of the object or holding the entire object in the hand.  Gibson defined the haptic system as "The sensibility of the individual to the world adjacent to his body by use of his body". Gibson and others emphasized the close link between haptic perception and body movement: haptic perception is active exploration. The concept of haptic perception is related to the concept of extended physiological proprioception according to which, when using a tool such as a stick, perceptual experience is transparently transferred to the end of the tool.  Haptic perception relies on the forces experienced during touch.  This research allows the creation of "virtual", illusory haptic shapes with different perceived qualities which has clear application in haptic technology Loss of the sense of touch is a catastrophic deficit that can impair walking and other skilled actions such as holding objects or using tools."
-  Wikipedia - Haptic Perception

A Collection of Expressions Making Use of Words Related to Fingers, Hands, Touching, Feeling, Manipulating ... 
Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo, 2015

"She has a light touch.
He is quite handy.
She is hardly notices because she is so thick skinned.    
The homeless man refused the offer of a helping hand.
She always gives because she is such a soft touch. 
He rubs people the wrong way.  
She grasped the key ideas of the lecture.  
Brethren, you are now safe in the hands of our Lord Jesus Christ, Our Savior.
He gave the homeless man a hand out.  
She is quick to talk about her feelings.  
He can handle difficult matters.
He is thin skinned and overreacts.  
The sweethearts held hands.  
Her final speech was touching.  
It was a touch and go situation.  
His cutting remarks really hurt.  
She could balance on her hands with her legs in the air for a long time. 
He was a successful handyman.  
She is a such a touchy feely person.  
He likes to manage in a hands on manner.  
She had strong feelings for him.    
He had some strongly held beliefs.  
They fiercely defended their stronghold.  
She keeps in touch by telephone.  
He demonstration amazing sleight of hands in his magic tricks. 
She gently fingered the rosary beads in her hands. 
He reverently touched his hands together and held them at his heart in Anjali Mudra.   
She has tricky fingers. 
He showed excellent hand-eye coordination. 
She spread and raised her hands up high and exclaimed "Praise the Lord."
He gently placed his healing hands on her neck.  
She gave the crippled women who had fallen a helping hand. 
He cut his hands badly in the accident. 
She lost her hands in the terrorist attack explosion. 
He lost his money in the strong armed robbery. 
She handed out the presents to the children. 
He stroked the shoulders hair of the crying child. 
She knitted the sweater with amazing speed. 
He gave the rude fellow the finger. 
She kneaded the thick bread dough. 
He stroked his nipples as he masturbated. 
He picked her favorite flowers for the bouquet. 
The senators decided to act, despite the charge of having dirty hands. 
The sweethearts walked hand in hand in the park. 
Her old fingers turned the pages of the philosophy book. 
The two boys tossed the baseball back and forth - playing catch for hours. 
Touching the Void, Touching the Clouds, Touching the Mind, Touching the Sky, Touching the Heart ...
Touching Wonder, Touching Evil, Touching Enlightenment, Touching God ...
The Left Hand of Darkness, The Left Hand of Evil ...
The judge just washed his hands of the matter. 
She was just grasping for straws in the debate. 
He held to his previous story when he testified in court. 
The priest's hands annointed the dying man with oil, as part of the last rites. 
She thought that her skills might rub off on her cooking student. 
He took the matter in hand with great confidence. 
The soldiers held their ground in the battle. 
She felt around in the dark for the light switch. 
He unscrewed the cap on the jar of kosher pickles. 
The skilled masseuse had magic hands. 
He touched his chin and lowered his hand to say 'thank you' in sign language.  
She threaded the needle using four fingers. 
She gave him a hand knitted sweater for Christmas. 
She thought the hand lettering on the card was beautiful. 
He delt the cards swiftly and carefully. 
She twirled the baton skillfully in her left hand. 
He pounded the 16 penny nails into the rafters with a heavy framing hammer. 
She reverently handled the blooming plum branches for the Ikebana arrangement. 
The Hands of Time cannot be stopped.
The house plans were hand drafted by the architect. 
Handle with Care!
Her motto was "Hands Can."
The girl slowly dried her hands. 
It was a lovely hand quilted piece of art. 
Her charming apron was hand sewn. 
The handbook was heavier than he expected. 
He gave me the thumbs up sign, then he turned and skied down the slope.
She played that guitar blue's riff with great chops. 
The baby fed himself with his hands. 
She raised her hand and said "Give me five!" 
He turned the pages of the book until he reached page 137.
She handled the problem skillfully.
Keep your dirty hands out of your mouth.
Wash your hands.
She rubbed the two small wooden balls in the in the palms of her hands.
She did biceps hammer curls with dumbbells to strengthen her arms. 
Hold On!  Don't Die!  Hold On!  We will get you to safety!  Hold On!
The toddler child broke the stick while playing. 
Entrust liberty in the hands of the people. 
May God hold you in the palm of his hands. 
It's in God's hands now. 
He felt refreshed after doing two hours of manual labor in the garden.
She didn't lift a finger to help her friend. 
He raised both hands and made the "air quotes" sign when he said the word "love" as he spoke.
He crossed his fingers and then threw the dice."
-  Mike Garofalo, Hands On 

Hand and Palm Touching Efforts-Actions-Movements
    and Some Related Wrist-Forearm-Arm Efforts-Actions-Movements

Notes by Michael P. Garofalo, 2015

What Are You Touching? 

Touching one’s own body
Touching another person’s body
Touching the body of an animal
Touching plants or foods
Touching an object in the environment
Touching and using a tool, utensil, musical instrument, clothing, pencil, etc. 
Not touching anything
 

Initiating or Receiving:

I initiate touching something with my fingers or hand – whether I want to or not
Something touches my fingers or hand – whether I am willing and accept the touch or not

Parts of the Hand Used: 

Touching something with the front bottom pad of one finger
Touching something with the front bottom pads of two fingers
Touching something with more than two fingers
Holding or grasping something with the fingers and palm
Touching something with the back upper nail side of one finger
Touching something with the back upper nail side of one finger
Touching something with the back of the hand or wrist

Duration:

How long does the finger or hand action take? 
What is the duration of the activity with the fingers or hand?
How often during the day is the specific activity of the fingers or hand being performed?

Direction of Movement: 

Up, Down, Right Side, Left Side, Center, Sideways, Lower, Higher, Inward, Outward, Aimed, Still, Motionless

Internal Sensations:

Compression, Resistance, Soft, Hard, Warm, Hot, Cold, Burning, Dry, Wet, Itchy, Little or No Feeling
Sharp, Smooth, Bumps, Rough, Edges, Curves, Textures
Uncomfortable, Painful, Injured, Broken, Squashed, Cut, Numb, Twisted, Weak, Inflexible, Uncontrollable, Unable to Move, Dysfunctional
Strong, Flexible, Able, Nimble, Coordinated, Functional, Rhythmic, Comfortable, Pleasurable
Moving, Raising, Lowering, Effort Actions (below), Motionless, Still
Magnitude, Intensity, Level, Degree, and Quantification of Tactile Impressions or Effort Actions.  [Examples: On a scale of 1 to 10 how painful is the injury to your thumb?  We measured her grip strength for five seconds with a hand dynamometer.]

Tactile Sensitivity Variations Between Different Observers and in Different Environments

Sensations derived from touching and being touched vary from person to person based in individual sensitivity and relevant local conditions. 
There are some psychophysics "laws" relevant to sensitivity to various levels of tactile stimulation: Stevens Power Law, Weber-Fechner Law.
Quantification and comparisons of different tactile impressions is a complex and difficult project.  

Hand Touching and Fingers-Hand-Wrist-Forearm-Arm Movement Actions (Verbs, Effort Actions)
And Some Related Metaphors: 

Aim   Direct, Coordinate, Place, Put, Target

Balance   Stabilize, Level, Steady

Block   Deflect, Hold, Stabalize, Defend

Bounce   Throw, Catch

Break    Cut, Rip, Tear, Throw 

Caress    Pet, Hug, Stroke, Glide, Fondle

Catch   Grasp, Clasp, Throw, Toss

Clasp   Grab, Pinch, Clutch 

Close    Lower, Inward, Pull 

Clutch   Grab, Clutch 

Cut    Slash, Rip

Compress    Press, Squeeze   

Dab   Tap, Touch,

Dig   Scratch, Pull, Grab, Lift 

Downward   Pull or Push Object Towards the Ground or Lower than Midline of Body 

Drag   Pull, Hold, Grasp

Draw   Pull, Push, Glide, Dab; Use a Pencil, Pen, Art Supplies 

Drink   Eat, Feed, Use Utensils

Drop    Release, Let Fall

She dropped me like a hot potato.
She has fallen for him.  
She dropped him off at school this morning. 
The annoyed supervisor say, "Don't drop the ball again on this project, George!" 

Eat   Feed, Drink, Use Utensils

Feed   Eat, Drink, Use Utensils

Feel   Touch, Manipulate, Grasp, Hold, Glide, Pat, Slide

That feels like a bad idea.

Finger   Manipulate, Feel

Fist    Squeeze  

Flexible   Easy to Move, Soft,

He was flexible in determining how much each month they should pay on the debt. 

Flick    Jab, Poke

Fold    Knead, Twist, Turn

Fondle    Stroke, Caress, Pet, Fondle

Float   Glide

Gesture   Wave, Point, Shake Hands, Raise Hand, Come Here, Insult, Pray, Sign Language, etc. 

Glide   Float, Hover, Pet

Grab    Hold, Palm, Grasp, Tighten, Grip

Grasp    Grab, Hold, Palm, Tighten

Grip    Hold, Grasp, Grab, Tighten, Crush Grip, Pinch Grip, Support Grip

Hammer   Pound, Knock, Push

Handle    Manipulate, Finger 

He takes a hands-on approach to problem solving. 

Hit    Punch, Strike

She was a hit at the party. 

Hold    Grab, Palm, Grasp, Clutch

She held the idea close to her heart.
He held on to his beliefs to the bitter end. 
The squad bravely held their ground under bitter gunfire. 
Hold on to that thought for a minute. 

Hot

She's a hot lady!

Hover   Glide, Float

Hug   Caress, Pet

Inward   Pull, Draw into my Body

Jab    Flick, Poke, Prod 

Knead    Press, Fold

Knock   Tap

Lay   Place, Put, Move, Down, Below

Lie   Rest, Motionless,

Lift    Raise, Open, Move 

Light   Not Heavy, Small, Easy to Hold

He is light on his feet. 

Lower    Close, Drop, Release, Moving Downward Until Resistance Encountered

He tried to lower her to his level.

Manipulate   Finger, Feel

Move    Push, Lift, Place

Open    Lift, Raise

Outward   Push, Place Away from my Body

Palm    Hold

Pat   Tap, Pet

Pet    Stroke, Caress, Glide, Pat 

Pick    Point, Select

Pin   Press, Hold

Pinch    Squeeze

Place    Set, Put, Move, Lay 

Point    Select, Pick

Poke    Jab, Poke, Prod

Pound   Knock, Hammer 

Prod   Poke, Jab

Press   Compress, Push, Squeeze

Pull    Inward, Twist, Tear, Lift, Open, Stretch

Punch    Hit, Strike

Push    Move

I am pushed for time.

Raise    Lift, Open, Pull, Lifting Upward and Infrequently Meeting Resistance

The gospel song raised his spirits.
Jesus raised him from the dead. 
He rose to the occasion. 
She raised the team spirits. 

Reach   Move Hand-Arm Upward, Downward, Inward, Outward, or Sideways  

Release    Drop, Toss, Throw, Letting Go

Rest    Release, Still

Rip    Slash, Cut

Roll   Rotate, Press, Twirl, Twist, Rotate

Rotate    Manipulate, Turn, Roll

Rub   Press, Move 

Scrape    Scratch, Rub

Scratch    Rub, Scrape

Screw    Tighten, Twist

Select    Pick, Point

Set    Place, Put

Shake   Wiggle, Roll, Vibrate, Pat

Shuffle    Sort, Manipulate, Arrange 

Sign    Gesture, Hand Sign Language for Deaf Persons

Slash    Slap, Cut

Slap    Hit, Strike

Slide    Glide, Stroke

Sort    Pick, Grasp, Move, Set, Release, Shuffle

Squeeze    Pinch, Grab, Fist, Compress    

The bill collector put a squeeze on us.

Stack   Pile, Balance, Sort

His problems started to stack up beyond his control.   

Still    Rest, Release, Hold, Stop, Hover

Stop    Still, Rest, Release, Hold

Stretch   Pull, Break, Twist   

Strike    Hit, Punch, Slap, Thrust

Stroke    Pet, Glide, Caress, fondle 

Tap   Knock

Tear    Twist, Pull

Tie    Connect, Thread

Thread    Connect, Tie, Attach  

Throw    Toss, Release, Hurl 

Thrust    Poke, Jap, Strike

Tie    Connect, Thread

Tighten    Twist

Toss   Throw, Release, Hurl

Touch   Feel, Press, Tap

The President touched many people with his moving speech.

Turn    Twist, Rotate, Manipulate  

He suddenly turned on his friends. 

Twirl   Twist

The ideas twirled around in his feverish mind. 

Twist   Tear, Pull, Wring, Twirl   

He has a very twisted and mean mind. 

Upward   Lift, Raise

Wiggle   Shake, Rotate, Twist

Wipe   Rub, Clean, Dry

Wring    Twist

Write

Rudolf von Laban analyzed and described eight basic Touch Efforts: 

Dab - A soft, light, short, quick, small direct touch (pat)

Glide – A lingering, sustained, soft, light, big direct touch (hold, touch, stroke)

Float – A traveling, sustained, meandering, soft, light, indirect touch (caress)

Flick – A brief, quick, short, small, light, hard, direct touch (poke, jab) 

Punch - A direct, strong, quick, hard, fist touch (knock, strike)

Slash - A fast, quick, light, short, hard, direct touch (slash)

Press - A long, sustained, hard, strong, direct touch

Wring - Hard, strong, sustained, wandering, indirect touch

"The human hand can be used to grip objects in several different positions. These different positions require different types of grip strength which are typically quantified based on the way the hand is being used.

The crush grip is what is most commonly thought of as "grip". It involves a handshake-type grip, where the object being gripped rests firmly against the palm and all fingers. A strong crush grip is useful in bone-crushing handshakes or for breaking objects with pressure.

In a pinch grip, the fingers are on one side of an object, and the thumb is on the other. Typically, an object lifted in a pinch grip does not touch the palm. This is generally considered a weaker grip position. The pinch grip is used when grabbing something like a weight plate or lifting a sheet of plywood by the top edge. Care must be taken to avoid cramping the muscles in the hand.

A support grip typically involves holding something, such as the handle of a bucket, for a long time. This type of strength is epitomized by the "Farmer's walk", where the bucket is filled with sand or water, and carried over a long distance. A great deal of muscular endurance is necessary to have a good carrying grip."
-  Grip Strength

"Should political leaders violate the deepest constraints of morality in order to achieve great goods or avoid disasters for their communities? This question poses what has become known amongst philosophers as the problem of dirty hands. There are many different strands to the philosophical debate about this topic, and they echo many of the complexities in more popular thinking about politics and morality. All, however, involve the idea that correct political action must sometimes conflict with profound moral norms."
-  The Problem of Dirty Hands, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

"Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth."
-  Friedrich Nietzsche

"The nun Wu Jincang asked the Sixth Patriach Huineng, "I have studied the Mahaparinirvana Sutra for many years, yet there are many areas i do not quite understand. Please enlighten me."
The patriach responded, "I am illiterate. Please read out the characters to me and perhaps I will be able to explain the meaning."
Said the nun, "You cannot even recognize the characters. How are you able then to understand the meaning?"
"Truth has nothing to do with words. Truth can be likened to the bright moon in the sky. Words, in this case, can be likened to a finger. The finger can point to the moon’s location. However, the finger is not the moon. To look at the moon, it is necessary to gaze beyond the finger, right?"
-  Classic Zen Dialogue

"Pointing at the moon,
making a point―
her lovely fingers."
-  Mike Garofalo, Above the Fog

"When we touch another person's body our first contact is with the skin, the primary boundary that differentiates the physical body within from the physical bodies outside.  Through awareness of this boundary, gained through the experiences of contact with the world outside, the infant first begins to identify itself as a unique and relatively separate individual.  Touch plays an essential role even from the very beginnings of intra-auterine development.  The infant is learning about the world around it as it experiences this world through touch.  The development of a healthy ego also depends very much during the earliest phases of life on adequate holding, touch, and the stimulation this gives to the growing sense of body boundary.  For adults, too, where this experience of self and personal boundary has not been fully nurtured and developed or has been temporarily lost, such simulation through contact can be beneficial in helping to redefine what is self and what is other."
-  Linda Hartley, Wisdom of the Body Moving, p. 132 

"The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness that the destruction of millions of our fellow beings."
-  William Hazlitt 

"Ambition has one heel nailed in securely, though she stretches her fingers to touch the heavens."
-  Lao Tzu

“I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.” 
-  Marilyn Manson

"The ego is the perception of the bodily self, and what one feels and knows of the body is the skin."
-  P. Lacombe

"May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face, the rains fall soft upon your fields and,
Until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand."
-  Irish Blessing

"The Devil finds work for idle hands."
"Idle hands are the Devil's workshop."
-  Proverbs

"The eyes have undressed things that hands have dressed."
-  Charles de Leusse

"Most people's hand-grip strength gradually diminishes as they age. Maintaining decent hand-grip strength levels can enable elderly people to more readily complete daily living tasks and may help them stay alive longer. A 2007 study published in "The American Journal of Medicine" concluded that lower hand-grip strength readings are a reliable predictor of an increased mortality rate. Testing your hand-grip strength can help to monitor this decline and can give an indication of risk."
-  Hand Grip Strength Test

Word Web Flows

re-tie, re-link, re-connect, re-attach, re-unite, re-turn, re-peat; yoke up, yoga, hook up, set up and connect leather or rope rigging; {re-ligio, re-ligion, re-peat}, re-imagine, re-ality; re-live, re-member, re-think, re-imagine, re-create, re-peat. 
-  Mike Garofalo, Hands On

Self-Massage Techniques, Practices, Theories: Bibliography, Links, Resources, Quotations

"The term somatic (from the Greek σωματικός) means 'of the body' - relating to the body.  In medicine, somatic illness is bodily, not mental, illness.

The term is often used in biology to refer to the cells of the body in contrast to the germ line cells which usually give rise to the gametes (ovum or sperm).  These somatic cells are diploid containing two copies of each chromosome, whereas the germ cells are haploid as they only contain one copy of each chromosome.  Although under normal circumstances all somatic cells contain identical DNA, they develop a variety of tissue-specific characteristics.  This process is called differentiation, through epigenetic and regulatory alterations.  The grouping of like cells and tissues creates the foundation for organs.

Somatic mutations are changes to the genetics of a multicellular organism which are not passed on to its offspring through the germline.  Many cancers are somatic mutations.

Somatic is also defined as relating to the wall of the body cavity, particularly as distinguished from the head, limbs or viscera.

It is also used in the term somatic nervous system which is the portion of the vertebrate nervous system which regulates voluntary movements of the body."
-  Wikipedia - Somatic

Soma, Body-Mind, Somatics, Somaesthetics:  Quotations, Sayings, Information, Bibliography, Resources

"Once I knew only darkness and stillness ... but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of being."
-  Helen Keller

"Green fingers are an extension of the verdant heart."
-  Russell Page

“You can prick your finger, but don't finger your prick!”
-  George Carlin

"I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out the the hands of fools.  Let's start with typewriters."
-  Solomon Short

Lao Gong or "The Palace of Labor" 

"The palm of the hand is home to one of the most powerful acupuncture points, which is considered also to be a minor chakra. The Chinese name for this point is Lao Gong, the Palace of Labor, and it’s the 8th point on the Pericardium meridian.  The classical location of this point is about where the tips of the ring and middle finger lands, in the palm of the hand, when we make a fist. 
     Pericardium 8 may have been named “palace of labor” for a very mundane reason: because the hands are the part of the body frequently used to engage in manual labor.  A somewhat more interesting explanation is that, according to the Five Shen system, the heart is residence of the “emperor” of all the shen.  Since the pericardium is the sack that encases and protects the heart, we can think of it also as being the heart’s (and emperor’s) “palace,” whose job (i.e. labor) it is to comfort and protect the king. 
     To massage your own Lao Gong, simply rest one hand, palm up, on the fingers and palm of the other hand. Then, use the bottom hand’s thumb to reach into the palm of the top hand.  Apply moderate pressure, with the end or tip of your thumb, moving it in tiny circles, as you place your mental focus gently upon the point." 
-  Acupressure Treasury - Lao Gong 

You can also practice the Sun Taijiquan He Shou and Kai Shou movements, Open Hands and Close Hands, to visualize/imagine/pretend/act/engage/positively enhance/open the Lao Gong point and its connection to the pericardium that surrounds your heart. 

"Most primate hands are long of palm and finger, short of thumb, and suited for climbing. Human hands have short palms, short fingers and long thumbs, which are not. These proportions do, though, make it possible to grip things in two ways that other apes’ hands cannot manage well. One is by using what is known as a precision grip, in which an object is held between the pads of the finger tips (especially the first and second fingers) and the pad of the thumb. The other is by means of a power grip, in which all the fingers and the thumb are wrapped around what is being grasped. These two grips are crucial to Homo sapiens’s characteristic tool-crafting skills, and it has thus long been thought that the widespread use of tools by humanity’s ancestors was the driving force behind the modern hand’s proportions.  In a study just published in the Journal of Experimental Biology (12/2012) by Michael Morgan and David Carrier of the University of Utah has shown that the exact geometry of the hand is probably the result of its destructive rather than its constructive power.  Most natural weapons are obvious: teeth, claws, antlers, horns. But the hand becomes a weapon only when it turns into a fist.  “There may, however, be only one set of skeletal proportions that allows the hand to function both as a mechanism for precise manipulation and as a club for striking,” the researchers write. “Ultimately, the evolutionary significance of the human hand may lie in its remarkable ability to serve two seemingly incompatible, but intrinsically human, functions."
-  Making a Fist of It

   Even better than a fist alone is a fist holding a cane staff weapon.  Grabbing a stick and hitting something, or sharpening a stick to make a spear for stabbing something (animal or human), is the most primitive form of tool using for self-defense and an essential survival tool in hunting. 

"Perception and attention are affected by how close our hands are to an object.  Items near our hands tend to take priority.  The point of both these studies is not that one strategy (whether of hand movements or hand position) is wrong. What you need to take away is the realization that hand movements and hand position can affect the way you approach problems, and the things you perceive. Sometimes you want to take a more physical approach to a problem, or pick out the fine details of a scene or object — in these cases, moving your hands, or holding something in or near your hands, is a good idea. Other times you might want to take a more abstract/generalized approach — in these cases, you might want to step back and keep your body out of it."
-  Enhanced Visual Perception Near the Hands

"Contrary to popular opinion, humans - homo sapiens -  are not the only primates posessing opposable thumbs. Chimanzees and monkees can oppose the thumb to the index digit. What makes the human hand unique in the animal kingdom is the ability of the small and ring fingers to rotate across the palm to meet the thumb, owing to a unique flexibility of the carpometacarpal joints of these fingers, down in the middle of the palm. This is referred to as "ulnar opposition" and adds unparalleled grip, grasp, and torque capability to the human hand.

• Each hand contains (plus or minus... everyone is different, and everyone counts these things differently...)
  • 29 major and minor bones (many people have a few more).
  • 29 major joints.
  • At least 123 named ligaments.
  • 34 muscles which move the fingers and thumb:
    • 17 in the palm of the hand, and
    • 18 in the forearm.
  • 48 named nerves:
    • 3 major nerves.
    • 24 named sensory branches.
    • 21 named muscular branches.
  • 30 named arteries and nearly as many smaller named branches."

"We explore the world around us with our eyes and hands but, as pointed out by John Napier in Hands (1980), only one of these permits us to see around corners and in the dark. The exploratory capacity of the hand brings to the tactile sense a quality that transcends all the other senses and led Bichat in the early days of the 19th century to refer to touch as the only active sense. An inert hand receives an impoverished sensory input and is but a poor transmitter of information about an object placed in it to the centres for perception. But to observe a skilled Braille reader translating series of raised dot patterns into meaningful language at a rate of up to 100 words per min is to recognize not only the high resolution sensory capacities of the active human hand but also the capacity of the neural signals generated by the mechanoreceptors in the moving fingers to gain rapid access to the highest cognitive centres. This is on the input side. On the output side, apart from the chimpanzees who exhibit a limited capacity, humans are the only species that can communicate meaningfully with the hands.
    The hand and the somatosensory system of which it is the handmaiden have never attracted the same extensive and long continued treatment as the eye and the visual sense. Vernon Mountcastle's book, The Sensory Hand, nevertheless, comes in a tradition that commenced with Sir Charles Bell's Bridgewater Treatise of 1832 (The Hand its Mechanism and Vital Endowments as Evincing Design), a pre-Darwinian perspective on the place of the forelimb appendage in the broader economy of nature. Bell like Napier and others after him, for example, Frederic Wood Jones in his influential The Principles of Anatomy as Seen in the Hand (1919), was principally focused on the hand as a motor organ, fascinated as they were by the almost unlimited capacity of the human hand for precision and dexterity of movement. In this, they saw the hand as an executive organ of the brain. To Napier, the hand was the mirror of the brain and ‘there can be no such combination as dextrous hands and clumsy brains’. For Wood Jones, ‘It is not the hand that is perfect, but the whole nervous mechanism by which the movements of the hand are evoked, coordinated and controlled’. All recognized nevertheless the important relationship between tactile sensation and the motion of the hand, Bell summing up one of his chapters with ‘… . how happily the hand is constructed: in which we perceive the sensibilities to changes of temperature, to touch, and to motion, united to a facility of motion in the joints, for unfolding and turning the fingers in every possible degree and direction, without abruptness or angularity, and in a manner inimitable by any artifice of joints and levers’. "
-  The Sensory Hand

"We can land men on the moon, but, for all our mechanical and electronic wizardry, we cannot reproduce an artificial fore-finger that can feel as well as beckon."
-  John Napier

"The trees which are pruned, watered and nurtured by caring hands bear the greatest fruits; it is the same with people."
-  Bryant McGill

"The greatest sense in our body is our touch sense.  I is probably the chief sense in the processes of sleeping and waking; it gives us our knowledge of depth of thickness and form; we feel, we love and hate, are touchy and are touched, through the touch corpuscles of our skin."
-  J. Lionel Tayler, The Stages of Human Life, 1921, p. 157. 

"The Bible tells the story of a man who was very sick with leprosy. Coming to Jesus, he knelt on the ground and implored the Master to heal him. When Jesus saw this man, He was moved with compassion and “stretched out His hand and touched him” (Mark 1:41). The man was instantaneously healed. Elsewhere the Bible says, “So He touched her hand, and the fever left her” (Matthew 8:15). It also records, “Then He touched their eyes, saying, According to your faith let it be to you” (Matthew 9:29). Do you notice a pattern in these verses? Let’s continue on for a moment. The Bible also says, “Jesus came and touched them and said, Arise, and do not be afraid” (Matthew 17:7). Again it says, “So Jesus had compassion and touched their eyes. And immediately their eyes received sight” (Matthew 20:34). Occasionally the sick person touched Jesus; for example, “She said to herself, If only I may touch His garment, I shall be made well” (Matthew 9:21). And when word spread that contact with this man brought healing, the Bible says, “When the men of that place recognized Him, they sent out into all that surrounding region, brought to Him all who were sick, and begged Him that they might only touch the hem of His garment. And as many as touched it were made perfectly well” (Matthew 14:35-36).  These verses show us plainly that Jesus Christ is infused with magnificent healing power—a power far superior to anything man has to offer. Furthermore, this power is readily available: it is as close as the touch of the Lord. To partake of it we must simply touch Him, or be touched by Him, for this is all that it takes to be completely healed. As a child of God, it is vital that you really believe this."
-  David A. Huston, Healing Hands

"Hands-on healing, also known as Energy, Radiant or Spiritual Healing, has been practiced by many cultures for thousands of years. In Greek mythology, Chiron, the wise Centaur, taught Asclepius, the God of Medicine, hands-on healing. This practice was so revered that Grecian statues of Asclepius were made with gold-gilt hands, celebrating the power of touch to heal. This was also the source of the caduceus, modern medicine's symbol of healing and the word Chi-ergy, which evolved into surgery. Later, in Christianity, we are told countless stories of Christ's ability to heal using the laying-on-of-hands. Jesus further told his disciples in John 14:12: "... he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do..." Humankind was truly given a profound legacy in Hands-On Healing."
-  The Spiritual Healing Practice of Laying On Hands

"Reiki (霊気^?, /ˈreɪkiː/) is a spiritual practice developed in 1922 by Japanese Buddhist Mikao Usui, which has since been adapted by various teachers of varying traditions. It uses a technique commonly called palm healing or hands on healing as a form of alternative medicine and is sometimes classified as oriental medicine by some professional medical bodies. Through the use of this technique, practitioners believe that they are transferring universal energy (i.e., reiki) in the form of qi (Japanese: ki) through the palms, which allows for self-healing and a state of equilibrium."
-  Reiki 

"Power and speed be hands and feet."
-  Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tai Chi's "Wonderful Hand."
Chang Cheung-hsing's "Message of His Discovery of the General Theory of Tai Chi Ch'uan."

"Totally Yin with Yang is "Soft Hand".
Totally Yang without Yin is "Hard Hand".
10% Yin with 90% Yang is "Hard Rod Hand".
20% Yin with 80% Yang is "Combat Hand". 
30% Yin with 70% Yang is "Rigid Hand".
40% Yin with 60% Yang may be classified as "Good Hand".
Only 50% Yang beautifully matched with 50% Yin, without being partial to either Yin or Yang, is regarded as "Wonderful Hand".
The execution of "Wonderful Hand: is an expression of Tai Chi.
When all images and forms are completely neutralized, things once again return to their original state of "nothingness." "
-  Cloud Hands, Inc.  Tai Chi Chuan: The Technique of Power, p 75.  By Cloud Hands Inc., 2003.  290 pages.  ISBN: 0974201308.  VSCL.   

My teacher, Sifu Knack, once spoke of "Blood Hand" when you punch so hard that the blood of your opponent is on your fist.   

“Regarding the mother tongue, Luca Cavalli-Sforza relies on Joseph Greenberg, who claims that there is at least one word that seems to be common to all languages. 
This is the root word tik.

-       Peter Watson, The Modern Mind, 2000, p.691

In English, we use the word “tickle” to refer to use of the hands to cause another to laugh, squirm, or react with discomfort.  A “tick” is a single mark or count of something, a rhythmic audible tap or beat, tick of a clock hand, a glancing touch, or a reflex jerk of a finger.  A “tickler” is a device to count or jog the memory about something, a mental way of pointing to something.  A “token” is a single instance, a single part, a piece.

“If anyone can do something for me, these are my hands.”
-   Psychiatric patient in Langenfeld, Germany

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