Learning Hands

The miraculous loop between our hands and brain

“July Writing Challenge,” The Pillionaire Diaries https://medium.com/@parvathij084

Photo by Philipp Torres on Unsplash

When I started my PhD, I was one of the few students who had a practical background. I had spent years as a jeweller and a metalsmith, and at the time most people would be considering retiring, I decided to move on to getting postgraduate degrees.

While I worked, I often wondered about where my profession came from. Who were the first metalsmiths? How did people figure all this out? It was that curiosity that eventually led me to degrees in archaeology with a specialisation in Bronze Age metalworking.

I was an unusual student because of my background. Outside of a couple of others, most of the people in the postgrad programs had no experience other than being a student. They had gone from kindergarten to a PhD programme without ever having worked in a field or practised a craft related to their studies. So many students just repeated what they read and wrote new variations on the extent literature.

As someone coming from a practical background in metalworking, I realised that some of the literature was wrong. It was written by academics who had never held a hammer in their lives, but wrote authoritatively about working with metal.

Another problem was that academics, especially in archaeology, had no idea of how craft happens or how it is learned. They dismissed it as being handed down from master to apprentice and left it at that. Those few of us who were frustrated at the status quo had to go further. We looked for books about skill acquisition and physical learning. There wasn’t much available except for literature on childhood development of fine motor skills. So, we started there.

The Learning Curve

Most of us don’t remember learning to use our hands. If we had children of our own, we could watch the awkward and often frustrating progress of learning to use a spoon to get food successfully from the bowl to the mouth. The same process comes with learning to write, and later with any manual skills we choose to learn. There’s always a learning curve. We begin the process by being clumsy and frustrated while trying to reproduce the motions made by a skilled practitioner.

We make mistakes. We start over. We look, think, and try to move our hands in the way we imagine that we want them to. We repeat the process over and over. We start to lose the will to live. We’ll never be able to do it. And then the miracle occurs and our hands take over. Our brain steps out of the way and things begin to flow.

Learning to go with the flow

When I worked as a jeweller, there were a lot of repetitive tasks. I liked to form metal rather than cast it. I spent long hours hammering out pieces of silver, or making textured decoration. I had done it for so many years that my mind could wander and my hands did the work without my thinking about it. I’d used the same tools for years, some of which I made myself. They were worn to fit my hand, and likewise, my hands were adapted to the tools. At times the sensation feels as if the tool is doing the work alone and our brain is just along for the ride. As John Culkin famously said, We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us.

When our hands take over, it is similar to what ball players describe as being in the zone. The movements we make seem automatic, as if the tools and our hands are separated from our conscious brain and are doing the work on their own. In fact, that is what is going on. John Sennett, in his book The Craftsman, describes this as a feedback loop. We have internalised the skills to a degree that when we work and sense a change or variation, our hands seem to respond automatically. As we continue to learn, we catalogue the sensations in our brain, both as tactile and conceptual information. As a result, we become more dexterous and confident.

Tim Ingold calls this the poetics of tool use. Where tools become an extension of our body. We feel through the tool. The shock of the hammer striking metal is registered in our hand and without thinking, because we have already internalised the sensations, we know whether to hit harder, more gently, or to adjust our grip. Weavers feel the tension in the fabric they are making, potters feel if the clay has the right consistency.

The problems we encounter while working are solved without our conscious mind being a part of the equation. Because of this, we can work in an uninterrupted rhythm, making craft into a performance that can be fascinating to others who watch. They see acts of creation that appear effortless and almost miraculous. While the artisan follows a mental image, a person watching the act of creating does not know what the next step will be. They watch in anticipation and delight.

Even writing can bring this sense of a feedback loop. As I type, the words come into my head and my fingers work to keep up with the stream of my thoughts. But even though the words continue to flow, the hands still back up to fix a typo or to correct a verb tense as I go along.

A sense of calm

This phenomenon occurs in every craft in which we use our hands. Textile artists weave and knit, developing a cadence, producing textiles that many onlookers never realised could be made by hand.

The modern, western world is separated from crafts that a few generations ago would have been a part of everyday life. We risk losing the joy of making things with our hands. That is a sad statement because it creates such a wonderful feeling.

Working with our hands releases endorphins and stimulates the pleasure centres of our brains, making us feel more relaxed and reducing stress. The University of Arizona completed a study that showed how working at a handcraft creates a sense of calm and increased mental clarity. Dr Susan Biali wrote how hands are an important component in this process in a study published in Psychology Today.

It is not enough to daydream or think creatively. We have to get in with our hands to complete the circuit. The energy flows between mind and hand, and the imagined object is formed and brought into being through the hands. Through the process, our creative mind is stimulated by the textures and sensations registered by our fingers. The sensations fly into our minds and the brain quickly signals back to our hands how to adjust in order to continue realising the act of creation. It becomes a dance of the subconscious that is manifested in the creation of an object, be it of clay, wool, metal, or words. While we were working, the part of our brain that worries, controls, or obsesses is stilled during the performance.

This coordination of mind and hand appears miraculous. We shape things and create something that previously was only an invisible image formed in our mind. Through learning to use our hands, acquiring skills, and creating the feedback loop that engages a part of ourselves that is too often dormant, we not only lower our stress, but bring something new into the world. Something that has never been seen before, something unique that fulfills a basic need within ourselves. By creating we not only bring an object into the world, but we also strengthen the internal bond that enables us to conceive of something and make it real.

Recommended Books

Sennett, Richard. 2008. The Craftsman, London, Penguin Books.

Ingold, Timothy. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on livelihood, London, Routledge.