46

What These Hands Want to Say

Before my birthday musing, I want to say thank you. Thank you for reading and being part of this with me. I share what I’m learning and discovering so I can make sense of my journey and we can explore these questions together. Your time and attention mean more than you know.

A few quick announcements:

• I’m hiring a part-time Virtual Assistant for my coaching practice and business. This person will help me manage the business and collaborate on some creative projects I’ve been dreaming up. Ideally someone in the Hudson Valley (where I live) or elsewhere in New York state, but I’m open to other possibilities. Starting at 10 hours per week but can scale up over time. [→ Learn more about the VA role here]

• For the first time in six years, I have a few spots open in my coaching practice. I’ve kept my practice small on the heels of my sabbatical, but I’m ready to slowly grow it again. If you’re a professional navigating transition or a major inflection point and you want support, this might be a good fit. [→ Learn more about coaching here]

If either resonates with you or someone you know, I’d love to hear from you.

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Today I turn 46.

Last week, as an early birthday gift to myself, I scheduled a breathwork session with Alice Wells, a master practitioner, mentor, and frequent collaborator. Before the breathwork began, we talked about the last few months—the closure of Downshift, my summer sabbatical, and what’s been opening for me.

“My awareness is online most of the day now,” I told her. “Maybe 60, 70% of the time. But it often vanishes when I’m in social situations.”

“What happens?”

“I can feel myself blocking connection. My heart just closes.” I gestured at my chest. “With certain people and in group settings. Even Eliza sometimes.”

“Old patterns,” she said.

“Yeah. Armoring. It feels like a lead plate pressing on my chest when it arises. Even with this felt sense, this knowing, I still do it.”

She invited me to lie down on a giant futon on her floor and get comfortable with pillows and blankets. Once I was settled and eyes closed, she began making audible inhales and exhales, prompting me to follow her rhythm.

Within minutes, I could feel the intensity of the breathwork building in my body. The room faded to black. My mouth and throat became bone dry. I began to feel lightheaded. My hands and arms started tingling. My hips twisting back and forth to dissipate the energy building in my torso and abdomen. Suddenly my whole body was convulsing.

The energy in my hands became too much to bear. I began fanning my hands back and forth like I was trying to extinguish a giant fire within me. The harder I tried, the stronger it became, the more futile it was. I felt hopeless.

Alice leaned in. “What do your hands want to say?”

Stop. The word surfaced in my mind, but I couldn’t get it out.

“Are they telling you to stop?”

She found it.

“What do they want to say?”

“Stop. Yes, STOP.”

Next thing I knew, I was rolling around on the ground, on my stomach, crying like a little boy.

“I just can’t do it anymore,” I said through tears. “I can’t keep holding it all together. I’m exhausted.”

“Exhausted from what?”

“I don’t know how to be and do at the same time.”

Alice’s voice cut through: “You can just be here. There’s nothing to do.”

My whole body softened deeper into the futon. The relief of that nourishing statement—that I could just be—broke something open. I sobbed harder.

But even as I cried, the energy was still there. I rolled onto my back, hoping it would dissipate, that something different would emerge in its place.

“There’s electricity running through my hands and arms,” I told her. “It’s unrelenting, intense.”

“Where do your hands naturally want to go?”

Intuitively, I put them on my chest. Each hand covering each pec, fingers meeting at my solar plexus. I could feel the charge drop into my chest. I breathed into it.

Alice made that audible breathing sound again—slow, rhythmic—encouraging me to stay with it. I matched her breath. In. Out. In. Out.

The energy radiated through my chest, warm and electric at the same time. My hands could feel my heartbeat underneath them. For a few minutes, I just stayed there, breathing, feeling this current moving through me.

Then I had an impulse. I lifted my hands straight up, perpendicular to the ground, to see if the energy would shift.

Within a second, the current completely vanished. All the energy went blank.

“There’s no more energy,” I said. “It’s gone.” There was a part of me that wanted it to come back now because I could feel it had something to communicate.

“Your heart has a lot of energy,” Alice said quietly.

I lay there for a moment, hands still in the air. Something about what she said landed differently than anything else in the session.

“Wait,” I said. “My hands...” I couldn’t finish the sentence. The realization was forming.

“What about your hands?”

“They weren’t connected to my heart.” The words came out almost like a question, like I was discovering it as I spoke. “When they were on my chest, the energy was there. When I lifted them...”

“And now?”

I slowly lowered my hands back onto my chest. The current flooded back instantly—warm, electric, pulsing through my chest and into my palms.

I gasped. Tears came immediately.

My hands are an extension of my heart.

It was so simple. So obvious. My hands weren’t separate from my heart—they were of my heart. A way for it to reach out, to express, to give, to touch the world.

“Oh my god,” I sobbed. “How have I missed this for so long? It’s so obvious.”

Alice stayed quiet, letting me feel it.

“These hands,” I said through tears, “are a medium to express the heart. A medium to express love. A medium to serve.”

—

For years, I’ve wrestled with the same question: How can I be and do at the same time?

I’ve written and talked about presence, about just being here in the moment. But doing always felt separate—the work, the making, the building, the incessant forward motion of my life. I’d exhaust myself trying to hold it all together, armoring my heart in the process, blocking the very thing I was trying to access.

Lying on that futon in Brooklyn, I finally understood.

Doing and being aren’t separate when they come from love.

My hands aren’t tools for accomplishment, for getting shit done. They’re how my heart touches the world. Cooking dinner for my family. Folding laundry. Writing. Building something. Giving my daughter a back rub before bed. Hugging a friend. Texting a client. Every gesture, every action—all of it can be an expression of the heart.

The heart moves through these hands.

As I step into my 47th year, I’m living into an essential question: What does my heart want to express through these hands?

I can feel the answer right now, typing these words. There’s a slight buzz in my palms and fingertips. It’s the same current I felt on Alice’s floor. My heart, reaching out through my hands toward you. That’s what I’m bringing into this year.

The question I’ve been wrestling with—how to be and do at the same time—finally has an answer I can feel and trust.

Love.

When my hands move from love, being and doing are the same thing. I’ve been feeling it all week. In the ordinary moments. In the smallest gestures. My heart, speaking through these hands.