ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the value of an embodied enquiry within the therapeutic process. It illustrates how directing the attention of the client to the felt and visceral experience of their discomfort, pain, hope, and the use of metaphor within their communication can shed a needed light on their process. As well as connecting the client with themselves and reminding them that their ‘being’ inhabits the whole body as well as their thinking, this light can reveal unexpected influences or beliefs that the client did not know were dictating their choices or habits. The chapter particularly investigates how a client can be informed or surprised by a discovery made when noticing and valuing gestures made by their hands. These gestures often communicate something of which the client is unconscious, and this awareness can open a portal into new or deeper enquiry within the therapy. The chapter describes four case studies. In each one, the hands prompt a vital avenue of the therapeutic journey. As introduction and container, the chapter explores the Grimm Brothers story of The Handless Maiden which underpins the symbolic value and agency our hands represent.
