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Class OverviewIn a high-tech time, the five-sense experience of making is a great way to stay balanced and to foster creativity. Discover ten benefits to getting your hands in the mix. (Check out the Top 10 Big Ideas from the class below!) Your ProfessorCarrie Barron, MD, is a board-certified psychiatrist/psychoanalyst. She has published in peer-reviewed journals, won several academic awards and presented original works related to creativity and self-expression.How to Use Your Hands to Create HappinessWhen you were a kid, it was wonderful to be able to say, “Look! I did it with my own two hands!” Say it again. Using your own two hands to cook, fix, paint, craft, design, dig – whatever your inclination– can be a positive, powerful experience from head to toe. Research shows that meaningful hand use elevates moods, expands minds, engenders organic living and builds self-reliance. In a high-tech time, the five-sense experience of making is a great way to stay balanced and to foster creativity. Discover ten benefits to getting your hands in the mix.  The Top 10 Big Ideas1Psychological Research shows that meaningful hand use –tending a garden, cooking a meal, playing the trumpet, fixing a fence– elevates mood. Bring something new into being by repurposing existing elements or by starting from scratch. When you make things your mind sifts, plays, grapples and floats. Inner and outer move together, solutions surface and the self can coalesce when we pull together a product. Psychological matters shift when you engage your hands. 2Physical Making, building, and repairing requires movement and exertion of the hands. Through physical tasks, we maintain muscle, tendon, ligament, joint health, flexibility, and coordination. This combats osteoporosis, tendon rupture, and fatigue. Using your hands a little each day over time keeps you physically robust and mentally engaged. Active hands = in-the-pink person. 3Cognitive “The hand is the window to the mind.” (Immanuel Kant). The brains of early humans grew when they used their hands to make tools.60% of the higher cortical brain is stimulated by meaningful hand use. Hand use makes us smarter. Arts, crafts and domestic endeavors bolster cognitive ability. Research shows that the common element among award -winning scientists is making. Thinkers tinker! 4Creative Craft, cook, paint, fix, decorate or plant your garden. Whatever the hand based project, five-sense experience and peak moments ensue when you make things or alter the space. Absorption in the task leads to time falling away or flow, which is a height of human experience. Master the basics of a task and you are primed to explore, improvise, innovate and hit upon an Ahamoment. Thrilling! We have a need for novelty and our hobbies can help us chart new courses. 5Environmental Make. Build. Repair. Plant. Growing, farming and re-using what exists is the foundation of the DIY (Do-It-Yourself) movement. DIY provides the uplifting inner experience of self-reliance. If we protect the environment with self-generated and handmade solutions we combine conscience, independence, pleasure and health. What’s not to like?6Educational Knowledge accumulation and strictly cerebral pursuits can backfire.A fully developed mind needs undirected as well as directed thought. Undirected thought (daydreaming) occurs with busy hands. Plus, traditional classes in cursive, art, dance, shop and domestic arts prepares kids for the future (creative ability is becoming crucial) protects mind health and leads to new solutions.Even if one is destined for business, medicine, law, teaching, accounting or parenting, the creative capacity instilled by these endeavors is a source of success. 7Skill Building Unique satisfaction comes from finishing concrete tasks. Mastering a trade can serve in multiple ways. Professors become motorcycle mechanics and make more money. Wall street workers turn into passionate bike builders. We are attached to the egghead idea but manual tasks are grounding, giving, practical and lofty. One Buddhist thinker described manual tasks as spiritually satisfying. 8Autonomy Know-how is an antidote to anxiety, a self-esteem booster and a buffer. Great thinkers such as R.W Emerson cited self-reliance as a component of wellness. Practiced hand endeavors can mitigate plights because a sense of control over something, however small, can help people pull through challenging circumstances. Rituals comfort. Having a hobby also helps with self-definition and sense of purpose. Decreasing dependency on others is good in both practical and psychological ways. Fixing it yourself can make you free. Similar to self-soothing in children. 9Connectedness to Our Surroundings Our hands help us us know our environment in a deep way. Tending to our space helps us feel secure, grounded, connected and peaceful. Making and removing an imprint or re-designing a room can be calming. We can integrate hand, mind, setting, experience and intuition to create new useful objects and enhance wellness. 10Organicity By using our hands in meaningful ways, we honor our anatomic intent. Technology has deprived us of certain making experiences that used to foster pride and spur innovation. We used to have to create – pies, barns, fences, quilts – and now we can buy most of what we need with a click. Convenience, efficiency and technological creations are great, but in-the-trenches hand is essential for health.Bring hand and body into tech and make the world better!