Talking With My Hands.....

I've talked with my hands for as long as I can remember. Not sign language but verbose gestures emphasizing my point. My parents sometimes made me sit on my hands as I told them some exciting story about my school day. It was hard to do.

My childhood was filled with family games of Charades and school plays. I later was scholar shipped and attended The National Conservatory of the Dramatic Arts in San Diego, California. I'm sure these experiences only encouraged me to physically enhance my speech.

I recently stumbled across this tid bit:

According to a new study, talking with our hand is actually beneficial. This makes thinking easier. A research conducted by the University of Chicago revealed that people who moved their hands more frequently while talking have higher retentive memory compared with those who kept their hands still.

Researchers at the University of Chicago explained that gesturing while speaking seems to make speech less of an effort which may leave more mental resources available for memory.

Now, you can tell yourself its ok to use your hands. It’s one way of improving your memory.

Last night I was having dinner with friends (thank you Olive Garden) and became aware that I was gesturing only with my left hand and my right hand was just sort of dancing beneath the table. I looked at it with a sense of bemused embarrassment (a term I stole from L.Q.).

One of the more common symptoms of my illness is loss of speech. It's ironic that even though I have not yet lost vocal abilities I have, in a sense, begun to to lose MY method of communicating.

--------------------------------------------------------------