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The Ancient Art Modern Coaches and Therapists Need to Rediscover

Writer's picture: SuzannahSuzannah

Threading a bead is an ancient practice—one that modern-day coaches and therapists might do well to return to. The moment a bead slips between your fingers and onto the string, a small, deliberate act of creation takes place.


It is ordinary, yet intimate. Simple, yet profound.


Photo by Miriam Alonso at www.pexels.com
Photo by Miriam Alonso at www.pexels.com

We live so much of our lives in our heads—thinking, worrying, planning, doubting. The swirl of thoughts never quite settles, always shifting like mist. But the hands, they know something different. They speak in texture and weight, in movement and rhythm. They ground us in what is real.


Life Beading isn’t just about making something beautiful. It’s about giving form to what matters. The inner critic, the hidden fears, the small steps of courage—all of it takes shape when we put hand to thread. It is a way of saying, this is real, this is mine.


Why the Hands Matter


Philosophers and neuroscientists alike have spoken of the intelligence of the hands. Our ancestors carved meaning with them, shaping clay, weaving baskets, threading beads. To make something with our hands is to make meaning in the world.


Which is wonderful—if, of course, you have any real skill with your hands.


Personally, I do not. My fingers are all fingers and thumbs, my knots are dubious, and I seem to lack that magical eye for making things look pretty. Beads roll away from me like I’ve offended them.


And yet, even I find something soothing in threading them. Even my uncoordinated hands recognize that they are part of something meaningful.


When we thread a bead, we engage in a form of embodied storytelling. Each bead carries something—an intention, a memory, a promise. And in handling them, we come home to ourselves, however briefly.


The body anchors what the mind struggles to hold.


Beads as Anchors


A bead is small. But its weight in the hand can be surprising. And sometimes, this is what we need—something solid when everything else feels ungraspable.


There are moments when words fail. When reasoning offers no comfort. But the hand can hold, the hand can thread. It can string together something that reminds us: I am here, I am making my way.



A Practice of Presence


Life Beading slows us down in a way that feels like relief. It asks us to be present, to focus on the bead in our fingers, to breathe as we thread. And in doing so, we meet ourselves with a little more kindness, a little more patience.


For some, it is a way to mark a shift—to honour a transition, to step into courage, to name a truth long buried. For others, it is simply a way to be, to let the hands do what they have always known how to do: create, connect, hold.


Even if those hands are still trying to remember how to tie a knot properly.


What Will You Thread?


If you were to sit down now, with beads before you, what would your hands choose? What weight do you need to carry, and what do you long to let go of?


Putting hand to thread is not just an act of making. It is an act of becoming. A way of bringing something from the unseen world into form. It is, in the end, a way of saying yes—to presence, to meaning, to the quiet wisdom of the hands.

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