LEFT HAND INDEX FINGER - SLIGHT NERVE DAMAGE FROM DOG BITE

From Amazon: "Sorry, We Can't Deliver This To The United States" That's a new one on me.... Really odd, especially since they are made in the U.S.! I'll look for another source.... On a related note, I discovered something called "Sujok Rings," which I did get from Amazon. You roll them up and down your finger. They are a wire mesh-type sort of thing. The pack I received has several colors, with varying degrees of tightness. Normally, I would think such a thing to be in the category of Voodoo, but these things are incredible! After even the first use, the feeling in my affected left forefinger miraculously "woke up!!!' I can now play stuff on my saxophone that had eluded me for the last couple of years And, on piano, I can play stuff that I was hearing in my head that I was "missing" or just wasn't getting. I'm using them about every other day. What I think happened is that the injury cut off some blood supply to the affected nerve, or that the injury and stitches resulted in some sort of "covering" or "callous." My doctor said that the insane pitbull dog didn't actually sever the nerve. Maybe using the rings pushed the nerves back together. Whatever, I really can't believe how much improvement I've had! I can't find the Chinese medicine balls anywhere locally (I bought some small ones 15 years ago and still have them. They're painted and make cool sounds due to internal little gong type things). So, Amazon for the larger ones. I'll report back where I can find the finger exercisers things. Thanks! Best, - Jeff

Everything depends on what you're after. Traditionally, the variant where the balls don't touch is for meditation purposes. If you want to develop "intelligent" strength, however, (those balls are also called "kung fu balls"), then the balls should keep uninterrupted contact and you should actually slightly squeeze them together while rolling them in your hand. In this respect, the most challenging way of using them - both clockwise and counterclockwise - is with palms down without damaging your expensive parquetry flooring (if you drop them, you get nasty holes and cracks in your floor ). P.S.: Size matters in this case. The balls should be big enough to challenge your palms and fingers. Too small balls in too big hands is of little use. Ideal is when two contacting balls cover the width of your palm. There is also an interesting technical problem to solve (the exact interaction between thumb side ) when you roll the balls "towards the pinky" with palms down. This problem can be solved by working with palms facing your body sideways first and observing why exactly one hand (usually the dominant one from what I have seen in others) gets stuck and the other one doesn't. Paul

Thanks Paul for this update on the Chinese balls. I will try your variants! I do believe, however that rotating them not touching gives not only meditative benefits but neuromuscular ones. It is like in FI (Feldenkrais Functional Integration) where you do less effort to get more neurological change. All best, AFF

Uhm. Yes and no. Depends on how you evolve in the process. For example, one can make the "not touching" variant into a trick by making space with the middle finger so the balls *have no choice but to roll* because of how the hand structure changes all the time, assisted by slight thumb and pinky adjustments at the right time. It's a very simple trick, but that way, you actually other benefits you could have had. The baoding balls can now have no other purpose than to wow an audience. That's what you see in most YouTube clips about the subject. The balls "no longer touching", however, can also be the result of spinning them fast enough in my variant (at a certain point, they will simply separate without your involvement - the "Zen"/"let-go" principle or whatever one wants to call that) with the added advantage of you having gone through a kind of physical training that really in ways that will prove very useful for piano playing. Paul