Hands & feet as metaphors for the mind/spirit

[Sandy Clegg]

A really short post this, as I just want to get discussion going. I think there are a number of people on this forum who are already familiar with this concept, but hands and feet often seem to be used as metaphors/symbols for the mind/soul/spirit, or however you wish to describe that part of someone like Bran which is able to 'enter' another's body as a skin changer, or a wolf as a warg. This metaphor is made pretty explicit by GRRM in A Storm of Swords, in this Bran scene:

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. . . he slipped his skin, and reached for Hodor.

It was not like sliding into Summer. That was so easy now that Bran hardly thought about it. This was harder, like trying to pull a left boot on your right foot. It fit all wrong, and the boot was scared too, the boot didn't know what was happening, the boot was pushing the foot away.

This harks back to Bran's climbing scene in AGOT, where he likens feet to hands:

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He liked how it felt too, pulling himself up a wall stone by stone, fingers and toes digging hard into the small crevices between. He always took off his boots and went barefoot when he climbed; it made him feel as if he had four hands instead of two.

Feet into boots, feet as hands, feet and hands being used interchangeably as metaphors for the skinchanger mind/soul. Boots as a metaphor for the body which is being controlled by a skinchanger. Then we get this scene from The Hedge Knight

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Dunk could see the truth in that. "If I had not fought, you would have had my hand off. And my foot. Sometimes I sit under that tree there and look at my feet and ask if I couldn't have spared one. How could my foot be worth a prince's life?

Maekar chewed on that a time, [...] "The realm has as many hedge knights as hedges, and all of them have feet."

- The Hedge Knight

This metaphor is continued in the most recent novel's prologue:

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As a boot was shaped to accept a foot, a dog was shaped to accept a collar, even a collar no human eye could see.

- ADWD, Prologue

 So, if we assume that George has had this conceit in mind since the first book, and it continues to be relevant, then how does that affect our reading of this scene between King Robert and Ned:

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"My loving wife. The mother of my children." The rage was gone from him now; in his eyes Ned saw something sad and scared. "I should not have hit her. That was not … that was not kingly." He stared down at his hands, as if he did not quite know what they were. "I was always strong … no one could stand before me, no one. How do you fight someone if you can't hit them?" Confused, the king shook his head. "Rhaegar … Rhaegar won, damn him. I killed him, Ned, I drove the spike right through that black armor into his black heart, and he died at my feet."

I'm not going to give my thoughts here, I'm genuinely interested in what you all think about this, and how it could be interpreted.