Mudra 1 - ‘Courage,’ ‘Fearless’ • Technique: Raise right hand in front of right shoulder, palm facing forward, relaxed, with the fingers extending upward. Keep your shoulder relaxed, elbow bent, and hand still. Feel the center of your palm warm, as if radiating a soft light. Rest the left hand in lap with the palm up, or let it hang gently at your side during standing or walking practice. • Application: Use ‘courage’ or ‘fearless’ during seated meditation and self-reflection when fear and ego clinging arise. Hold the mudra for 5-45-minutes. Imagine that whatever causes you fear is looking directly into the center of your upheld palm and is subdued. Feel that your courage and openness are unwavering, and fear is conquered by the power of your unswerving acceptance. Through regular practice in this way, fear is transformed into fearlessness. • Benefits: Calms the mind, reduces anxiety and inner conflict, removes attachment and aversion to thoughts, emotions, and sensations, serves as a form of protection from negativity.
What are Mudras? In Sanskrit the word mudra means ‘attitude,’ ‘gesture,’ or ‘seal’. In this application we are utilizing the mudras by evoking a sense of hidden power, and uniting with something larger, like tapping into universal energy, or the principle of pure awareness. The hand mudras are meant to heal and promote self-cultivation. Much like yoga, there are several expressions that mean many different things, that affect the flow of vital energy within the human body to improve health and evoke elevated spiritual/emotional states. Utilizing breathing exercises and relaxing the body are useful tools while practicing the hand mudras. These hand mudras are wonderful because they are simple, and safe and easy to do whether you’re at home, work, or even during different activities, and can be practiced by anyone anywhere. Warming up the Hands Inhale deeply and hold your breath. Clap the hands together firmly 3 times, hard enough so that they sting just a little bit. Exhale slowly through the mouth and resume natural breathing. Then, rub the hands together vigorously for about one minute, or until they feel very warm. Make sure to rub the palms and tops of the hands and fingers, warming the hands on all sides, even between the fingers. This easy warm-up will improve blood circulation to the hands and fingers, make the joints feels more supple and strong, and increase your sensitivity to the energy generated through your practice of mudras. Kindness: Be gentle. Some of the mudras will challenge the flexibility of your finger joints. If you have arthritis in your hands, practicing mudras is especially helpful, yet even more caution and gentleness needs to be employed. Intent: Use your mind to send energy into your hands, and become aware of each finger and part of your hands, wrists, and your entire body. Activating the energy in your hands will in turn activate the corresponding energy in the rest of your body and evoke a sense of overall vitality. Precision: While practicing the various hand gestures, articulate the precise form as described in the text and shown in the images to the best of your ability. At the same time, keep in mind that each of has slightly different body proportions , and our anatomical differences will reflect in variations of our hand gestures. Balance: Practice single-handed mudras with each hand if possible. However, if a mudra cannot be made with each hand, there is still great benefit in practicing with one hand. This is especially true in the case of injury of disease in one hand. Essence: You will notice each mudra has a single word attributed to it on the image. This is a playful and intuitive way of connecting with a primary quality of each mudra. You can select a card based on its single word essence, and then use the corresponding mudra to activate that quality. Play with how the word and mudra might inspire your practice of reflection and self-cultivation for the day. ————— Works Cites: Carroll, Cain & Revital. ’72 Hand Gestures for Healing and Spiritual Growth’. Singing Drangon, San Fransisco. 2014
Comments