Hands & Heart
Hello my friends!
For those of you that have been practicing with me for the past 6 weeks, you know that I have been adding mudras into our classes regularly. I introduce our mudra at the beginning of class and we sit quietly with our hands in that position. Then we release our mudra. At the end of class, we test our short-term memory and try to recall the gesture.
That’s always a fun challenge!
I thought I might shed some light on what we’ve been doing.
What is a mudra?
A mudra is a gesture or seal with the hand. Yoga mudras have purpose and significance, helping to promote physical health, psychological balance, and spiritual awakening. Mudras help to evoke our own inherent positive qualities, which are always just under the surface, waiting to be awakened.
How do you select a mudra?
Each week I select a mudra to share at the beginning of class. I’m working with a set of cards from Mudras for Healing and Transformation by Joseph Le Page and Lilian Aboim. Sometimes I select something at random but mostly I am guided by the theme of our practice. Last week our yoga practice was grounding, so we practiced the Bhu Mudra, a gesture of the earth.
Are mudras magic?
Heck no! But our hands are powerful tools. They can do so much.
We use our hands to care for others - to give, to receive. We offer a hand, we give a hand, we lend a hand. Our hands can help to heal and soothe others. We communicate with our hands. We can feed, we can share, we can create with our hands.
So why not harness that power?
Take a moment this week to notice all that you do with your hands. Notice the movement and the gesturing. Notice the change that occurs when you employ your hands to complete tasks, to serve others, to build something new, to learn.
Without realizing it, we use mudra every day - perhaps not formally, but in our own ways. While some of our gestures might have specific names and shapes, most of what we do is of our own design.
We are expressing our own inherent and positive qualities.
That’s not magic, that’s building a more loving world.
With hands & heart,
Nina G