I welcome you to this book with a hand gesture of greeting, known in the Indian tradition as ‘Namaste’ – this translates as ‘my essence greets your essence’. This book is all about such mudras: hand gestures used to strengthen and purify mind, body and psyche by ensuring the free flow of natural healing energy, or prana, around your body to bring about radiant health and inner peace.
Hand gestures are used in many meditation traditions and are instruments of healing in a number of therapeutic systems. These include reflexology (massage using reflex points on the hands and feet), kinesiology (muscle-testing and natural healing techniques) as well as India’s traditional system of healing, Ayurveda. This book is based mainly on the Indian use of mudras: these simple yet powerful gestures are also an essential practice in hatha yoga and Indian dance, art and ritual. However, people have been depicted making similar hand gestures across the globe and throughout history: on Egyptian pyramids, Sumerian tablets and Mayan statues, in Hebrew inscriptions and Classical art.
Unlike yoga postures and breathing exercises, which are best learned from a teacher, mudras are easy to pick up and totally safe to practise by yourself. Absolutely anyone can benefit, from children with learning disabilities to older people with limited movement. If you have little spare time, mudras make the perfect form of exercise: you can practise while waiting for a bus, taking a break from the computer or watching TV.
Mudras are so valuable because they enhance overall wellbeing and allow you to tap into hidden energy reserves. Practice brings physical benefits, such as increased mobility and balance, and mental benefits, such as improved concentration. Emotionally, mudras encourage forgiveness and compassion. As yoga and meditation tools, they develop deep calm and inner peace. This book offers practical techniques to achieve all this – and all you need is your hands.
Through my experimentation, observation and extensive teaching of yoga, I’ve found that the body is a powerful antenna that is continually receiving and transmitting the subtle energy known as prana.
Most people think of hatha yoga as physical exercises: asanas. But it has developed many other techniques for channelling prana efficiently and effectively. There are breathing exercises (pranayama), cleansing exercises (kriyas), energy ‘locks’ (bandhas) and ‘seals’ (mudras), as well as meditation and ethical teachings. Hatha yoga begins with the physical body, but with practice you become aware of a more subtle movement of energy that is not physical in nature.
As I got more deeply into my asana practice, I became aware that I was doing something more than just moving my body. Often I felt as though my movement was just a flow of energy. As I became aware of the prana, I started to find ways to direct and seal it into specific channels. This was the start of my work with mudras, which enabled me to fine-tune and intensify many of the benefits of my asana practice.
I started practising yoga in 1967, long before it was fashionable, and became a yoga teacher in 1975. I found I have an aptitude for observation and research, and the ability to communicate ancient teachings in everyday language. Over the years, I’ve taught many classes and trained many teachers. Much of what I observed, including my findings on mudras, has gone into this book.
In 2003, when I began training yoga instructors in the teaching of meditation, started experimenting with mudras on a wider scale. Each week, I asked the student teachers to practise a different mudra and report back on its energetic values. Many of their findings are contained in this book. I hope it will inspire you, too, to try using mudras and experience for yourself how this ancient practice can help you to live a more peaceful and happy life right now.
OM shanti – with wishes for peace,
Swami Saradananda
After your face, no part of your body is quite as expressive as your hands. With the flexibility to make a wide range of gestures and subtle movements, your hands can convey complicated thoughts and profound feelings, helping you to communicate and connect with other people.
Modern scientific research has established that moving different parts of your hands activates different areas of your brain. Since ancient times, Indian philosophy has taught that how the fingers move and touch each other influences the flow of prana, the life-giving energy within the body (see pages 12–13), and yogis have used precise hand and finger gestures – mudras – to channel prana for physical and mental healing and spiritual enlightenment.
This book draws on this ancient Indian science, offering more than 70 mudras suited to modern life. There are mudras to boost mental acuity and calm you down; mudras for letting off steam and connecting to others; mudras to energize or relax; and mudras to ease symptoms of common ailments. All are effective, easy to perform, and safe and simple to incorporate into your everyday routine.
THE BENEFITS OF MUDRAS
Regular practice of mudras can help to:
• ensure prana (subtle energy) moves freely to keep your body and mind well balanced and healthy
• increase flexibility and mobility of your hands, wrists, arms and shoulders
• improve technique if you play an instrument or hand-intensive sport
• boost mental acuity and concentration
• ease symptoms of common ailments
• overcome emotional difficulties, from anger to grief
• purge your sub-conscious mind of negativity
• develop a regular meditation practice
• encourage inner peace and a sense of oneness with the universe.
Whether you are a complete beginner or already have a yoga or meditation practice, you will find it easy to practise the mudras in this book.
Chapter 1 offers flexibility exercises for your fingers and wrists, arms and shoulders, which can be used to build strength and suppleness or as a warm-up for mudra practice. They are especially useful if you work at a computer or your hands are a bit stiff.
The six chapters (Chapters 2–7) at the heart of this book focus on mudras connected to each of the five fingers and the palm. Each finger connects to the energy of one of the five elements of Indian philosophy (see pages 16–17) while the palm relates to the mind, so the chapters in turn focus on fire, air, ether, earth, water and mind mudras. Each group of mudras has a particular life benefit, from greater self-esteem and stress-relief to increased creativity, stability, health and concentration.
In each mudra profile there is an introduction to help you choose why and when to practise, plus simple instructions for finger placement and notes on the effects of the gesture and how it works. Each mudra has an extra practical feature: an idea for incorporating the mudra into a yoga, meditation or breathing practice, for example, or an accompanying chant or visualization to enhance its effects.
Start with any mudras that appeal to you or feel easy. You might choose one for its effect on body and mind, or because of its link to a certain time of day or recommended practice position. On pages 151–4 you will find a basic daily routine of seven mudras, plus suggested sequences to ease common health complaints, from allergies to headaches.
As with anything, to reap the most benefit from mudras, you need to practise regularly (daily is best). Some mudras show immediate effects – Bhairava Mudra (page 136) instantly calms the mind – but most work best over a period of time.
The Sanskrit word prana is often translated as ‘life-force’, ‘vital energy’ or ‘vital air’. Yoga philosophy teaches that this subtle energy animates and moves through your pranamaya kosha, or aura – an ‘etheric double’ of your physical body. Prana is not a physical energy, and is quite different from the electrical current that moves through your nervous system. This form of bio-energy is much more subtle.
Prana flows through the pranamaya kosha or bio-energy field in subtle channels known to yogis as nadis. Acupuncturists and shiatsu practitioners refer to these channels as ‘meridians’. In Sanskrit, the word nadi means a riverbed containing water or the channel through which a river flows. Yoga texts claim that the subtle wiring system in your pranamaya kosha is made up of 72,000 nadis. As prana flows through these nadis it reaches every part of your body: this is the force that ensures your body stays well balanced and healthy.
It’s perhaps easiest to understand the concepts of nadis and prana by visualizing the nadis as the roads within a highway system that enable traffic (prana) to move smoothly and freely. When prana is free-flowing, the body stays vibrantly healthy. However, at times the nadis become blocked and the flow of prana is interrupted. A whole region maybe cut off by a blockage. As a result, that part of the body is weakened, and may become susceptible to ailments – or it may even atrophy or become paralysed.
For your body to be exceptionally healthy, it is important to break up these ‘traffic jams’ and stimulate the prana to flow freely through your nadis again, bringing natural healing energy to every area. You can do this by practising yoga postures, breathing exercises and mudras.
Why are mudras so effective at clearing energetic blockages? Most of the major nadis either start or finish in your hands or feet. So working with your hands is a particularly effective way of cleansing the subtle channels of impurities, removing obstructions and directing the prana in healthier directions. When you position the fingers in particular ways, you affect the flow of prana by working with the chakras and elements linked with each finger (see pages 14–19), redirecting its healing force wherever it is needed to re-establish balance, which eases symptoms.
Sometimes traffic needs to be temporarily diverted on the pranic highway so repairs can be made to the nadi network. Mudras help here, too, acting like switches that can create or cut the flow of prana to various parts of your body; as you position your fingers in different ways you can seal off certain nadis and instead channel prana to weaker regions of your body to strengthen and stimulate them. The Sanskrit word mudra can be translated as ‘seal’. Alternatively, you might wish to direct prana away from areas where there is an excessive concentration of it. The instructions for practising the individual mudras in chapters 2–7 explain how to do this and why it works.
But above all, by practising the mudras in this book, you allow yourself to become a clear channel for prana to flow through, enhancing wellbeing and ensuring peace of mind.
Prana is vital subtle energy, which flows through the physical body although it is not visible. It travels through channels that yogis call ‘nadis’.
If we liken the nadis in the energetic body to the roads in a highway system, we can imagine what happens at a junction, where two or more roads meet or cross. A junction is more likely to become congested or blocked than a straight, uninterrupted stretch of highway. The more roads that come together, the more likelihood there is of a traffic jam developing. And the larger the roads, the larger the traffic jam at busy times. There are seven important crossing points for nadis in the energetic body, where the major nadis come together. These large energy hubs are referred to as chakras in the Indian tradition – the Sanskrit word translates as ‘wheel’. These vibrant centres of energy work as antennae, receiving, storing, transforming and transmitting prana. Each chakra governs the energy of the region of your body in which it is located; they are also strongly related to the senses, governing the way you take in information from the world and process it, as well as the mode and quality of the energy you give out.
Seven major chakras are aligned with the body’s spine: the root, sacral, solar plexus, heart, throat, brow and crown chakras.
The seven main chakras are located in the region of your spine, moving up from the base of your body to your lower abdomen, solar plexus, heart, throat, forehead and finally the crown of your head. There are less busy energy junctions, too, where fewer roads meet, known as ‘marma points’ in the Indian tradition, and as acupressure or acupuncture points in Traditional Chinese Medicine. And there are a number of minor chakras, including those in the palms of your hands.
Although considered minor chakras, the hand chakras are essential energetic antennae. LInked to the heart chakra, they transmit a flow of healing energy out from the heart centre. Without your hand chakras you would have difficulty in receiving information from the world and sending energy outward, for example in extending feelings of compassion or reaching out to others. By stimulating these chakras (see pages 132–3) you can better feel the connection between your hands and your heart and become more sensitive to the healing energy of your heart chakra.
As with any junction, traffic flow is more free and easy when there are no jams or breakdowns. The same is true with the chakras: when they are open, clean and operating smoothly, physical health and mental wellbeing are assured in the areas of the body and senses governed by those particular chakras.
There are various ways to keep your chakras clean, balanced and fully functional, including yoga and meditation practice. But one of the easiest and most effective ways to rid these energy junctions of blockages and ensure free-flowing prana is to practise mudras. By doing this you awaken and start directing the natural healing energies in your hands.
In the Indian tradition, each finger relates to the energy of one of the five ‘great elements’ (maha-bhootas): the thumb to fire (matter in radiant form), the index finger to air (matter in gaseous form), the middle finger to ether (space), the ring finger to earth (solid matter) and the little finger to water (liquids). The palm of the hand relates to the mind. Mudras that predominantly use certain parts of the hands therefore have different sets of physical, emotional and spiritual benefits, depending on which elemental energies and chakras are most affected in that hand position.
Some mudras involve only one hand, others engage both hands in symmetrical gestures, and others still have each hand in a different position, but most mudras are formed by using your thumb (fire element) to lightly stimulate one or more of the other elements as you touch the tip, nail, knuckle or base of a finger. These general rules detail how each element is affected by finger positioning.
THE FIVE BASIC FINGER POSITIONS
Joining your thumb tip to a finger tip encourages stability in the linked element.
Touching the back of a finger (nail or knuckle) decreases the linked element’s influence.
Bringing your thumb to the base of any finger stimulates the linked element.
When your palm faces upward, you open to receive inspiration and energy.
When your palm faces downward, you become more grounded.
HOW THE FINGERS RELATE TO THE ELEMENTS AND THE CHAKRAS
This chart details the connections between the parts of the hand, the elements and the chakras. When the elements are in balance, it is easier to maintain health and wellbeing.
In order to better understand how mudras affect your body and mind, it is helpful to have a basic knowledge of the three Ayurvedic constitutions, or types of physical and mental make-up, known as the doshas. These are made up of three energetic types: vata, pitta and kapha, and Ayurveda places great emphasis on keeping them in balance.
Many factors, both internal and external, disturb the balance of one or more of the doshas, including emotional and physical stress, not eating for your body type, the seasons and the weather, physical trauma, and problems with work, family and relationships. Mudras gently but powerfully counteract negative influences that cause these energies to fall out of balance and play an important part in maintaining a healthy balance of the three doshas within your body, mind and consciousness.
Vata: air and ether elements; cold and dry; this is the energy of movement.
Pitta: fire element; hot, dry qualities; this is the energy of digestion, assimilation and metabolism.
Kapha: earth and water elements; cold, wet qualities; this is the energy forming the body’s structure.
THE THREE ENERGIES IN BALANCE
For optimal physical and emotional health, you need a balance within your body of the three energies – vata (air and ether), pitta (fire) and kapha (earth and water).
VATA
This is the energy of movement; it is made up of air (matter in gaseous form) and ether (space). It is constantly moving, expansive in nature, easily changeable, irregular and cold. When vata is excessive, your body tends to suffer from dryness, roughness, stiffness, joint pain, and brittle bones and teeth. You may have trouble focusing or committing to anything. Joint problems and symptoms relating to the nervous system are said to indicate an imbalance of vata.
Mudras can offer relief from symptoms in body or mind, particularly those involving the index and middle fingers. If you have a vata imbalance it’s more effective to practise mudras while sitting or standing still rather than while engaged in other activities.
PITTA
The energy of digestion, assimilation and metabolism is known as pitta. It is mainly composed of the fire element and is hot and dry. Pitta generates heat in your body and regulates your temperature. When pitta is excessive, you may tend to get angry, suffer from high blood pressure, or burning sensations, sweat too much and crave spicy food. You may develop eczema, irritability, blotchy red skin, rashes and hives.
Pitta and the fire element relate to your thumb. Most mudras involve the thumbs, so other factors often become important when you use mudras to treat pitta imbalances, such as the way your thumb presses the other fingers or palm.
KAPHA
The basic energy that forms your body’s structure, kapha provides the foundation for the other doshas. Kapha is made up of the water and earth elements and is cold and moist and white in nature. It is stable and tends to move very little.
When kapha is excessive, you may feel stuck in life, crave too many sweets, feel heavy, and suffer from swelling and congestion. Accompanying physical symptoms may include depression, lethargy, passivity, weight gain, asthma, water retention and congestion.
Mudras can be very helpful for kapha imbalances, particularly those involving the ring and little fingers. Practise them alongside some gentle movement, such as yoga postures or walking.
INTEGRATING MUDRAS INTO YOUR LIFE
You can practise many of the mudras in this book anywhere at any time – walking to work, sitting at your desk, on a train (though not while driving). They are equally helpful during stressful situations and while relaxing. Each mudra entry suggests appropriate ways to add it into your daily routine.
Alternatively, you can practise mudras in a more focused way by sitting or kneeling in a meditation posture. Many benefits of mudra practice are enhanced if you build them into contemplative activities such as yoga or meditation.
PRACTISING WHILE SITTING
If you sit or kneel to practise, it is easy to drop into deep relaxation and you may feel an urge to sing with joy. There are stories of mudra practitioners experiencing involuntary, but not unpleasant, movements of their arms and bodies during a meditation session.
While sitting you can place your hands on your thighs or knees. This stimulates the subtle energy channels in your legs and helps balance the root (muladhara) chakra, providing a firm foundation for practice. For joined-hand mudras you may rest your hands on a small cushion or blanket in your lap.
Sitting on a chair: Use a straight-backed chair; do not sit on an upholstered chair or a bed, which tend to discourage a straight back. Keep your feet flat on the ground or on a folded blanket or mat. Relax your shoulders and lift your breastbone. Imagine that a string attached to the top of your head is supporting your weight. Without losing your connection to the seat, feel your body reaching upward, tall and steady, without effort.
Sitting with legs crossed: Sitting ‘tailor fashion’ gives your body a firm base and encourages your mind to stay centred. With regular practice, tightness in your hips lessens and the muscles of the lower back strengthen. If your knees are higher than your hips, sit on a cushion or folded blanket to lift your buttocks and relieve tension in the lower back and hips. Sit up straight, spine perpendicular to the ground. Check your head is erect, chin parallel to the floor and shoulders unhunched.
Kneeling on your heels: Place a mat or folded blanket on the ground. Kneel on the mat with feet and knees together or slightly apart. Lower your buttocks to rest firmly on your heels. If your ankles or feet are uncomfortable, cushion them with a rolled up washcloth. Some people prefer a low meditation bench. Rest your buttocks on the bench with feet and knees together or slightly apart.
PRACTISING WHILE STANDING
Stand firmly with feet slightly apart, in line with your hips, and knees straight. Feel your bodyweight spreading evenly between both feet. If you practise while walking, you may feel lighter and notice that your step is more vigorous or bouncy.
PRACTISING WHILE LYING DOWN
Feel free to practise mudras lying down when you feel in need of deeper relaxation; where this isn’t advised there is a note in the text.
FINGER CONTACT
When performing a mudra, make a light contact between thumb and fingers. Unless otherwise specified, practise with both hands simultaneously to concentrate the elemental energies.
BREATHING
Try to keep your lips gently sealed and breathe through your nose. Try placing the top of your tongue flat against the roof of your mouth. Slide your tongue back so the tip is just behind the hard ridge at the rear of your upper teeth (it can help to swallow). This position calms your mind, balances and increases your sensitivity to prana energy and connects two major nadi energy pathways (ida and pingala).
