Mudras in Yoga

Sacred Hand Gestures

You buy the DVDs, you take the weekly classes and you notice your body is starting to look leaner and more like Madonna's, but have you ever stopped to actually think about the parts of your body you are leaving out? This is where Mudras come in.

Long before man was given the gift of speech, the language of the hands was developed and was prime source of communication. These gestures could express moods, temperaments and correspond ideas.

Mudras (Sanskrit for 'seal') are generally a gesture or mystic position of the hand during Yoga practice, but they can also be eye positions, postures and even breathing techniques. In this article, I will be focusing on the hand gestures. There are twenty-five mudras in Hatha Yoga and in both Hatha and Kundalini Yoga; the mudras deepen the body posture movement and even help shift certain states of consciousness.

The most popular and publicly best-known hand mudra of yoga is the Chin Mudra. This pose is created when the yoga student touches the index finger (symbolizing human consciousness) to the thumb (symbolizing the cosmic divine) of the same hand, leaving the other three fingers gently relaxing in a concave position. With this motion, you are expressing the longing for oneness of humanity with the cosmic or divine consciousness.

While the exact origin of mudras remains a mystery, they can be found widely throughout the world, not only in the Asian culture. When Pagans raise their arms to invoke a deity, they are practicing a form of a mudra; much in the same way Catholic priests perform a Mass.

Mudras are an extremely important part of all religious actions in India and most iconography of Hindu gods can be seen posing in various yoga and mudra positions. Mudras are even a huge component to Indian dance where an entire narrative is played out through the movement of the eyes, hands and body without any words being spoken.

In Buddhism, Buddhas and Bodisattvas and repeatedly other deities are shown with their hands forming a number of dissimilar poses.