Your wellbeing is a top priority during this pandemic. Human life and productivity depend on good health. Mental well-being is just as crucial as physical well-being. Meditation to the brain is what physical exercise is to the body.
Meditation is a set of practices that promote heightened awareness and concentrated attention. It enhances your insight, reveals your true nature, and brings you inner peace. It is practiced in various traditions and cultures all over the world.
There are various meditation hand positions that are a huge part of the meditation. All of them have different meanings. They help you calm down and relieve all your stress. It involves focus and awareness.
Types of Meditation
- Mindfulness meditation
- Spiritual meditation
- Focused meditation
- Movement meditation
- Mantra meditation
- Transcendental meditation
- Progressive relaxation
- Loving-kindness meditation
- Visualization meditation
Benefits of Meditation
There are various benefits of meditation that help you to calmly carry out your day. These benefits do not expire when your session ends. Let’s take a look at the benefits of meditation:
Increases immunity
Meditation leads to an increase in antibodies, which helps us fight diseases. It provides all the electrical energy needed to boost immunity.
Reduces pain
Your state of mind is proportional to your perception of pain. Meditation helps to calm the mind and dull the pain. The causes of pain were the same for both meditators and non-meditators, but meditators had a better capacity to cope. There have been incidents where meditation helped in reducing depression symptoms in people suffering from chronic pain.
Increases sleep quality
Stress and concern are common causes of sleep problems, but meditation enhances the relaxation response. It also increases autonomic nervous system function, which reduces the ease with which you are awoken. Meditation helps to improve sleep quality as it helps to control runaway thoughts which lowers the time you take to sleep.
Promotes positive feelings
Meditation generates a positive attitude towards yourself and others. It may lead you to become a more empathetic, compassionate, and considerate person. It helps you get rid of stress and focus on your goals; this gives rise to a feeling of confidence and increases your self esteem.
Boost creativity
It helps in boosting creativity and developing new ideas by separating emotions from work. It allows you to think freely. According to research, mindfulness meditation can have a variety of beneficial effects on workplace outcomes.
It improves your endurance by allowing you to manage tension, control emotions, and maintain a more optimistic attitude, allowing you to bounce back from setbacks more quickly.
It aids in the development of the ability to turn off reactive fight-or-flight responses and move to a more reflective mode, which is critical for making balanced decisions.
Reduces stress and controls anxiety
Meditation helps in reducing stress-induced chemicals and makes you feel more relaxed. A loud, overactive mind is one of the reasons for anxiety. Meditation calms your mind and helps in decreasing anxiety. Read more: How to Sleep When Stressed and Anxious
Improves emotional intelligence
Meditation leads to a better understanding of your thoughts and emotions. It helps you to be aware of your feelings without acting on them.
Lowers blood pressure
Although there is some disagreement on this one, most experts agree that meditation, besides medical care, a balanced diet, and exercise, will help lower blood pressure. While meditation does not actually reduce blood pressure, it does aid in the reduction of stress and anxiety, all of which may contribute to high blood pressure.
What are Mudras
Mudras bring your awareness inward and reconnect you with the language of your heart: love, kindness, goodness, imagination, and joy. Hand mudras is another name for meditation hand positions.
The Sanskrit word for gesture is mudra. Each mudra has a sense and purpose, just like a gesture in everyday life. All fingers represent different elements: the thumb represents space, the index finger represents air, the middle finger represents fire, the ring finger represents water, and the pinky represents earth.
Mudra is a concept that refers to the use of hand movements during meditation intending to channel your body’s energy flow. Over the centuries, more than 100 different mudras have been created.
Mudras and States of Mind
Mudras have been used in meditation since the dawn of time. They are used to promote a certain mental condition. Every mudra has a symbolic significance on the outside and an experimental feature on the inside. This is because mudras interact with both the performer and the observer.
Mudras are also known as seal mudras. The name comes from the fact that you are joining two pieces of your hand together. Mudras are also said to assist in the unblocking of chakras. These are the body’s energy centers. Chakras must remain open or balanced in order to work to their full potential.
When a chakra is blocked, the person may experience physical, or emotional symptoms associated with that chakra. The seven major chakras that run along your spinal cord make up your body. Mudras are said to assist in the opening and balancing of the chakras.
Different Meditation Hand Positions
Now that you know what mudra is, you can use it to perform a variety of hand positions and movements during meditation. Here are some examples of mudras and their meanings:
Ganesha Mudra
Meaning: Strength and power
Benefits: Reduces anxiety, stress, and tension. It improves self-assurance and motivation. It improves mood and helps to strengthen the muscles in the arms, abdomen, heart, and shoulders.
How to do it: Put your left hand in front of your chest first. This hand’s palm should face outwards, with the thumb pointing down. The next step is to place your other hand in front of your left. Your right hand’s palm should face you and resting on your left palm. Finally, join the fingers in a half-bent position by locking them together.
Samadhi Mudra
Meaning: A state of total concentration
Benefits: The Buddha often performs the Samadhi, also known as the dhyana mudra. It promotes deep concentration and clarity of thought. This is the one to use if your mind is being pulled in a million different directions and you’re multitasking but somehow not getting anything done.
How to do it: Place both hands on your lap, palms facing up, and the right hand on top of the other. Touch the tips of your thumbs together lightly.
Karana Mudra
Meaning: Keeping evil at bay
Benefits: When negative emotions and thoughts have become sticky and you can’t shake them off, try this mudra for a boost of happiness. It brings peace, clarity, and simplicity to the internal landscape, resulting in an almost immediate upgrade.
How to do it: Place your thumb on your right hand’s middle and ring fingers, and stretch your index and pinky fingers. Then, with your palm facing out, place your hand directly in front of your heart. Meanwhile, your left hand can be propped up on your lap.
Varada Mudra
Meaning: Granting of wishes
Benefits: Varada mudra promotes kindness, charity, giving, love, being a part of the solution, and contributing to human salvation. Do this mudra anytime you want to spread some positive energy and goodness.
How to do it: Rest your left hand on your left knee, palm facing up and fingers extended, to make the mudra. With your right hand, you can make a different mudra or simply position it face up on your lap, thigh, or knee.
Rudra Mudra
Meaning: Rudra is a Sanskrit word that means lord
Benefits: It is said to enhance clarity and focus of thought. We often recommend this mudra for people who suffer from dizziness, nausea, or chronic body tension. It energizes your physical body and allows you to achieve your full potential.
How to do it: Attach your thumb to your index and ring fingers while holding your other two fingers as straight as possible to perform this mudra.
Varuna Mudra
Meaning: Balance the water element in body
Benefits: This mudra can help with constipation and indigestion. However, remember to drink plenty of water, eat mainly a balanced, plant-based diet, and get plenty of rest. To put it another way, think of the mudra as a digestive aid rather than a perfect solution.
How to do it: Keep your other three fingers stretched out and touch the tips of your thumbs with the tips of your pinkies. Then, on your knees, put your hands facing up.
Gyan Mudra
Meaning: Enhancing consciousness
Benefits: The Gyan mudra is perhaps the most well-known of all the mudras. Just because something is simple doesn’t mean you can ignore it. It’s designed to help you concentrate and improve your perception and consciousness.
How to do it: Simply touch the tip of your index finger to the tip of your thumb while holding the rest of your fingers straight out.
Jnana Mudra
Meaning: Knowledge
Benefits: This is your mudra if you have a meeting or presentation coming up and need to memorize something or if you’re having a creative block. It’s also an easy and effective way to remind yourself that you have access to an inner fountain of knowledge.
How to do it: Make a circle by curling your index fingers toward the base of your thumbs. The rest of your fingers are already straight out in front of you. Then, on your feet, lie your palms facing up or down.
Vajrapradama Mudra
Meaning: Gesture of Unshakeable Trust
Benefits: This mudra represents unwavering confidence. It’s reassuring and heartfelt. It relaxes the nervous system and assists us in discovering and trusting our inner wisdom. It’s especially effective when you’re facing a problem or feeling frustrated.
How to do it: Bring your hands in front of your heart to do so. Your fingers should be interlaced, and your open palms should rest on your heart.
Shuni Mudra
Meaning: Improving intuition
Benefits: It provides clarity and insight into the next moves, as well as how to successfully implement them. The Shuni taps into your inner fire to help you concentrate your attention and purpose.
How to do it: Pin the tip of your middle finger to the tip of your thumb.
Prana Mudra
Meaning: Vital life force
Benefits: The prana mudra opens energy channels. This mudra is a wonderful addition to your morning espresso to help move some stagnant steam.
How to do it: Touch the tips of your ring and little fingers with the tip of your thumb.
Apana Mudra
Meaning: Eliminating toxins
Benefits: The Apana mudra regulates the energy in your lower abdomen, which controls the body’s outward flow of energy. It may aid physical and emotional digestion by assisting in the removal of unwanted elements from the body.
How to do it: Touch the tip of your thumb to the tips of your middle and ring fingers while keeping the other two fingers extended, similar to the Karana mudra. Then, on your knees, rest your hands facing up.
Abhaya Mudra
Meaning: It represents peace and fearlessness since it depicts hands without arms
Benefits: For a sense of calm, bravery, and fearlessness.
How to do it: This one is easy. Arrange your right hand so that the inside of it points away from your body. Tilt your hand backwards until your wrist becomes tense. When you’re seated, this gesture works best.
Important: For better performance, keep your hand slightly below your chest.
Anjali Mudra
Meaning: Address or offer
The Anjali Mudra is not only a traditional form of greeting in many Asian countries, but we can also use it for meditation.
Benefits: The palms of your hands together help to build a sense of mental and physical equilibrium.
How to do it: Straighten up and sit or get up. Bring your hands together at the level of the heart chakra and stretch your back without having a hollow back. It’s important that the palms are fully stacked on top of one another. Have your fingers pointed upwards all the time.
Other Meditation Hand Positions
- Vitarka mudra
- Surya mudra
- Dharmachakra
- Bhumisparsha
Conclusion
Our hands can manipulate the energies of our physical, mental, and spiritual bodies. They help to connect the brain and the body, relieve pain, activate endorphins, alter our mood, and boost our vitality. These hand positions are called mudras and are used in meditation.
There are various sorts of mudras, and every mudra represents a special element and meaning. Meditation is crucial for both physical and mental health. It helps in boosting creativity, immunity and positive feelings. Meditation helps in improving sleep and reducing pain and stress.
You can’t really say you’re meditating if you don’t include mudras within the process. Using mudras throughout your meditation session will assist you cultivate stillness of mind, while refining and expanding your awareness. The mind allows universal consciousness to flow through when it is focused and quiet. That is the yogic goal.
