ENLIGHTEN UP! a blogSelf-awareness stories: lighting our way to clarity, contentment and resilience in a complicated world.
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 Photo: Maria Mendola. https://mariaalive.com Question: Why yoga for your hands? Answer: The holidays are coming. We’re moving into them facing a global pandemic along with the social, political, and racial unrest that’s come along with it. This leaves us with questions to answer.
Whatever your holidays look like, the garden-variety stress we feel during this time will be increased exponentially. Yoga for your hands can help you reach a measure of equanimity when you can’t drop to your knees and flow into Child Pose or do Legs Up the Wall in the middle of a difficult gathering with family and friends. When Joseph LePage, my primary yoga teacher, first introduced yoga for your hands (mudras) into the Integrative Yoga Therapy Training program, I resisted. I simply did not get it. But having been raised a “good girl” with respect for my teachers; I went along with the program. He introduced them. I listened. I practiced. And I felt nothing. Nada. No energy shifts, no sensations, no nothing. So much for mudras, I thought. Several months later, I found myself in a stressful family situation. My hands automatically moved into one of the grounding mudras I’d learned and WOW!!! There it was. My palms tingled, my breath slowed, and I felt a sense of calm in the middle of that uncomfortable situation. It actually worked. I was amazed and delighted. What are mudras? The common English meaning of the word is “gesture,” or “seal.” In Sanskrit mudra means, “to bring forth pleasure or enchantment.” Mudras are thought to have arisen spontaneously from the deep meditative states experienced by the ancient Indian sages. Mudras can be used to recognize a quality, attitude, or energetic state that is already present and waiting to be awakened. Three desirable states we humans need to awaken during these times are calm, balance and focus. Once I grasped the basic principle of mudras, and felt them shift my energy, I searched for an analogy to make the concept mudras personal and memorable. It took a while but when I gave up my flip phone, bought a smart phone, and used the GPS function for the first time to get directions to a workshop I was attending, the light bulb went off. GPS! Global Positioning System! Mudras can be thought of as a global positioning system for reaching and realizing a desired state. Consciously place the hands in a particular position, pay attention, and allow the mudra to take you where you need to go. Now I practice mudras regularly and can definitely feel their effects. Here are three related to the desired states of calm, balance and focus.  Adhi Mudra This gesture is said to bring the breath to the base of the body to help with anxiety and instill a sense of calming, grounding and stillness. Instructions:
 Hakini Mudra This mudra facilitates full deep breathing, supports overall health and healing and is said to bring forth a state of balance and integration. Instructions:
 Jnana Mudra
This gesture is related to the ability to concentrate and focus. It is perhaps one of the most well-known meditation mudras. Instructions:
Try some yoga for your hands and realize benefits to your whole being. My self-awareness newsletter is published six times a year. It features informative, inspiring and entertaining tips for finding clarity, contentment, and resilience in a complicated world. Sign up here.
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 From January through March, I was busy teaching yoga, writing a book, and sending proposals to agents and publishers for my non-fiction book, Enlighten Up! I was keeping busy, visiting friends, going to art openings, reading books, posting online, eating out, hanging with family – you know, normal life.
Then BAM! Up popped the pandemic, forcing me to take a ride on the CORONA-coaster. That left me, like many of you, COVER-whelmed, dealing with CORONA-phobia, and adjusting to the three W’s - Wear a mask, Wash your hands and Watch your distance. All my classes were cancelled. One of the studios I worked for, teaching restorative and yin yoga sadly closed permanently. I thought I was going to have an extended restful stay-cation and sabbatical from work and volunteering. Boy, was I wrong! The pandemic hit pretty hard, pretty early in Connecticut, largely because the southern part of the state borders New York, which really got slammed. Because I felt healthy and safe, and because I have a deep interest in making sure everyone has access to basics like food, I gave my government $1,200 relief payment, plus more of my own savings, to World Central Kitchen, No Kid Hungry, Feeding America and my local Foodshare program. Connecticut, The Nutmeg State, is largely populated by reasonable people who listen to science. In the past seven months, I’ve seen only one or two folks not wearing masks or social distancing. As a result we are now slowly and safely opening back up. Then there is the other pandemic of racial and social injustice that re-appeared in front of our eyes in the news, and on our digital devices. I say re-appeared because it has never really gone away. I found myself attending a rally, writing about it, performing a piece in a local theater group’s online presentation, titled Say Our Names. I joined a group of yogis holding weekly zoom meetings on how best to help with the DEI (Diversity, Equity Inclusion), and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous People Of Color) movements. So far we’ve come up with four pillars to serve as a foundation for whatever we eventually build. The four pillars are:
Also, I signed the Yogins United letter to Get Out The Vote. The effort urges all citizens to actively participate by taking one or more of three important action steps: VOTE: Go to Vote.org to check regularly that you are properly registered to vote, sign up for an absentee ballot, and get 3 friends to do the same. VOICE: Go to Vote Forward, Engaged Buddhist or Dharma Vote and sign up to write letters to voters in swing states. This method of peer-to-peer engagement is proven effective and prefers letter writing to cold-calling and texting in this election cycle. VOLUNTEER: Go to All Voting Is Local and sign up to be a poll worker. Help safeguard our electoral process and protect voters in marginalized communities from rampant voter suppression. Somehow I got myself drafted to participate in creating material for IAYT’s (International Association of Yoga Therapists) ethics training videos for the accreditation process. The goal is to create four one-hour videos, each one worth 1 CE (Continuing Education credit). Then there is the personal. Definitely it was and still is a strange time, but as an introvert who is sensitive to OPE, other people’s energy, I was just fine with being home alone in spite of the lockdown, shut down and need to occasionally quarantine. I tried yoga classes on Zoom but abandoned that pretty quickly for my own yoga and meditation practice. Yoga on Zoom was not for me, but meetings that that moved from in person to virtual were another matter. I actually found myself enjoying them. In social groups it’s hard for an introvert to listen or be heard over the chatter especially when we’re trying to get our own thoughts in order. From the comfort of my couch, (no bra, no shoes but yes, I wear pants) I know I’m seen and it’s easier to be heard. I wrote like crazy; finished my book, moved past the rejections from the agents and traditional publishers, found a hybrid publisher that I liked and signed a contract. That’s working well and my book, Enlighten Up! The Five Layers of Self-Awareness, will be released later this year. It’s a personal growth book that presents a contemporary (and often light-hearted) look at the Kosha model of being human. It offers personal stories along with goals and accessible practices that can be done by anyone. Since I had time on my hands, I used some of it to de-clutter and re-organize my spaces. I am a recovering perfectionist; dis-organization and clutter makes my skin crawl. During the process, I discovered boxes filled with stuff I wrote years ago. Honestly I don’t remember writing a lot of it but I liked it. I uncovered an unfinished novel and a bunch of short stories. So, I finished the novel, polished the short stories and wrote a few more. As I re-read them and began the job of editing and re-writing, I noticed that they all involved the importance of self-awareness and how that can improve a life, change a habit and help the characters manage difficult feelings and touchy situations. I guess that really is my brand! That’s what I did and am still doing to stay sane during my pandemic stay-cation. Hope you are finding ways to stay resilient and sane during yours. My self-awareness newsletter is published six times a year. It features informative, inspiring and entertaining tips for finding clarity, contentment, and resilience in a complicated world. Sign up here. |
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AuthorBETH GIBBS started her yoga practice in 1968, four months after her son was born and she’s been practicing ever since. She currently teaches all levels therapeutic yoga classes for adults, and specialty classes for seniors in the Hartford, Connecticut area. Beth is a certified yoga therapist through the International Association of Yoga Therapists and is guest faculty at the Kripalu School of Integrative Yoga Therapy. She writes for the blogs, Yoga for Healthy Aging, and Accessible Yoga. Her master’s degree from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA is in Yoga Therapy and Mind/Body Health. Categories |
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