Mudras hold an innate healing power that supports the mind-body connection … and have been used for centuries.
A mudra, a symbolic or ritual gesture performed with the hands and fingers, is a spiritual gesture used to stimulate different parts of the body involved with breathing and to affect the flow of prana in the body.
Mudras have been in use in the East for thousands of years, particularly in Buddhism. Buddha statues often have the hands in certain hand positions. They have been used as a spiritual practice (and still are), as a way on the path to enlightenment.
However they’re also used for physical ailments. – source
The Healing Power In Your Hands
Mudras are a powerful addition to any meditation. In a recent article posted by Forever Conscious, shows us some of the most common mudras and how to use them to boost our mind and body connection.
Mudras are positions of the hands that are said to influence the energy of your physical, emotional and spiritual body.
Mudras have been used in the East for thousands of years and were practiced by many spiritual leaders including Buddha. Today, Mudras are still used in Yoga and meditation.
Sometimes we may subconsciously place our hands into Mudra positions without even knowing it and other times we can use them to help channel and stimulate healing.
There are hundreds of Mudras but here are some of the most common:
1.) Gyan Mudra (Mudra of Knowledge):
The tip of the index finger touches the tip of the thumb while the other fingers remain straight.
Benefits: Enhances knowledge, stimulates the pituitary and endocrine glands, increases memory, helps meditation, prevents insomnia, can boost mood and bring clarity.
Practice: Any time while sitting, standing or lying in bed.
2.) Prithvi Mudra (Mudra of Earth):
The tip of the ring finger touches the thumb while the other fingers remain straight out.
Benefits: reduces physical and spiritual weaknesses, can increase the life force, can help clear skin, promotes body functionality.
Practice: Any time.
3.) Varuna Mudra (Mudra of Water):
The tip of the pinky finger touches the thumb while the other fingers remain straight up.
Benefits: helps to balance emotions and helps to retain water. Helps to relieve constipation and cramps. Can also help regulate menstrual cycles and hormonal conditions.
Practice: 15 minutes three times a day.
4.) Vayu Mudra (Mudra of Air):
The thumb wraps over the index finger while the rest of the fingers remain straight.
Benefits: helps to calm an anxious mind, soothe a strained voice and can help decrease stress. Can also help reduce impatience and indecisiveness.
Practice: 10 to 15 minutes, 3 times per day.
5.) Shunya Mudra (Mudra of Emptiness):
The tip of the thumb presses the middle finger down while the rest of the fingers stand straight up.
Benefits: reduces dullness in the body and can also be highly effective for ear aches. Can help restore confidence and boost mental cognition.
Practice: 40-60 minutes daily or for an earache- 4 to 5 minutes.
6.) Surya Mudra (Mudra of the Sun):
Bend the ring finger under the thumb while the rest of the fingers remain straight.
Benefits: helps stimulate the thyroid gland, helps to alleviate weight gain and reduces appetite, stimulates digestion, helps relieve anxiety and stress. Helps to guide you to your purpose.
Practice: 5 to 15 minutes, twice daily.
7.) Prana Mudra (Mudra of Life):
The ring and pinky finger both bend to meet the thumb while the index and middle finger remain pointed straight up.
Benefits: improves the life force, helps to strengthen the mind, body and spirit, helps promote taking action, improves immunity and motivation. Helps enhance vision and reduces fatigue.
Practice: Any time.
8.) Apana Mudra (Mudra of Digestion):
The middle and ring finger are bent under the thumb while the pinky and index finger stand straight up.
Benefits: helps to regulate the excretory system, helps detoxify and stimulates bowel movements. Helpful at relieving constipation and piles.
Practice: 45 minutes daily
9.) Apana Vayu Mudra (Mudra of the Heart):
The index finger bends to touch the base of the thumb while the middle and ring finger bend to touch the tip of the thumb. The pinky finger remains stretched out.
Benefits: stimulates healing of the heart and helps physically protect the heart. Can also help reduce gas and heart burn.
Practice: 15 minutes, twice daily
10.) Linga Mudra (Mudra of Heat):
Interlock the fingers of both hands but keep the thumb of the left hand pointing up. Take the right thumb and wrap it around the thumb so it touches the index finger of the right hand.
Benefits: helps to stimulate heat in the body, helps reduce phlegm and congestion, good for strengthening the lungs, helps to invigorate and balance the body.
Practice: Any time but do not over practice.
12 Healing Mudras, Volume 1
The first 12 healing Mudras of vol 1 are: Guru mudra, Trajitam mudra, Jii mudra, Amrita mudra, Aghnya mudra, Raahu mudra, Danta mudra, Panjabhutani mudra, Tri stambha mudra, Naga mudra, Bhumi mudra and Svargatim mudra. These mudras can support your health..
I am putting this up as there are many psychic attacks and challenges at this time with the great energy shifts and changes that are happening at this time. This is not the only way to deal with these things. I am suggesting you be aware. I am hoping that you will take the time to develop your own protections system which radiates from within your core and out through all the various levels and bodies of your physicality and spirit. Take time daily to ground and center and to open the true eyes of your heart. listen to your intuition and trust it. Your intuition is connected to the Universal Consciousness and is Universal Consciousness whispering to you in love and oneness.
And now:
Psychic Vampires – How to Recognize and Protect Yourself From an Energy Vampire
Last updated on August 24, 2013 at 12:00 am EDT by in5d Alternative News
Energy vampirism is a parasitic relationship in which one person feeds off of the life force (also known as prana) of another person. These people who drain other’s energy are referred to as psychic vampires. But despite this definition, it is impossible to take energy from someone else. So why does it feel possible?
In this episode Teal explains how to recognize a psychic vampire, how to prevent yourself from loosing energy as the result of one and urges us to recognize the patterns of vampirism within ourselves. Psychic vampires do not feel as if this universe is infinite. They do not feel that it is possible to get the love that they desire. They do not trust themselves to fulfill their own needs. And as a result, they believe that the only way to get what they need is to take it from others. Believe it or not, the remedy for victim and vampire is the same!
Both must realize the truth that it is impossible to take energy from someone or have your energy taken by someone. If you feel drained of energy or like you don’t have enough, it is because you are not allowing yourself to think thoughts that let that energy in. Then, both need to do the following:
1. Develop Authenticity (create and find the true self).
2. Develop Autonomy and a sense of healthy self sufficiency where one feels capable of fulfilling one’s own needs
3. Nurture themselves (cultivate self love).
4. Commit to their life and physical body.
5. Develop self trust (if we really trusted our own internal guidance system and our own ability to “discern” we would not worry about what other people could do to us),
6. Learn to see and expect nuances (gray areas and complexities) instead of seeing the world as black and white with villains and victims
7. Study the behaviors they want to receive from others (for example: do you want to be caressed? Appreciated? Listened to?) And practice doing those things to others.
Any thought you can think and anything you can do to help yourself feel empowered, will put you in a vibrational space beyond where you would be a match to either being a psychic vampire or being a victim to one.
The Navel Chakra – a quick primer
The primary way that the body generates its own prana (energy or chi) is through the navel chakra and your breath. As you breathe in there are two vortexes located at your physical navel; one in front and in back. With each breath prana is drawn through the back and front vortexes of the navel chakra into the core of your body. To the extent that the navel chakra (both front and back vortexes) are tuned to your soul and body accurately you generate prana that is usable by your body now.
Just like any of the multitude of major and minor chakras in our body, our navel chakra is probably somewhat out of tune with our soul’s journey in our body. One of the most common causes of not having enough ‘get up and go’ or ‘seeing it through to the end’ is having the navel chakra not tuned to your body, to your soul, or tuned into this moment in time. Too often our navel chakra still reflects the umbilical cord connection to our mother or our family. It can also be tuned to generate energy for our body as it existed during another period of our life. Or even be tuned to generate life force for a spouse or other person we deem more needful or more important than our self.
As the navel vortexes, both in back and in front, are tuned to your body and soul in this moment now, energy is generated that is usable by your entire chakra system. This energy is often referred to as prana or chi. Great Masters of various spiritual traditions have the ability to generate large amounts of prana within their body. This amassing of prana allows them to relate to the physical world without being bound by all of the physical world’s rules. They can, at times, choose to use this prana as a means of moving outside of the rules dictated by our physical universe.
Prana exists all around us. Our personal prana, tuned specifically to our bodies, exists within the pranic tube (running up and down in the center of our bodies) and in pranic spheres located in and around our body. We have the ability to store prana that our body can use within pranic spheres located in our head, heart, and navel. There appear to be other spheres of pranic energy above and below the physical body as well. At the present moment I am seeing the three pranic spheres within the body as being the most active.
The pranic sphere related to the body center lies deep within the body at or just under the navel chakra. Its center point varies from person to person. I see it either directly behind the physical navel or hovering an inch or two lower in the body. This lower position is the most common; where the upper part of the pranic sphere intersects with center of the navel chakra.
The pranic sphere located at your navel is the equivalent of your magic ball. It is the basis of the prana within your pranic tube and hence the entire chakra system. It is from this sphere that prana (energy, chi) is distributed to every major chakra in your body through the pranic tube. Sometimes a depletion of energy in your life or body stems from an inability to generate sufficient prana at the navel chakra.
Each of the major chakras has its center within the pranic tube. Each chakra is supplied with prana from the central channel or pranic tube. Each chakra then collects its own appropriate energies by drawing additional energy or prana from the outside into the core of the chakra through the webbing of the vortex that make up each chakra. The prana provided in the pranic tube mixes with the prana drawn in and tuned by the vortex of the chakra. This prana, unique to each chakra, is then dispersed from the chakra’s core into the pranic tube to other chakras and to layers of the aura surrounding and interpenetrating the physical body. In this fashion the prana generated at the navel chakra becomes the basis of all prana available to your body.
If there is a lack of this most basic navel prana, the entire process of creating energies for the body to use at each of the chakras is greatly diminished. In my private practice I am routinely finding that it is not individual chakra issues we are addressing now, but overall issues related to simply not generating enough navel chakra prana in our daily living.
As a singer I am fortunate because I can set aside time to sing each day. As I sing I naturally breathe deeply and generate prana. When I do yoga or swim I am also generating prana. But how often do we give ourselves permission to do something that has us actively engaged in conscious breathing? For most people the answer is never.
Breathing Practice to Build Prana
Let’s change that with a simple conscious breathing practice you can do on your own. This is especially good to do when needing to move out of boredom or stagnation. Don’t do this while driving as it might make you light-headed or distract you. Do try this while seated and in a location where you feel comfortable.
Find your navel chakra. You may need to put your hand on your body to do this. Now imagine or feel where your navel’s pranic sphere might be. You don’t have to know this exactly or even be sure of it. Just let yourself explore the possibility that there is a sphere of energy within your body at or slightly below your physical navel.
Breathe out all the way. Feel the muscles of your abdomen and lower torso move inward. You may feel the upper abdomen directly below your ribs move inward and also upward a bit. This is the diaphragm moving upward and expelling air out from your lungs.
Now relax and allow the air to move back into all of the areas of your body that it just moved out of. While our intake of air is of course limited to our lungs, the process of breathing can involve almost every muscle of our body. For now, let’s focus on our torso, and allowing all the areas that want to move with the breath to be free to move.
Start with a slow count of two.
One – Two breathe out.
One – Two breathe in.
Repeat four times
Now go to a count of three.
One – Two –Three breathe out.
One – Two – Three breathe in.
Repeat four times
Now do the same on a count of four.
One – Two –Three – Four breathe out.
One – Two – Three – Four breathe in.
Repeat four times. You may continue this pattern of breathing as long as you feel you want to, up to ten minutes.
If at any time you feel you are getting out of breath and need to breathe more quickly do so, and start the breathing pattern over again at One – Two. As you practice this you will find that you can slow down the counting more and more. This type of breathing, inhaling and exhaling at the same speed and amount, generates a lovely quality of balance in the overall energy field of your body. It creates prana that is tuned to your own body’s balance. This breathing pattern done daily will help to supply your body with its own source of well refined prana.
After you finish breathing, or even during the process, you may notice that the pranic sphere appears to be growing larger or brighter. For those who do not see energies, your body may feel fuller or warmer around your navel. This indicates you are successfully generating more of your own prana as you breathe.
You may also notice discomfort in your body or a sense of unease. As you are filling the navel sphere and your pranic tube with your own prana there is less space for energies that are not in tune with your body and soul. As a result these energies are pushed up into your conscious. They are often interpreted as odd or repeating thoughts, relatively sudden emotions or emotionally charged memories, heaviness or quickly arising body aches. These are all interpretations made by your body, mind and heart of energies that no longer fit you and your life.
Ask each thought, emotion, memory and body ache if it is really yours. Is it really yours now, in this moment? I find it best to keep as much of your attention as possible on the breathing process and ask the questions silently as the sensations arise. These questions coming from your consciousness indicate to the energy behind the thought, emotion or physical sensation that you are ready to release it onto its own journey now. There is no need to follow it as it leaves, and most of the time there is no need to know what it is.
If there is something more you need to know please trust that you will get it from within spontaneously or from the Universe at a later point in time. This process of breathing is meant to bring you out of your head and into your body…so stay in the body with the process as much as possible.
Why Build Prana Consciously? To hear your Spiritual Helpers more clearly.
As you breathe you generate more and more energy that perfectly supports your body. This pranic energy acts as a medium that fills the space between your body, your guides and angels, and your soul. The more this space is filled with your pranic energy, the easier it is for you to hear the messages that are coming to you from your soul, your guides and your angels.
I am sure you have had the experience of being faced with a decision. And as you are presented with the possibilities, one jumps out immediately as being the appropriate choice for you. It feels like a fit to you, and often there is a sense of relaxation or expansion when you are presented with this option. As you build more prana throughout your lifetime your soul’s connection into your body is enhanced. The sensation of what fits and what doesn’t fit is magnified by the presence of this prana, tuned to your body.
What doesn’t fit for you eventually doesn’t fit literally within your body or your aura. For myself, I experience options that don’t fit me as a twisting sensation in my gut. Those situations and choices that do fit me feel comfortable, even though they might appear to be physically difficult to undertake. There is an innate expansion in my auric field when I consider a choice that is appropriate to my soul and body. Acting upon this choice results in my creating more of this same quality of prana to fill my aura.
When we are considering different choices, it is our navel chakra that experiences each of the options first. The pattern of each choice is tested within the navel chakra, and our body tells us the resulting ‘yes’ or ‘no’. We can do this while being presented with the choices (by someone speaking to us, for example “Do you want to go see a movie tonight?”), as well as while we are in a meditative state and holding each option within our mind as a thought or mind’s eye as a picture. For most people feeling their navel chakra and body response to different choices is at first a very subtle art, best done in meditation.
Ideally when we sit quietly and breathe we are generating prana which is accurately tuned to our bodies. Then, as we are faced with a decision, enough prana is present in the various layers of our energy field so that we can feel which option fits best. Without sufficient prana, a means to generate it, and an ability to sit quietly, there is no medium to carry the communication between our body, our guides and angels, and our soul.
Sitting in deep stillness and focusing on our breath is one of the ways we build prana. While it seems to be the simplest, the art of meditating on the breath is quite vast.
In our culture we are seldom exhorted to enter into meditation or a conscious state of deep stillness. We are seldom expected to notice how our buttocks are interacting with the chair or surface upon which we are sitting. In fact, we are seldom praised for being consciously within our bodies much at all, especially that part of ourselves below our waists!
As you breathe while consciously aware of stillness, your heart chakras open more. As your upper thymus gland and traditional heart chakras both open, each breath generates prana, tuned to your soul’s journey, which in turn allows a greater ability for you to be connected from your heart with all that surrounds you.
With this meditation you have linked your heart to your body center. You are beginning to regain the conscious awareness of your body that you had as an infant. This awareness of the physical body ceased as you lived within your culture, but it can be regained. As you do regain it you open into numerous possibilities of sensing and feeling connections to others and to all that surrounds you, both in form and not in form.
Validate the changes you have made…this process will continue!
This essay comes out of thoughts and meditations shared during a recent live channeling. The meditative channeling itself is available as a free podcast #37 Breathing Stillness, Generating at Norma’s podcast page www.healingchants.com/podcasts
Norma Gentile
Sound shaman, is a natural intuitive and channel for Mary, Archangel Michael and the Hathors. She trained as both a professional singer and energy worker.
In a world where sickness of heart is a cultural normality, it’s a long road to the heart of the Bodhisattva
When some of my Tibetan teachers first began to visit the West and teach Westerners, they were surprised or perhaps even shocked by something they experienced in us. When they described it in their own terms, they called it sok lung, a damage or blockage of the primary life supporting “energy-wind” or lung(in Sanskrit: prana ) within the heart chakra. What they recognized in this was that something about our way of life in the West was putting a kind of pressure in the heart that led to a deep yet subtle level of pain and depression of the energy there. One of the ways this manifests is in subtle yet deep insecurity and anxiety.
If we translate this into a more Western, psychological language, what we begin to understand is that there is something about the stresses and pressures we grow up with in the West that has a dramatic impact upon this very subtle energy in the heart. One of the most significant aspects of this problem is that we experience a much more accentuated sense of insecurity and alienation in the West because of the very nature of our culture and its expectations on us from a very early age. From early in our life we are more likely to experience separation from the mother and a far greater expectation to be independent and self-reliant. We grow up into a world that then demands that we survive and become an individual in an extremely competitive environment where the pressure to succeed is endemic. If we add to this the absence of a supportive sense of community and the often dysfunctional nature of the nuclear family, insecurity, anxiety and fear become a root emotional drive.
Is it any wonder that this alienation has an impact on the heart and the energy of the heart? The consequence is that we experience deep-rooted wounding to our sense of self, and our ego-identity is built on shaky ground from the very beginning. It was this wounded sense of self that my Tibetan teachers recognized and as a result were at first somewhat at a loss as to how to address it in us. What becomes particularly problematic is that with the degree of wounding we have in the west it has become normal to be self-preoccupied and solely oriented to personal gain and personal gratification at the expense of others. Our culture seems to see the ruthless attainment of one’s own needs in a competitive world as something of an accolade. In the cutthroat political and corporate world being able to achieve and satisfy one’s own aspirations for power and status at the expense of others’ is encouraged. Our sickness of the heart has become a cultural normality.
From a Tibetan Buddhist point of view this wounding to the heart causes a contraction and closing around the heart chakra that cuts us off from a deep essential quality that is innate within us all. This is a quality of mind known in Sanskrit as Chitta. Chitta is often translated as mind, heart or essence and is a quality of mind that dwells in the heart chakra. But this is not our ordinary worldly conceptual mind, it is a deep quality of mind that is essentially clear, peaceful and pervaded by a natural compassion and loving kindness. Indeed it is our ordinary mind with its emotional entanglements and wounds that obscures this essential heart mind.
In the Tantric tradition this essential nature of mind is also known as clear-light mind and has a number of significant characteristics, one of which is its innate clarity and emptiness and the other is a potent innate vitality that brings with it a felt quality of joy, happiness and bliss. Our problem, if we like to see it as such, is that while this natural quality has never been defiled, it is, however, obscured by our gross ordinary mind and its emotional proliferations. As a result it is largely inaccessible to us. It has been described as being like a golden statue wrapped in filthy rags. From a Buddhist point of view if we are able to gradually clear these obscurations, then what naturally manifests is what could be called bodhichitta or the awakening mind or heart.
Our innate heart potential is the deep vitality of our mind’s natural, undefiled and clear nature. So long as we are still caught up in our primary wounds of the heart it is going to be extremely difficult to begin to awaken qualities such as compassion and loving-kindness. If I have deep-rooted feelings of low self-worth, lack of self-acceptance, feeling I am not good enough and so on, then these close the heart leading to Sok lung.
It is very easy to speak of opening the heart and having spiritual ideals of love and compassion, but if we have not addressed our essential wounding these will just be a kind of veneer of spiritual correctness burying deep wounds. To open the heart we must first begin to heal our sense of self. To do this we need to develop compassion and acceptance towards ourselves with all of our failings as well as gifts and qualities. The contraction around the heart then begins to soften, and the innate energy within the heart starts to awaken. This may not always be comfortable because as we soften the contraction in the energy around the heart we re-awaken our wounds, but as we go deeper we can begin to feel the natural chitta that lies in the heart.
The term bodhichitta, which is often translated as the “awakening mind,” emerges from an opening of the heart and brings a deep compassion for the suffering of all beings. It also awakens a powerful quality of intention that is willing to dedicate life to the welfare of others. Bodhichitta is sometimes called the “great will,” but this is not the will of the ego but a deeper intention that requires that we surrender to the process of awakening to the state of wholeness or Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. It is like the shift from “I will” to “thy will be done.” While this “awakening mind” lies at the heart of Buddhist life it is something that emerges only when we have begun to heal our own wounds so that there is the fertile ground for its growth. Once present, as a quality of the heart, it will underlie everything we do in life, like a steady flowing river moving us towards the ocean of full awakening. It will then be natural to wish to dedicate our life to the welfare of others and indeed to the planet that so unconditionally supports us. Bodhichitta is the heart of the Bodhisattva, often translated as “the awakening warrior,” one who with courage engages with the journey of life to transform adversity into the path of awakening for the welfare of others.
About the Author
Rob Preece, author most recently of The Courage to Feel(Snow Lion, 2009) is a psychotherapist, spiritual mentor, leader of Tibetan mediation retreats, and an initiated Granicero (weather work) in the Nahua tradition.
Norma Gentile