For Beginners: Anjali Mudra
By Shiva Rea
Anjali means "offering," and in India this mudra is often accompanied by the word "namaste."
If you have attended even one yoga class, it is a familiar gesture: the drawing together of one's palms at the heart. Your teacher may bring his or her hands together while saying "Namaste" at the beginning or end of a class. You may find his gesture within certain asanas—in Tadasana (Mountain Pose), before you begin Sun Salutations, or in balance poses such as Vrksasana (Tree Pose).
This sacred hand position, called anjali mudra (AHN-jah-lee MOO-dra), is found throughout Asia and has become synonymous with our images of the East, from the smiling face of the Dalai Lama peering over his fingertips to images of devotees before a Hindu or Buddhist altar.
In the West, we translate this gesture as a posture of prayer. Because we have grown up with this gesture as part of our culture, each of us probably has our own personal connection to this mudra—positive or negative. Some of us may find a subconscious resistance to bringing our hands together as if it were a sign of submission. However, the beauty of this gesture, which positions us right at the core of our being, is timeless and universal.
I know a 3-year-old who is delighted to greet people this way and an actor who prepares himself with this gesture before entering the stage. As we explore the significance and potential of this mudra, be open to your own experience and ways that this simple yet powerful hand position can be a practical tool in your practice and daily life. In Sanskrit, mudra means "seal" or "sign" and refers not only to sacred hand gestures but also whole body positions that elicit a certain inner state or symbolize a particular meaning.
Anjali mudra is but one of thousands of types of mudras that are used in Hindu rituals, classical dance, and yoga. Anjali itself means "offering," and in India this mudra is often accompanied by the word "namaste" (or "namaskar," depending on one's dialect). As the consummate Indian greeting, like a sacred hello, namaste is often translated as "I bow to the divinity within you from the divinity within me." This salutation is at the essence of the yogic practice of seeing the Divine within all of creation. Hence, this gesture is offered equally to temple deities, teachers, family, friends, strangers, and before sacred rivers and trees. Anjali mudra is used as a posture of composure, of returning to one's heart, whether you are greeting someone or saying goodbye, initiating or completing an action.
As you bring your hands together at your center, you are literally connecting the right and left hemispheres of your brain. This is the yogic process of unification, the yoking of our active and receptive natures. In the yogic view of the body, the energetic or spiritual heart is visualized as a lotus at the center of the chest. Anjali mudra nourishes this lotus heart with awareness, gently encouraging it to open as water and light do a flower.
Begin by coming into a comfortable sitting position like Sukhasana (Easy Pose). Lengthen your spine out of your pelvis and extend the back of your neck by dropping your chin slightly in. Now, with open palms, slowly draw your hands together at the center of your chest as if to gather all of your resources into your heart. Repeat that movement several times, contemplating your own metaphors for bringing the right and left side of yourself—masculine and feminine, logic and intuition, strength and tenderness—into wholeness.
Now, to reveal how potent the placement of your hands at your heart can be, try shifting your hands to one side or the other of your midline and pause there for a moment. Don't you feel slightly off kilter? Now shift back to center and notice how satisfying the center line is, like a magnet pulling you into your core. Gently touch your thumbs into your sternum (the bony plate at the center of the rib cage) as if you were ringing the bell to open the door to your heart. Broaden your shoulder blades to spread your chest open from the inside. Feel space under your armpits as you bring your elbows into alignment with your wrists. Stay here for some time and take in your experience. What initial shifts of consciousness do you experience? Is there a change in your mood?
Now imagine that you are beginning your yoga practice—or any activity in which you want to be centered and conscious of how your inner state will affect the outcome of your experience. Take anjali mudra again, but this time slightly part your palms as if to make a cup, so that your hands resemble the bud of a lotus flower. Depending on your spiritual orientation, you can metaphorically plant a seed prayer, affirmation, or quality such as "peace," "clarity," or "vitality" within your anjali mudra. Drop your chin towards your chest and awaken a sense of humility and awe with which to begin your practice, as if waiting to receive a blessing of good things to come. It is important that this anjali or offering be true to your Self as that will be the most effective and uplifting for you. Traditionally, yogis might visualize their ishta devata or personal connection to God within the shrine of their hands. For some people this may be a sacred mountain, for others, Jesus, Krishna, or the Mother Goddess. Align your mind (awareness), feeling (heart), and actions (body) within this gesture. When you feel your invocation is complete, draw your fingertips to the center of your forehead, ajna chakra, and pause there feeling the calming effect of your touch. Bring your hands back to your center to ground your intention within your heart.
From here you can begin your yoga asanas, meditation, or any activity from a place of connectedness. Notice how much easier it is to be present and joyous with whatever you are doing. Look for other times to integrate anjali mudra into your practice and life. Besides the beginning and end of your yoga sessions, anjali mudra can be used within the Sun Salutations and many other asanas as a way to come back to and maintain your center. When your hands come together overhead in Virabhadrasana I (Warrior I) or in Tree Pose, this is still anjali mudra. Consciously connecting this upward movement of your hands through an invisible line of energy to your heart will help your posture and your inner attitude.
In daily life, this prayerful gesture can be used as a way of bridging inner and outer experience, when saying grace before meals, communicating our truth within a relationship, or as a means of cooling the fires of stress when feeling rushed or reactionary. Anjali mudra is an age-old means of helping human beings to remember the gift of life and to use it wisely.
Consciousness
in Motion
By Shiva Rea
Vinyasa yoga teaches us to
cultivate an awareness that links each action to the next—on
the mat and in our lives.
Sit back and relax. Take in these images and see if you can
sense the underlying pattern: the flow of the seasons, the
rise and fall of the tides in response to the moon, a baby
fern unfurling, a Ravi Shankar sitar raga or Ravel's
"Bolero," the creation and the dissolution of a Tibetan sand
mandala, the flow of Suryanamaskar (Sun Salutation).
What do these diverse phenomena have in common? They are all
vinyasas, progressive sequences that unfold with an
inherent harmony and intelligence. "Vinyasa" is derived from
the Sanskrit term nyasa, which means "to place," and
the prefix vi, "in a special way"—as in the arrangement of
notes in a raga, the steps along a path to the top of a
mountain, or the linking of one asana to the next. In the
yoga world the most common understanding of vinyasa
is as a flowing sequence of specific asanas coordinated with
the movements of the breath. The six series of Pattabhi
Jois's Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga are by far the best known and
most influential.
Jois's own teacher, the great South Indian master
Krishnamacharya, championed the vinyasa approach as
central to the transformative process of yoga. But
Krishnamacharya had a broader vision of the meaning of
vinyasa than most Western students realize. He not only
taught specific asana sequences like those of Jois's system,
but he also saw vinyasa as a method that could be
applied to all the aspects of yoga. In Krishnamacharya's
teachings, the vinyasa method included assessing the
needs of the individual student (or group) and then building
a complementary, step-by-step practice to meet those needs.
Beyond this, Krishnamacharya also emphasized vinyasa as an
artful approach to living, a way of applying the skill and
awareness of yoga to all the rhythms and sequences of life,
including self-care, relationships, work, and personal
evolution.
Desikachar, Krishnamacharya's son, an author and renowned
teacher in his own right, has written, "Vinyasa is, I
believe, one of the richest concepts to emerge from yoga for
the successful conduct of our actions and relationships." In
his book Health, Healing, and Beyond (Aperture, 1998), he
gives a subtle yet powerful example of how his father
attended to the vinyasa of teaching yoga.
Krishnamacharya, to the amazement of his private students,
would always greet them at the gate of his center, guide
them through their practice, and then honor the completion
of their time together by escorting them back to the gate.
The way he honored every phase of their session—initiating
the work, sustaining it and then building to a peak, and
completing and integrating it—illustrates two of the primary
teachings of the vinyasa method: Each of these phases
has its own lessons to impart, and each relies on the work
of the previous phase. Just as we can't frame a house
without a proper foundation, we can't build a good yoga
practice unless we pay attention to how we begin. And just
as a house is flawed if the workmen don't finish the roof
properly, we have to bring our actions to completion in
order to receive yoga's full benefits. Vinyasa yoga requires
that we cultivate an awareness that links each action to the
next—one breath at a time.
Initiating a Course of Action
Applying vinyasa in your yoga practice and daily life
has many parallels not just to building a house but also
sailing a boat. Like sailing, moving through life demands a
synchronization with natural forces that requires skill and
intuition, the ability to set a course yet change with the
wind and currents. If you want to sail, you have to know how
to assess the conditions of the weather—blustery, calm,
choppy—which constantly fluctuate, as do our physical,
emotional, and spiritual states.
The teachings of yoga include a view called parinamavada,
the idea that constant change is an inherent part of life.
Therefore, to proceed skillfully with any action, we must
first assess where we are starting from today; we cannot
assume we are quite the same person we were yesterday. We
are all prone to ignoring the changing conditions of our
body-mind; we often distort the reality of who we are based
on who we think that we should be. This can show up on the
yoga mat in any number of inappropriate choices: engaging in
a heating, rigorous practice when we're agitated or
fatigued; doing a restorative practice when we're stagnant;
going to an advanced yoga class when a beginning class
better suits our experience and skills. In order to avoid
such unbeneficial actions, we need to start out with an
accurate assessment of our current state.
So what are the observations a good yogic sailor should make
before initiating a vinyasa? Like checking out the
boat, wind, and waves before you sail, an initial survey of
your being can become an instinctive ritual. Ask yourself:
What is my energy level? Am I raring to go? Holding any
tension? Am I experiencing any little physical twinges or
injury flare-ups? Do I feel balanced and ready to sail into
my practice? How is my internal state? Am I calm, agitated,
focused, scattered, emotionally vulnerable, mentally
overloaded, clear and open?
These questions are relevant to how we begin any action, not
just our asana practice. In choosing what foods we eat, when
we sleep, our conversations and our actions with
others—everything that we do—we must understand where we are
coming from and choose actions that address any imbalances.
In teaching my students about vinyasa, I offer them
ways of checking in with their current state at the start of
their session. I also will suggest specific strategies for
addressing impediments that may break up the flow of their
practice. For example, on the bodily level students can
choose a more calming practice or one that provides them
with a more invigorating opening. If they have a twinge in
the lower back, they might want to modify certain postures,
perhaps substituting Bhujangasana (Cobra Pose) for
Urdhva Mukha Svanasana (Upward-Facing Dog Pose). If
they're suffering from typical urban tensions in the neck
and shoulders, they can use a small series of stretches—a
mini-vinyasa, you might say—to encourage softening
and release. On a more internal level, agitated students can
focus on releasing tension by relaxing the face and breath;
if their energy is more lethargic and diffused, they can
focus on their drishti, or gaze, to increase their
concentration.
The same insight that we use on the yoga mat can be applied
to the way that we initiate actions elsewhere in our lives.
Are you feeling anxious on your way to a big appointment?
Drive more slowly and listen to some calming music to ensure
that this imbalance doesn't carry over into your meeting.
Such adjustments do not show an unwillingness to accept what
is or a compulsive attempt to fix everything until it is
just right. Rather, they are evidence of a deep awareness of
and appropriate response to reality. A yogic sailor embraces
the changing winds and current and the challenge of setting
course in harmony with the ebb and flow of nature.
Sustaining Power
Once you've properly assessed conditions and initiated
action, you can focus on the next phase of vinyasa:
building up your power, your capacity for a given action.
Power is the sailor's ability to tack with the wind, a
musician's ability to sustain the rise and fall of a melody,
a yogi's deepening capability for absorption in meditation.
The vinyasa method has many teachings to offer about
how to build and sustain our capacity for action, both on
and off the mat. One of the primary teachings is to align
and initiate action from our breath—our life force—as a way
of opening to the natural flow and power of prana,
the energy that sustains us all on a cellular level. Thus in
a vinyasa yoga practice, expansive actions are
initiated with the inhalation, contractive actions with the
exhalation.
Take a few minutes to explore how this feels: As you inhale,
lift your arms up over your head (expansion); as you exhale,
lower your arms (contraction). Now try this: Start lifting
your arms as you exhale, and inhale as you lower your arms.
Chances are that the first method felt intuitively right and
natural, while the second felt counterintuitive and subtly
"off."
This intuitive feeling of being "off" is an inborn signal
that helps us learn how to sustain an action by harmonizing
with the flow of nature. Just as a sagging sail tells a
sailor to tack and realign with the energy of the wind, a
drop in our mental or physical energy within an action is a
sign we need to realign our course. In an asana, when the
muscular effort of a pose is creating tension, it's often a
signal that we are not relying on the support of our breath.
When we learn how to sustain the power and momentum of the
breath, the result is like the feeling of sailing in the
wind—effortless effort.
To build real change in a student's capacity for action,
Krishnamacharya utilized a method which he entitled
vinyasa krama ("krama" means "stages"). This
step-by-step process involves the knowledge of how one
builds, in gradual stages, toward a "peak" within a practice
session. This progression can include elements like using
asanas of ever-increasing complexity and challenge or
gradually building one's breath capacity.
Vinyasa krama is also the art of knowing when you have
integrated the work of a certain stage of practice and are
ready to move on. I frequently see students ignore the
importance of this step-by-step integration. On the one
hand, some students will tend to jump ahead to more
challenging poses like Pincha Mayurasana (Forearm
Balance) before developing the necessary strength and
flexibility in less-demanding postures like Adho Mukha
Svanasana (Downward-Facing Dog), Sirsasana
(Headstand), Adho Mukha Vrksasana (Handstand), and
other, easier arm balances. The result: They strug-gle to
hold themselves up, becoming frustrated and possibly
injured. These Type-A students should remember that strain
is always a sign that integration of the previous krama
has not yet occurred.
On the other hand, some students may congeal around the
comfort of a beginning stage and become stagnant; they often
become totally energized when given encouragement to open to
a new stage which they had written off as beyond their
abilities.
The Art of Completion
All of us are better at some part of the vinyasa
cycle than others. I love to initiate action and catalyze
change but have to consciously cultivate the completion
phase. As Desikachar explains it, "It is not enough to climb
a tree; we must be able to get down too. In asana practice
and elsewhere in life, this often requires that we know how
to follow and balance one action with another. In the
vinyasa method this is known as pratikriyasana,
"compensation," or literally counterpose-the art of
complementing and completing an action to create
integration. Can you imagine doing asanas without a Savasana
(Corpse Pose) to end your practice? In vinyasa, how
we complete an action and then make the transition into the
next is very important in determining whether we will
receive the action's entire benefit. These days I invite my
students to complete classes by invoking the quality of yoga
into the very next movements of their lives—how they walk,
drive, and speak to people once they leave the studio.
Pathways of Transformation
It is important to remember a vinyasa is not just any
sequence of actions: It is one that awakens and sustains
consciousness. In this way vinyasa connects with the
meditative practice of nyasa within the Tantric Yoga
traditions. In nyasa practice, which is designed to
awaken our inherent divine energy, practitioners bring
awareness to different parts of the body and then, through
mantra and visualization, awaken the inner pathways for
shakti (divine force) to flow through the entire field
of their being. As we bring the techniques of vinyasa
to bear throughout our lives, we open similar pathways of
transformation, inner and outer-step by step and breath by
breath.
No Worries
By Aaron Hoopes
Worrying about what might happen in the future makes life so
much more difficult. No matter how much you worry about
something, fretting about the outcome or stressing about the
ramifications, the actual situation will surely turn out
different than what you are thinking. Once you begin
worrying, however, it is hard to stop. You begin to wonder
if you have thought enough. Then you realize that you
couldn't have taken every possible development into
consideration, so you think about it some more. This is a
sure path to anxiety. It is much better to deal with things
as they come up. In this way it is possible to react to the
present situation as it happens , without all the baggage of
worry dragging behind you. Why waste all of that time
worrying about something that you cannot do anything about
until the time comes to deal with it? A clear and calm mind
is your best weapon to deal with problems that arise.
Worries
perpetuate worry. Let them go. Imagine a beach on a
beautiful ocean. As the tide comes in, write your worries in
the sand...and see how long they last.
By Dr. Kev
No matter how rough it gets,
without yoga, it would be worse.
With it, everything becomes possible,
and that is my limitless spring of joy!
