Alexandra Chauran - Modern Guide to Mudras: Create Balance and Blessings in the Palm of Your Hands

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

Copyright Information

Modern Guide to Mudras: Create Balance and Blessings in the Palm of Your Hands 2021 by Alexandra Chauran.

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First e-book edition 2021

E-book ISBN: 9780738767765

Cover design by Kevin R. Brown

Interior Mudra illustrations Wen Hsu. Other interior art by the Llewellyn Art Department.

Llewellyn Publications is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Chauran, Alexandra, author

Title: Modern guide to mudras : create balance and blessings in the palm of

your hands / Alexandra Chauran.

Description: First edition. | Woodbury, Minnesota : Llewellyn Publications,

2021. | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: Modern Guide to

Mudras teaches how to use hand gestures for worship, meditation,

spellcasting, sacred movement, and ritual storytelling Provided by

publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021033546 (print) | LCCN 2021033547 (ebook) | ISBN

9780738767666 (paperback) | ISBN 9780738767765 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Magic. | GestureMiscellanea. | Gesture in worship. |

Meditation. | Mudrs (Buddhism) | Mudrs (Hinduism)

Classification: LCC BF1623.G47 C43 2021 (print) | LCC BF1623.G47 (ebook)

| DDC 133.43dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021033546

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021033547

Llewellyn Publications does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business arrangements between our authors and the public.

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Llewellyn Publications

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Manufactured in the United States of America

Dedication

This book is dedicated in gratitude to my peerless guru, M. Subhashini Vijay Santhanam of From Within Academy, who first taught me the power of mudras. I continue my studies with the hope that I will achieve perfection in them.

Disclaimer

This book is not intended to provide medical or mental health advice or to take the place of advice and treatment from your primary care provider. Readers are advised to consult their doctors or other qualified healthcare professionals regarding the treatment of their medical or mental health problems. Neither the publisher nor the author take any responsibility for any possible consequences from any treatment to any person reading or following the information in this book.

Contents

: The Mudras

: Meditating with Mudras

: Mudras in Your Spiritual Practice

: Mudras in Ritual

: Protection

: Healing

Introduction

I magine filling your life with the grace and joy of hand gestures and movements that captivate your subconscious. Mudras are symbolic, ritual gestures meant to evoke a state of consciousness and to manifest change in the world. You can learn the secrets of one of humanitys oldest forms of magic, meditation, and wordless communion with spirit through mudras. The only tools you need are those you take with you wherever you go, the powers of your own hands. Place your hands one way to calm down after a stressful day at work one evening, or perhaps use another gesture to invoke fertility before trying for a baby. Use a simple sign to ward off the toxic feel of a creepy coworker. Though mudras are no substitute for medical or mental treatment, the possibilities are as endless as the richness of the cultures that discovered them.

Mudras are sacred hand poses and gestures that can be used in the contexts of worship, meditation, spellcasting, sacred movement, and ritual storytelling. Through simple exercises, you will be able to invoke blessing and shut down negativity at home, at work, and when adventuring out in the world. Mudras will speak to you if you have ever wanted to add a bit of color and beauty to everyday life without having to invest in candles, crystals, and incense. They can be beautifully ostentatious or discreetly covert.

Many practical applications will be drawn together in this down-to-earth guide. As your author, I have trained for years in a Hindu temple dance called Bharatanatyam, which always makes heavy use of mudras during its practice. I have a masters degree in teaching, so I enjoy carefully scaffolding lessons so that any reader can pick up the book and build on concepts they learn from the ground up, chapter by chapter. The chapters in this book were written to be read in order, since some ideas build on others. If you do choose to jump around, please refer back to the first chapter for full descriptions and demonstrations of the mudras used, since thats where Ill get you started right away. I hope you are as excited as I am to start sharing the powerful magic of simple hand gestures and poses. Everyone can find at least one practice that will become an important personal key to empowerment and inner peace.

A Brief History

The word mudra is Sanskrit in origin and means gesture or seal. The primary intent behind mudras is to seal spells or blessings. Mudras are typically taught as an oral tradition, since the ability to record video of gestures is relatively recent in human history. Technically, a mudra can be done with the entire body, but the vast majority of people use only the hands. It is certain that humans have been using their hands for storytelling and magic before recorded history began. Traditional mudras are generally understood to be Indian in origin but, of course, every human culture has hand signs and gestures of significance. For example, Buddhist mudras are expressed within Japanese martial arts. I studied Shrin-ry karate at the competitive level and found that mudras were often contained within the memorized series of poses called kata that often resemble a dance or ritual.

In Tahitian hula dance, mudras are used to honor and respect the natural world by representing, for example, the trees or the ocean. According to Hawaiian legend, the gods of our creation (Kane, Lono, K, and Kanaloa) used mudras when reciting incantations, which explains the origin of hula dance. Many dance forms feature hand movements and poses to catch the eye. My first dance teacher was a belly dance teacher. She taught that the fundamental theorem of dance is to isolate movements to one part of your body at a time. She asked her students to imagine a ball of glowing green goo in their hands and to stick that goo to different parts of their body. Wherever the glowing green goo is, you focus your attention and your movement. That dance teachers methods werent very different from magical theory. Magic is the art of making your will a reality. Spiritual energy is the life force of the universe and the engine that governs magic. Mudras are movements that grab that energy, which you can visualize as glowing green goo if you like. This can direct your attention and intention inward or outward.