A photographic guide presents more than 200 Indian hand gestures used in yoga and dance, in a fully indexed and cross-referenced format, giving both the Sanskrit and English name for each.

Hand mudras have been used for centuries in yogic traditions to promote health and wellbeing, and they are considered valuable tools on the path of spiritual awakening. This card set provides 72 of the most important hand mudras used in yoga. The gestures presented support mental and spiritual development, and have a wide range of health benefits. Each card presents a full-colour image of the mudra with the Sanskrit name, transliteration and English translation. The back of each card includes concise information on technique and applications as well as the physical, energetic and spiritual benefits of the mudra. The accompanying booklet contains background information on the mudras, how to practice them at home, and details on how each of the 72 mudras can be used to address a variety of common health complaints. This card set will enrich the practice of students and teachers of yoga, and will be of interest to anyone looking to gain a comprehensive understanding of hand mudras.

A simple technique to achieve lasting health, happiness, and inner peace. “Yoga for the hands—sounds too good to be true. Do it at the office, on an airplane, lying in bed. Seasoned yoga teacher Gertrud Hirschi has used these hand postures to ease asthma, relieve flu symptoms, think more effectively, relieve tension, and more. Like a classroom instructor, she guides readers with simultaneous breathing advice and conjures up helpful images.” —Brian Bruya, Amazon.com Review Mudras are yoga positions for your hands and fingers. They can be practiced sitting, lying down, standing, or walking, at any time and place. These mysterious healing gestures can calm the stress, aggravations, and frustrations of everyday life. Schooled in the traditional knowledge of this eastern art of healing, well-known Swiss yoga teacher, Gertrud Hirschi, shows how these easy techniques can recharge personal energy reserves and improve quality of life. Readers will learn how to use the practice of mudras to: Prevent illness and ailments Support the healing of many emotional issues Promote spiritual development Intensify the affect with breathing exercises, affirmations, visualizations, herbs, nutrition, music, and colors therapy Also included are several full-body mudras and exercises to enhance any meditation and yoga practice.

These 98 Yoga cards were developed to support your personal Yoga practice and also to assist the Yoga teacher in offering clear and concise instructions and language for the Yoga poses. The Toolbox uses a multidimensional approach to teaching asanas, in which the instructions address all levels of being: physical, energetic, psycho-emotional, intuitive and spiritual. The Toolbox also includes warm-up cards for all areas of the body as well as three complete asana sequences, beginning, intermediate and advanced.Each of the Yoga posture cards, organized by category, includes the following: ? Clear cues, benefits, cautions, modifications and variations.? The core quality of each asana with an affirmation for use during practice.? Symbolism and mythology behind each pose.? Physical body systems influenced by the asana.? Energetic body systems influenced by each asana, including the five elements, ayurvedic doshas, chakras and prana vayus.

Discover how to integrate more than 60 mudras into your daily life for increased vitality and inner peace Mudras are an ancient and often overlooked Eastern practice that involves making established hand gestures which direct subtle energy to boost health and wellbeing. This definitive, fully illustrated guide to the art of mudras provides a highly practical and inspirational overview of how to use these subtle and beautiful gestures to revitalize every aspect of your life, not just in your yoga or meditation practice. The introduction lays the foundation for mudra practice with chapters showing why and how to do the mudras themselves. Chapters are also dedicated to different parts of the hand and their corresponding elements, illustrating holistic benefits, like boosting inner strength, relieving stress, enhancing creativity, and increasing concentration. Each mudra entry includes an accompanying chant, meditation, pranayama, asana, or visualization. Mudras for Modern Life also provides a series of highly useful mudra routines for a range of both physical and emotional health issues from anxiety and chronic fatigue to arthritis and headaches.

The word "embodied" is one of those terms, such as "grounded" or "centered" that can be discussed forever without being experienced. Defining embodiment, though, can be quite tricky, because much of what is taught in western societies about the body devalues the felt experience. The categories of formal learning, particularly anatomy and physiology, are taught with the fundamental source being cadavers (dead bodies), and conceptualizations that do not include our own vitality, or life force. Without the felt experience, embodiment is just another concept that can be discussed ad nauseum. The felt experience (or "phenomenology" in academic-speak) is the path away from these endless discussions and conceptual befuddlement. This book provides a basic training on how to become aware of our physiological functioning and our sense of vitality. A part of this training comes from becoming hyper-aware of how we breathe. This awareness makes it possible to feel our own organs and how they function and interrelate. To help us refine our awarenesses of our own organs we are entirely fortunate to learn and practice methods, developed over thousands of years by Indian and Chinese cultures. With these fundamentals this book leads us through a series of connected experiences using mudras to feel our organs, the flows of our life force (Qi) and the flow of that life force through our meridians. From that we learn to feel our own chakras and sushumna (central channel), and our ability to perceive our connections with our environment and ecosystem. This then provides the basis for a body sense of our spiritual existence and development. Thus the definition of embodiment evolves into deeper awareness within our bodies and deeper connection to the world.