Hand positions and hand movements have been an integral part of dance for as long as we know, just as hands have been an important part of communication and expression to one another for centuries. Your fingers and hands are like energy antennas. They send and receive messages, reaching as far as you wish it to. Hand gestures are the mother of all communication and are supremely powerful. A great deal of energy can pass through your hands to another person eliciting a response that can heal or harm, excite or entice. A lot can be said about a person who can dance with their hands as well as their body. There is an energetic pattern at work where your fingers and hands can capture and lead an audience in whatever direction you want, while at the same time guide your body movements. The use of mudras gives us a connection to the divine play of the cosmos.

In the words of a famous dancer, Nadia Gamal “ we have feelings in our fingers and it translates those feelings to the body, so if you have flowing fingers you have  flowing body movements or if you have soft hands you have soft body movements or sharp hand movements equal sharp body movements. Your feet keep you grounded to the earth but the control and balance is in your hands. Hands give you the movement and your hands eyes and body show the feelings”.

Both hands and all ten fingers have separate and particular meanings corresponding to a part of the body and a planet in the solar system. In the Polarity system the fingers correspond to an element, thumbs (ether), 1st (air), 2nd (fire), 3rd (water), 4th (earth). The right hand is the receiver, while the left hand is the giver. These meanings are also significant in the hand positions of mudras. Each finger has an ability, tendency, or meaning in how it affects your life. That is why it is important to follow the hand and finger movements with great care and accuracy. Mudras can help you reach your best, aid in healing you mind, enhance your body and spirit and increase changes in your life for the better while bringing you to a new level of awareness and self empowerment.

One of the most common hand gestures is the index finger touching the thumb. Its meaning is that the ego (the index finger) is bowing to God (the thumb) in love and unity or (air meets ether). Using mudras on a daily basis can help you heal, rejuvenate, and balance your body, mind, and spirit, and connect you to the voice of divine wisdom. Most of all, mudras will awaken and magnifiy your inner power and have a powerful healing ability on your spiritual state as you become more in tune and connected to the universe . Daily practice will help you release old, draining, unhealthy energies and will recharge you with new, vibrant life force. Mudras are a great source of preventative medicine for maintaining a healthy mind, bodt, and spirit.

There have been many cultures that use the term Shekina but the most common is the Jewish-Kabbalistic version of Shakti; the idea was that God could not be complete, or whole, until he was united with her (like the yin and yang). The Kabbalists believed that it was God’s loss of his Shekina half or the seperation of the I AM to EGO which brought about evil. From the Hebrew Shekina means “dwelling place,” giving the concept that God had no “home” or possibly lost it’s way without her. Like her Tantric counterpart Shakti, the Sh’kina was the source of all “soul” in the universe. The Gnostic Christians of the fourth century spoke of Sh’kinaas a “spirit of glory” or divine presense, in who Beings of Light lived, as children in their mother’s body or home. Mani referred to the Aeons of sh’kinas or female spirits of the sacred year.

The Kabbalists taught that it was essential to bring the male and female cosmic principles together once more since they are one and the same within each soul and are always searching to bring about a union, which could possibly be achieved through sexual magic, signifying the union of the sun (man) and the moon (woman), which was graphically expressed by the hexagram. Philosophically the Kabbalists were saying “the supernal mother Shekina is manifested in the earthly mother, with whom her husband should lie on the Sabbath (Sunday)”, because “all the six days of the week derive their blessing” from this coupling. Rabbi Eliahu di Vidas said, “Who has not experienced the force of passionate love for a woman will never attain to the love of God.”

Jewish mystics claimed the “outer garment” of the Shekina is the Torah, “Holy Law.” Man becomes a Bridegroom of the Torah by study, symbolized in erotic imagery. He has to court her as he would a beautiful maiden. “She begins from behind a curtain or veil to speak words in keeping with his understanding, until very slowly insight comes to him like the slow writhings of a dance reaching a furvour of excitement and enlightenment.” The Shekina as the “Indwelling One” might be compared to the Latin I-dea, or Goddess Within. “She opens the door of her hidden chamber ever so little, and for a moment reveals her face to her lover, but hides it again to be repeated time and time again. He alone sees it and is drawn to her with his heart and soul and his whole being.”

As man requires his Shekina for his enlightenment, so God requires his Shekina for his wisdom and creativity. This is a crucial tenet of Kabbalism. A.G.H.