Mudra

The word means seal or mark. Most mudras are hand positions — thumb and index finger touching, palms together at the chest, one palm resting in the other — though the older texts also include whole-body techniques that have little to do with hands. Their function is partly symbolic and partly practical: a defined hand position is something to return to, and it quietly tells the shoulders and jaw to stop working.

What a mudra is for is focus and continuity. During a long breathing practice the hands drift, and a drifting hand is usually a drifting mind; giving them one clear job removes a small distraction. Some traditions make larger claims about redirecting energy in the body, which cannot be measured, but the attentional effect is immediate and anyone can test it in thirty seconds.

In a KEO session mudras appear without ceremony. During the opening breath work you will be asked to rest your hands somewhere specific — palms down on the thighs to settle, palms up to open the chest, one hand on the belly and one on the sternum to feel where the breath is going. Hands together at the chest is used occasionally as a pause before the group starts moving, and never as a greeting or a sign-off.