Little Yoga Lesson: Bhumi Sparsha Mudra

Connect yourself to the earth’s circuitry and your own

Wherever we place ourselves is home.

This is an important lesson to remember daily, but an especially significant one to assimilate when life gets topsy-turvy or when you’re constantly running from point A to point B, or feeling caught between demands.

Before chanting Om to begin a yoga class, try placing your hands into a very simple mudra called “Bhumi Sparsha” which translates to “Earth Witness” or “Touch the Earth”:

• Left hand placed on the leg

• Right hand touching the floor/ground

In this sweet gesture, one hand connects you to the circuitry of the earth, while the other completes the loop with yourself. Sometimes in yoga, we get so caught up in lofty themes and Big Ideas and The Universal (whatever that means) that we often forget that the practice is really not that complicated. Yoga is as simple as sitting and bringing awareness to your breath and your place in space, in time. Home can be accessed no matter where you are because it doesn’t exist outside of yourself.

Wherever we place our ourselves is home.

Putting the mudra in motion: wherever you place your hands is an experience of home

On the mat, when you refine how you distribute energy into your hands — spread evenly along the length of the fingers, radiating through the palms while maintaining a tiny half-moon of space in the carpal tunnel area — you can feel changes happening in other parts of your body. By bringing more clarity to the extremities, you not only create more stability in weight-bearing poses, but you also free the shoulders and neck. The ease in this approach is that every pose is an opportunity to feel supported by the earth, to feel at home, by using the very placement of your hands as an agent of alignment and opening.

Off the mat, Bhumi Sparsha has to be practiced with some modifications. A sidewalk is not something you want to touch 😜 and you certainly wouldn’t want to when attempting to find a sense of succor! Instead, touch something that feels solid. On a crowded bus, adapt the mudra by bringing awareness to the contact between your right hand and the railing, and keeping your left hand close to your body. Concentrate on breathing and feeling at home, and watch the shift that happens in your body and mind.