Thumb gestures

- Hi, I'm Baxter, and welcome to Thumb Gestures for Your Thumbs. So you know, in our daily lives, especially if we're sitting at a computer, the thumbs have a certain position that they're held in. We often kind of curl them in a little bit, depending on whether you're using a mouse with your right or left hand, you're kind of doin' the same thing all the time. So I want to let the thumbs kind of fly free for a little while. We're going to use some classic yoga hand gestures, called mudra, a mudra is an energetic key that unlocks the potential for your hands to be free and more open. So these are super simple, they're actually gestures we use in everyday life. So the first one is the double Fonzie, where the thumbs are pointing straight up, and the deal here is I want you to get those thumbs to fly as high as they can, and avoid the tendency to curl them down and in. So you're going to stick them up, the other fingers curl into your palms, your shoulders are relaxed, and your elbows can hang at your sides. So sometimes when I use these for my yoga, meditation, or breathing practices, I'll actually do that. I'll set the gesture right in front of my body like this, and I'll just hang out for a couple minutes, either sitting or standing, and focus on my breath, my thoughts, whatever I'm doing for that particular practice. But we can use these just for bringing more awareness to the thumbs in general. So from the Fonzie move, or the double thumbs up mudra, we're going to take the thumbs and we're going to turn them almost like in the old Caesar movies where you didn't want to be the guy in the center of the ring because if the thumbs were goin' down, it was a bad deal. So just turn the thumbs to point toward one another. So kind of a neutral position, just kind of feeling that for a moment. So when you do that, of course, the whole wrist changes, thumbs are still stretching out, away from the palm, as far as they'll go, and you're breathing, the shoulders stay relaxed, the elbows are maybe floating a little bit away from your body. And I usually hang out when I'm doing this practice for my thumbs, I usually hold each pose for about six breaths or so. So you don't have to do it for a super long time, and of course, if it feels uncomfortable, then come out of it sooner. And then from here, we're going to go through the thumbs up version, and then I call this the indecisive hitchhiker maneuver. So you don't know which way you want to go, 'cause you're stickin' those thumbs out to the sides. And of course each time you change the orientation of the hands, it'll reverberate through the hands in a slightly different way. So kind of noticing that, and again, I'm really trying to stretch from the base of my thumb, from the center of my palm out into the tip of the thumbs. Anytime you're holding things for a while, notice if you start to hold your breath and let the breath come back to a natural, easy breath. Good, and then come back through center, turn back in, and then just lightly touch the tips of the thumbs together. So I don't want you to smash the thumbs together. But feel like the thumbs are touching one another from the reach of the palm into the thumb, as opposed from the pushing of the hand and the collapsing into the thumb, it's almost like you can barely touch and you just make it through your effort. Shoulders stay relaxed, arms floating in front of the belly, in front of the navel, and again maybe five, six breaths. You can go longer if you want to. And then release it, and then shaking that out. So you know, if we're sitting like this all day and curling our thumbs in, that sets a certain fixed pattern of the thumb, we've just kind of gone in the opposite direction for a little while, and now we've set a new pattern, but it's not a bad idea just to just move the thumbs and fingers around a little bit, as a way to finish your thumb practice for today. So there you have it, Thumb Gestures for Your Thumbs, hope you enjoyed that and I look forward to seeing ya next time.