Ida Mudra: trust your sensitivity, let your emotions guide you, and awaken your feminine nature

Your emotions, while often intense and sometimes not so pleasant, come to you for a reason, to guide you.

The moon is a glowing beauty up in the sky that helps remind you to allow yourself to connect to your sensitivity and receptivity. She has the power to move the ocean. And we are made up of a lot of water, so of course she influences us too!

Ida Mudra helps you connect to the energy of the moon and the water element. It reminds you that there is immense strength in sensitivity. It isn’t brave to push things down, it is brave to call them up for feeling and eventually healing!

Ida Mudra is a wonderful handshape to work with anytime you want to lean into your own sensitivity, but especially during Cancer Season or when you want to work with any water sign energy.

Connect to the guides that are always there for you and awaken your feminine nature with this mudra and these tools to support its intention!

Check out ways to practice mudras live with our empowering yoga community on our live class schedule!

🫶🏻MUDRA: Ida Mudra

Benefits of Ida Mudra:

• emotional receptivity

• awakening feminine qualities

• connecting to the moon and lunar energy

• fluidity

• serenity

• sensitivity

• connection to the water element

• connection to your sacral (Svadhisthana) and root (Muladhara) chakras

Why practice Ida Mudra:
Practice Ida Mudra to connect with the emotional receptivity and sensitivity that live in your body. This mudra invites you to soften into your fluidity, awaken your feminine qualities, and feel the steadying pull of the moon and the water element. This is a practice for anyone who is ready to stop pushing their feelings down and start trusting them as guides.

How to practice Ida Mudra:
Find any comfortable place. Add support if you’d like. Join the tips of your ring fingers to the tips of your thumb on each hand. Keep the other fingers extended. Hold your left hand just below your navel with your palm facing up. Hold your right just above your left with your palm facing down. Hold the joined fingers close to each other but not touching. Soften your shoulders, hold your elbows comfortably away from your body, and align your spine.

🧘🏻‍♀️MEDITATION: Chandra Bhedana (Moon Breath) Meditation

WHY:
This three-part meditation invites you to connect with the moon and let her steady, fluid energy move through you. As you breathe, you are welcome to soften into your own receptivity, your sensitivity, and your feminine nature, letting whatever rises be felt rather than pushed away. There is nothing to force here. This is simply space to feel, and to let your emotions guide you.

PLACE:
Find a comfortable seat. Perhaps sit on a bolster or blanket to get your hips a little higher than your knees.

DRISHTI:
Soften or close your eyes if that feels safe and comfortable.

PART 1:

MUDRA:
Find Ida Mudra by joining the tips of your ring fingers to the tips of your thumb on each hand. Keep the other fingers extended. Hold your left hand just below your navel with your palm facing up. Hold your right just above your left with your palm facing down. Hold the joined fingers close to each other but not touching. Soften your shoulders, hold your elbows comfortably away from your body, and align your spine. 

PRANAYAMA: 
Embrace the natural, fluid rhythm of your breath as you breath in and out through your nose for 1-3 minutes. 

PART 2:

MUDRA: 
Place your left hand on your heart and use your right hand in whatever way feels comfortable to work with blocking your nostrils.

PRANAYAMA:

• Take a big inhale through the nose followed by an easy exhale.

• Block your right nostril up near the cartilage.

• Inhale through your left nostril. Pause.

• Switch to block your left nostril. Pause.

• Exhale through your right nostril.

• Continue breathing in through your left and out through your right for an equal amount of time as part 1.

PART 3:

MUDRA: 
Return to Ida Mudra.

PRANAYAMA:
Continue to mentally breath in through your left nostril and out through your right for an equal ratio of time. 

TO END:
Release control after an exhale and breathe freely as you sit and connect to feminine and lunar energy.

✨MANTRA:

I am receptive to the guidance of my emotions.

I hope you let your wise and knowing emotions guide your beautifully sensitive heart and soul!

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