Kapota Mudra: tend your inner peace, welcome your compassion, and rest in your wholeness
You deserve to protect your own peace.
Kapota Mudra is the gesture of the dove, the symbol of peace. Your hands come into prayer at your heart and your knuckles open away from each other, so an open yet contained space forms between your palms. When you hold this shape, your breath and your awareness move into the center of your chest, into a sanctuary all your own. During Libra Season, when relationship and fairness come into focus, this shape reminds you that peace with anyone else begins with peace toward yourself.
Kapota Mudra activates the air element and opens your heart chakra, your center of unconditional love. It directs your breath into the center of your chest and into your middle and upper back, creating space between your thoracic vertebrae. It also supports your immune system, including your skin, the boundary that simultaneously holds everything you are and allows you to touch and meet others.
When Libra energy is activated, it is eay to lose yourself in others and set aside your own peace for the sake of another. This shape reminds you of your inner sanctuary and the importance of nourishing it too. It is supportive anytime you want to practice kindness toward yourself or come back inside your own edges.
Align with the energy of peace and compassion through this mudra and the practices that accompany it.
Check out ways to practice mudras live with our empowering yoga community on our live class schedule!
🫶🏻 MUDRA: Kapota Mudra
Benefits of Kapota Mudra:
cultivates ahimsa, or non-violence, toward yourself
builds your inner peace
instills compassion and acceptance
helps you feel whole in your own skin
makes room to feel your feelings with compassion
balances self-care and caring for others
invites introspection and inner listening
directs your breath into the center of your chest
improves circulation to your thymus gland
releases tension from your middle and upper back
creates space between your thoracic vertebrae
supports the health of your immune system
supports your skin, your body's first boundary and largest immune organ
supports your Anahata (heart chakra) — your center for unconditional love
connects to the air element
Why practice Kapota Mudra:
Practice Kapota Mudra to find the sanctuary in the center of your own chest and remember that peace begins with how you treat yourself. From inside it, you get to meet what you are feeling and offer yourself the same kindness you give everyone else.
How to practice Kapota Mudra:
Find any comfortable seat. Bring your hands into prayer in front of your heart. Hold this slightly away from your body. Keep your fingers, your thumbs, and the base of your palms together while you open your knuckles away from each other, to create an open space between your palms. Soften your shoulders and align your spine.
🧘🏻♀️ MEDITATION: Peace In My Inner Sanctuary
WHY:
Practice this meditation to remember that your inner sanctuary is always there to come back to. Your breath moves in through one nostril and out through a whistle. Your hands float between your own heart and the mudra with the rhythm of your breath. Let peace within become familiar so coming back home to yourself becomes more natural.
PLACE:
Find a comfortable seat. Perhaps sit on a bolster or blanket to get your hips a little higher than your knees.
MUDRA + MOVEMENT:
Invitation to find Kapota Mudra. Bring your hands into prayer in front of your heart. Hold this slightly away from your body. Keep your fingers, your thumbs, and the base of your palms together while you open your knuckles away from each other, to create an open space between your palms. Soften your shoulders and align your spine.
This is a moving mudra. Your hands will leave this shape and return to it with every breath. Your left hand rests on your heart and your right hand travels to your face as you inhale. Both hands come back together in Kapota Mudra as you exhale.
PRANAYAMA:
INHALE: Let your left hand rest on your heart. Block your right nostril in any way that is comfortable with your right hand. Inhale deeply through your left nostril. Pause.
EXHALE: Release your right hand to meet your left and reform Kapota Mudra at your heart. Exhale through your mouth in a whistle sound. Pause.
Bring your right hand back up to your face and your left hand back to your heart and continue this pattern.
DRISHTI:
Soften or close your eyes if that feels safe and comfortable.
SUGGESTED TIMING:
3-5 minutes.
TO END:
After an exhale, release control of your breath and sit with both hands in Kapota Mudra to allow yourself a moment inside your own sanctuary. Visualize your hands mirroring the shape of your heart. Let yourself rest inside your own wholeness.
✨ MANTRA:
I find wholeness in my steady body and peaceful heart
I hope you always return to the sanctuary of your body and heart.
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