Varahkam Mudra: find courage in your equanimity, live harmoniously, and move through your days with grace

Peace is not some passive thing you need to attain. It is the quiet courage already alive within you.

Varahkam Mudra is the gesture of the boar, a shape for equanimity. One hand begins facing up, the other facing down, so you are both receiving and offering at the same time — the scales, held at your own center. The shape stays because you intentionally hold it, and that intention is the whole practice. You remember two things can be true at once.

Varahkam Mudra activates the water, earth, fire, and air elements and opens your first through fourth chakras, with a focus on your Svadhisthana, your center of self-nourishment and the fluidity of your body, spirit, and emotions. It sends your breath low and wide, into your belly and back body. Your kidneys and your adrenal glands live back there, filtering and keeping your blood balanced and your body steady no matter what is going on in your external world.

The bright side of Libra energy is harmony, grace, and peace — being in balance with the people around you while staying in your own center. This shape supports the steadiness that makes all of that possible. It is wonderful anytime you want to feel into Libra’s influence and supportive anytime you want to move through your days with more grace, or feel how much strength is already in your own steadiness.

Align with the energy of harmony and grace 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: Varahkam Mudra

Benefits of Varahkam Mudra:

  • cultivates equanimity, your steadiness underneath everything

  • invites harmony into your whole system

  • helps you move through your days with more grace

  • builds a peace that stays even when things shift

  • lets hard things move through you rather than disrupt you

  • supports your emotional balance

  • makes it easier to stay present with another person

  • deepens the awareness you have of your own body

  • directs your breath into your back body

  • releases muscular tension from your middle and upper back

  • improves circulation to your kidneys and adrenal glands

  • grounds you in your body and balances all the systems

  • opens and balances your first through fourth chakras, with focus on your Svadhisthana (sacral chakra) — your center of self-nourishment

  • connects to the water, earth, fire, and air elements

Why practice Varahkam Mudra:
Practice Varahkam Mudra to find the steadiness underneath everything and let harmony move through your whole physical and energetic system. From there, hard things can move through you rather than disrupt you, so you get to stay present — with yourself and with the people around you.

How to practice Varahkam Mudra:
Find any comfortable seat. Bring your left hand in front of your belly with your palm facing up, and place your right hand just above it with your palm facing down. Clasp your fingers together and draw your hands gently apart. Bring the tips of your thumbs to touch, rotating your hands in opposite directions so both thumbs point up. Let your elbows stay away from your body. Soften your shoulders and align your spine.

🧘🏻‍♀️ MEDITATION: Embodied Peace + Love

WHY:
Practice this meditation to build a steadiness you know you can trust. You offer peace out on the exhale and trust it to return to you on the inhale. You cultivate a deep knowing that you will never run yourself empty sharing your peace with the world. You are not keeping the peace, inside of you or in the external world. You are being it. And embodying it in that way makes more of a difference than you know.

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

MUDRA:
Invitation to find Varahkam Mudra. Bring your left hand in front of your belly with your palm facing up, and place your right hand just above it with your palm facing down. Clasp your fingers together and draw your hands gently apart. Bring the tips of your thumbs to touch, rotating your hands in opposite directions so both thumbs point up. Let your elbows stay away from your body. Soften your shoulders and align your spine.

PRANAYAMA:
Inhale deeply through your nose for a count of five as you imagine your breath filling your center, right where your hands are holding. Exhale fully through your nose for a count of five as you imagine offering peace from your center, through your hands, and out into the world. Adjust the count as needed, but try to keep the inhale and exhale balanced and equal.

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 release your hands to sit and reflect on being an embodiment of peace and love on this planet. Notice what stayed steady in you the whole time.

✨ MANTRA:

I am an embodiment of love and a warrior of peace


I hope you take time to feel how much courage is already alive inside of you.

You belong here — in your body, in your practice, and in our community — always, in this season and the next.

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