Salutation Seal

• Reduces stress and anxiety
• Calms the brain
• Creates flexibility in the hands, fingers, wrists, and arms
• Opens the heart

Take care not to harden the skin as you spread the palms against each other. The center of the palm should always stay soft and maintain its "dome" shape. Keep the thumbs soft too.

This palms-together gesture is usually centered over the heart. But you can also raise the pressed hands to the front of your forehead or bring them slightly above and in front of the crown of your head.

Press a block or thick book (about 3 to 4 inches thickness) between your palms. Spread the skin of the palms and stretch the fingers out of the centers of the palms. Use the prop to help widen your sternum and collarbones. Then recreate this same width without the block, palms touching.

Have your partner sit in front of you, also in a comfortable seated posture. Perform the gesture and have the partner cover your hands with his/hers. Sit together for a few minutes with joined hands, feeling the energetic exchange between your subtle hearts through your hands. Then reverse and cover your partner's hands with yours.

• Adho Mukha Svanasana

This palms-together gesture completes an energetic circuit between the hands and the heart and harmonizes the two hemispheres of the brain. See if you can discover, as you perform this gesture, the roots of the hands in the yoga or subtle heart, which unlike the physical heart is directly in the center of your chest (below the sternum and between the shoulder blades), and towards the back of the torso.