Sometimes life feels like you have been directed into the hidden abyss without any guideposts showing the way. Often this experience comes out of nowhere, just when you thought you had things figured out for a while. Well, luckily, the yogis of old were familiar with similar experiences which prompted the download of a certain yogic technique just for the very task of navigating the unknown. This simple practice is called the Shoonya gesture in Sanskrit. Shoonya means “the void” or the nothingness. It is a psychic eye mudra that can be done anywhere and at any time, easily, and mastered with little effort, though challenging at first - reflective of its applicability with real-life.
If you search the word “shoonya” online, you will be hard pressed to find reference to this particular psychic gesture anywhere. Most places describe the hand gesture as great for healing and bringing peace and bliss, but pales in the stunning revelatory potential of this practice. In yogic references to the word shoonya, one is generally pointed toward the space behind closed eyes – the most obvious space to access the void during meditation. But this practice goes out on a limb...literally.
To practice Shoonya mudra – as I have learned it in India at yoga school - one brings a hand up to the nose, placing the side/end of the index finger next to the tip of the nose, while the pinky finger sits furthest away – fingers flat and extended. The eye gaze falls to the furthest finger, or the very top edge of the last finger in sight. See picture below for a demonstration.
After focusing attention for a few moments on this furthest finger, the hand is removed, but the gaze remains where the hand and finger once was. This is where the reference to “the void” comes in, because now the practitioner is staring into a mini-void, a place with “nothing” in it. Here is where the practice begins.
Staring into the void continues for as long as one can maintain focus, and then the practice is again repeated, beginning with the hand in place.
Each time the hand is removed and the gaze is fixed into the “nothingness” the practice lengthens. In this way, the practitioner is training him/herself in dancing with the void, “being” with the unknown and feeling comfortable in a position that has no real boundaries to be seen.
How applicable is this to life?
As we find ourselves in situations which ask us to go forward with little or no reference points or no known space of comfort, we are being asked to enter “the void.” In this place of unknown, boundary-less living, we have the opportunity to find peace in the space in-between knowing and not knowing.
By using Shoonya mudra, we are training the mind and the physical body (actually) to be in the space of not knowing, with relative comfort. This is extremely powerful.
By using Shoonya mudra, a simple yoga practice, one can train oneself to be in the unknown and not freak-out. As the yogic practice is mastered, the one using it finds more and more confidence in dealing with the uncertainties that life most certainly offers up. By utilizing Shoonya mudra on a regular basis, suddenly the unknown becomes a friendly place - as the ability to stare into what is “supposedly not there” becomes normal.
A funny thing happens when the unknown becomes a friend. It seems as the nothingness is “made friends with” something entirely new opens up. What reveals itself in the space beyond discomfort with the void is unique to every person, but carries with it a special kind of magic that only one who goes there can identify as real. Are you ready to dance with the void?
Practice Shoonya mudra and see how this simple yogic technique can help you navigate the unknown with not only ease, but mastery. There is nothing to gain and that is the key.
