The Magic Hand
BY JANANI RAVIKUMAR
The magic hand is a beautiful practice that you carry out on yourself to relieve your feelings of sadness, fear, anger, anxiety, or any other difficult feelings. Imagine that your hand has a magic touch – it is full of light, peace and joy, and the moment it touches any part of your body, it would be healed. This is the first thing they teach us in Reiki, to heal the affected parts of our body with our hand.
So when I was stuck with extreme anxiety at one time, my magic hand helped to heal me a great extent. To do this practice, fold your hands in prayer position and pray to the universe or your favourite God for strength in your hands or palms, imagining an illumining light received within your palms full of peace, joy and calm.
Now, lie down on your back or your side (whichever is comfortable) and start scanning your body from the top to the bottom, part by part, slowly. And if you notice any pain or discomfort in any part of your body, simply place your warm hand on that part and notice the painful sensation with lot of compassion and love. Imagine that your hand is radiating a beautiful warmth and comfort to the painful part. Also keenly observe your thoughts or feelings that emanate from that area. As the long hidden painful thoughts or feelings surface, do not become nervous or tensed. Just continue holding your magic hand there to comfort, accept those feelings or thoughts completely and allow them to vent out. Just be a silent witness to whatever is going on within you. With compassion and unconditional love to whatever is, without labelling it any way nor trying to analyze it. Your job is just to be a compassionate and loving listener, a best friend as all these uncomfortable memories or feelings surface.
Sometimes, you may find this pain moving to somewhere else in your body. When you notice it moving, immediately move your magic hand to the next place and notice what is happening there as well. In this way, you keep healing yourself through your own compassion and unconditional love, until your whole body feels much better.
And the logic behind this practice? Many a time, when something untoward happens in our life that we are unable to accept, something or someone that made us angry or sad or evoked in us any negative feelings, these feelings never completely vanish. They leave their mark somewhere in our body, and are stored in small pockets of energy at different places. Sometimes these painful feelings remain dormant or unnoticed for many days, months or even years unless a powerful incident occurs that triggers them again. This causes us to react in ways conditioned by our past or seemingly irrational fears, but which have their roots in the past. Many times, such thoughts or feelings have been long suppressed or ignored or just stacked away in a dark place to be tackled later on. But as these small cockroaches and spiders pile up one after another, they cause a dense pain body that lives within us. The only thing that can cure this pain body is to bring it up as and when it arises and hold it in our loving non-reactive space with the help of our magic hand.
This magic hand is a highly effective method that can be used effectively on anxiety and depression patients and even on small children. You will find that within few days of doing this practice, your negative thoughts and feelings decrease to a large extent, as you have allowed them to come up, accepted them completely rather than resisting them, and validated them for what they are through your love rather than suppressing them. Your body’s energy levels rise up because of your loving awareness, and you find yourself making decisions or taking actions that are wise and appropriate to the moment rather than being driven by impulse or emotions. As you keep doing this to yourself on a regular basis, you will also notice that you become a very kind and compassionate person to others around you as well, as you are able to understand that they go through the same difficult feelings or thoughts, and so you are able to help them in a better way through a deeper perspective rather than just looking at the surface of things.
Do try it and let me know if it worked for you!