The Reverence of One-Handed Prayer

Recently one of our teacher trainees, who is also a pastor, sent around an email sharing an AI response to a query about the origin of prayer hands:

"The prayer hands posture — palms pressed together, fingers pointing upward, held at the chest — has roots that predate Christianity by a long way, and it shows up across several traditions with somewhat different explanations.

The gesture is often traced to the anjali mudra, used in the Indian subcontinent for thousands of years as a gesture of greeting, respect, and devotion — it's the basis of "namaste." It appears in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain worship and social greeting alike, long before it shows up in Christian art or practice.

A few explanations get offered for why the gesture feels so universally suited to prayer or reverence:

• Bringing the hands to the center of the body toward the heart is read as a gesture of unity — bringing scattered attention and energy into one focused point.

  
  

• Some traditions link it to a physiological idea: touching the fingertips of both hands is thought to balance the body's energy or activate a calm, focused mental state."

To take this a sweet step further, the Thai greeting called wai involves bringing the prayer hands up to touch the forehead. This is the highest level of respect, reserved for elders, teachers, bosses, monks, and royalty.

In short, prayer hands is a universal gesture spanning both centuries and the globe. Use this gesture to honor yourself above all — honor your body, breath, and mind.

But you don't need to use both hands to embody prayer hands! Shaolin monks greet each other with one hand only, called dan zhang, to honor Buddhist monk Dazu Huike, who cut off one arm to prove his devotion and be accepted as a disciple by Bodhidharma.

Even the anjali mudra has a one-handed version, the abhaya mudra. This is slightly different from the Shaolin dan zhang, which is done with the palm facing sideways. In the abhaya mudra, the right palm faces forward, very often with the left hand resting face up in the lap. It's a gesture of fearlessness, peace, protection, and safety, also demonstrating that one is not carrying any weapons to be a threat.

So as you can see, each hand can be a prayer hand, and the hands can be doing things independent of each other — even mundane tasks — and still be prayer hands.

Whatever it is you're immersed in — tai chi, cooking, gardening, driving, typing — feel as if you have two separate prayer hands, always carrying reverence with them in everything they do. ("Reverence: a deep feeling of respect mixed with awe; honoring someone or something greatly.")