Part 1: The Root Cause of All Disharmony
What's with the Attitude?! — 4-Part Series
The very first thing I learned from JSJ was holding the fingers to"Get rid of Worry Fast.” It was a powerful introduction to the Art. I didn't understand how something so simple could work, but it was easy enough to do, so at night, when thoughts were keeping me awake, I practiced the technique and found that it actually helped me get back to sleep! Soon I began teaching my yoga students to hold their fingers and they, too, found it helpful. Holding the fingers calms a busy mind.
Each finger has a relationship with an element, organ function energy, and an attitude. There are other relationships as well, but for this post, I'm going to focus on the finger-attitude relationship.
JSJ teaches that Any and All disharmony in the body stems from one or more of the 5 attitudes: worry, fear, anger, sadness and Try-to. This is a profound concept. It means that while there are thousands of disease diagnoses in the world, there are only 5 root causes! That really simplifies things, and emphasizes the importance of keeping our attitudes in check. This is how the Art of Jin Shin suggests we do just that:
When you're feeling worried, hold your thumb to help shift the worry towards a sense of security and confidence.
When you're feeling afraid, hold your index finger to harmonize fear towards courage and flow.
When feeling angry, hold your middle finger to shift anger towards compassion.
When grieving or feeling sad, hold the ring finger to help shift sadness towards gratitude.
And when feeling like you are not enough just as you are, hold your little finger to shift your need for pretense towards self-acceptance and a sense of ease.
How can holding a finger change the way we feel?
In short, it has to do with the mind-body-energy connection and each finger's relationship to the 5 elements.
In part 2 , we'll further discuss these relationships.
Read the Entire 4-Part Series on the Finger-Attitude Connection:
Each finger has a relationship with an element, organ function energy, and an emotion/attitude. There are other relationships as well, but for this post, I'm going to focus on the finger-attitude relationship.