The other day I was the unfortunate recipient of a rude gesture. I was stopped at a traffic light, and I guess I took a nano-second too long to hit the gas after the light turned green. The car behind me squealed its tires to pass me, and the woman behind the wheel glared at me with her hand extended out the window as she passed by. She flipped me off, and almost instantly, I was sent reeling back to childhood when I knew from the look in my mom’s eye that I had done something very very bad, but I wasn’t quite sure what it was. Then, a mile or so down the road, the guilt transformed into rage, and I felt my own face tighten like the woman’s glare.
I began to wonder, how does one little gesture have so much power to evoke such profound emotion instantly? In fact, the gesture, also known as “the bird”, has so much power that one name is not enough. This gesture owns innumerable other monikers such as “flipping the bird”, “shooting a bird”, “flying the bird”, “telling me I’m number one”, “birdie worthy’s”. The emotions evoked are doubled when both hands are used in the “double-barrel salute”, the “double deuce”, a “double whammy” or the “dirty double”. A variation of the hand gesture is also made by showing someone the back of the hand, with three fingers extended, with the comment to “read between the lines”.
The next day on my mat, the image of the angry woman and her gesture returned to me during side angle pose. My lower hand was extended toward the floor, and as I have been playing with in my practice lately, I was careful not to put any weight on my lower hand at the floor, but rather to simply touch my middle finger to the ground. Probably out of retaliation towards my offender and in expression of the guilt and rage I had absorbed from her, I folded my fingers of my lower hand into “the bird”. Everything collapsed. My legs lost a little strength, and my spine curved. My upper arm began to shake, and my jaw began to clench. So, out of reaction, I dropped the pose and tried again on the other side.
Then, I thought, if this one finger has so much power, what would happen if that power were directed more positively?
I tried side angle pose again. This time, I resisted the urge to retaliate. Instead, when the image of the angry woman returned to my vision, I took a deep breath and extended my lower hand middle finger (with its four friends open too) to touch the floor. I imagined a line of energy drawing from the tip of the middle finger at the earth to the tip of the middle finger in the sky. Hands open and receptive, I focused my drishti on the middle finger tips and the energy between them. The pose took a different form. I felt strong, supported, free, open, and relaxed. Suddenly, I could imagine what the angry woman might look like when she smiles.
The tip of the middle finger represents our self-image, self-acceptance, personal power, and our ability to implement our creativity. The middle finger as a whole represents the channeling of life’s energy: the tactics, strategies, and techniques. Extended alone, without the support of the other fingers as in “the bird” the middle finger shoots energy of extreme poor self-image, low self-acceptance, and a need to assert one’s personal power through aggressive and belligerent tactics. However, when supported by community (the other four fingers on the hand), the middle finger draws upon the energy of the whole, is an expression of working in unity, as a piece of the whole. When the middle finger holds its place as the center of the hand as a whole, it has extreme power to heal, to support, to express self-image/acceptance and personal power.
Energetically, the middle finger thrives off the power of community, working together. It likes to take the lead (it is the longest finger on the hand), but it also likes to delegate. Thus, when performing a yoga pose that requires reaching for the floor (triangle, side angle, open armed standing twists, half-moon, etc.) try just touching the middle finger to the floor and transmitting the energy of Earth through that touch to the rest of your body. I find that this simple physical adjustment in alignment promotes more strength in the core, more openness in the chest, more extension of the limbs, and more freedom in the pose. Energetically, allowing the middle finger to work in community with the rest of the hand as an expression of love can be a thousand times more powerful than “flipping the bird”.
Let me first confess.
