Śivasaṃhitā 4.51

This heading — khecarīmudrākathanam — introduces the most celebrated and feared of hatha yoga’s mudrās: the ‘seal of the one who travels through space’. Unlike the preceding bandhas, which work primarily on the lower winds, Khecarīmudrā operates on the upper palate and the cranial neuroendocrine system. Its name evokes freedom of movement in the empty space (kha) of consciousness.

Khecarī — ‘she who moves in the sky’ — combines kha (space, sky, the opening of the axis, also the tenth orifice of the body) with carī, from the verb car- (to move, to traverse, to practice). The space referred to is not only physical space but cidākāśa — the space of consciousness — and the ‘journey’ is the inversion of the tongue toward the cranial cavity where bindu resides, the drop of amṛta.

In the hierarchy of the Śivasaṃhitā’s mudrās, Khecarī occupies the highest place for its direct effect on the pituitary and hypothalamus, which medieval texts describe as the sahasrāracakra and the reservoir of soma, the lunar fluid of immortality. The Haṭhapradīpikā (III.32-53) devotes more verses to it than any other individual technique, and the Khecarīvidyā is an entire text dedicated to it.