This is so stupid! What?? Me??? Oh, yes, that's me!
Where do you point your finger when you wanna make sure people know it's YOU?
You gonna point at your heart, right?
You will rather shake your head slightly in disbelief to express your valued opinion about something or somebody else by pointing at your head, isn't it?
In the Asian culture, Namaste is a very common way to greet each other. The idea is that we all have our divine sparkle, our essence, our soul, our still point - whatever you wanna call it - within us. The location is pretty much in the centre of our chest. In Yoga we call this area the Anahata Chakra or Heart Chakra.
And we all point there automatically to our heart. We do not have to be a yogi. We don't have to travel to Asia. We know it anyway.
Namaste means literally: "I bow to Thee"
In Yoga we often put some decoration around this simple meaning by adding "My inner sacred self greets your inner sacred self" or "My divine self honours your divine self", etc. It is a very common way to start and end a yoga session. You might doubt that Donald Trump is much aware of this meaning but obviously even he is adapting it. Is he becoming a yogi in the end...? :-)
3 good reasons for Namaste
1. It shows respect to one another
At the same time we have a tiny moment where we connect to ourselves, and honor ourselves as much as the person in front of us. To me this feels nicer than the elbow bump... And it has nothing to do with egoism or ego. The inner self is pretty much the opposite of ego, as we can feel that...
2. ... we are all connected
We do connect to ourselves by touching our own heart centre and connect to the person we greet at the same time. And all this
without touching.
Without hugging.
We keep a respective space and give this space to the other person.
3. We protect ourselves and the other person
By not touching and still connecting we have a very practical way of keeping all of us save. Why not adapting new habits during this time and keeping them up?