When and why do we touch elders’ feet in Indian culture? What does touching someone’s feet mean? Here is an insight into the Indian tradition of touching elders’ feet as a part of the cultural etiquette.
Bowing down and touching the feet in a certain way is an enormous opportunity for one to receive things.
Sadhguru Quote
When to Touch an Elder’s Feet?
Touching an elder’s feet is a cherished tradition among Hindus in India and abroad, serving as a sincere gesture of respect. Here’s when this tradition is typically observed –
First Meetings and Greetings
When meeting elders for the first time, or as a general greeting, it’s customary to touch their feet.
Reunions and Farewells
Whether reuniting after a long time or bidding farewell before a journey, touching elders’ feet is a common way to express warmth and respect.
Seeking Blessings
To seek blessings, individuals often touch the feet of parents, grandparents, teachers, spiritual gurus or older family members. This happens during festivals, special occasions, personal milestones, and before embarking on new ventures.
Birthdays and Marriages
On birthdays, and especially on wedding days, it is a widely observed tradition for newlyweds to touch the feet of elders.
Acknowledging Gifts and Appreciation
When receiving gifts or appreciation from an elder, tradition encourages touching their feet as a sign of gratitude.
Artistic Performances
Artists show reverence by touching the feet of their teachers or gurus before performing on stage.
Guru Purnima and Teachers’ Day
On these occasions, students express respect by touching the feet of their teachers, gurus, or mentors as a gesture of gratitude and seeking blessings.
Before Religious Ceremonies
Prior to performing any religious rituals or pujas, it is customary to touch the feet of all elders in the family. This act symbolizes paying respect and seeking their blessings. In many families, children and youngsters are encouraged to touch their elders’ feet on the first day of school, college or work.
Why Indians Touch the Feet of Their Elders
The action of touching an elder’s feet is intended to seek their blessings.
Touching the elders’ feet is a way of honoring them for the knowledge and experience they have acquired over time.
Indians touch their elders’ feet as a token of respect towards them.
On birthdays, festivals or before starting something new, it is a tradition to touch the elders’ feet to obtain their blessings.
Touching someone’s feet signifies the shedding of one’s ego, honouring their greatness in terms of age or expertise, bowing down to them with humility and obtaining their blessings and good wishes.
The practice of touching the elders’ feet was adopted by Indians during the Vedic period. Hindu tradition says that when you touch someone’s feet, you receive their knowledge, strength and fame.
It is believed that while touching the feet of elders, you touch the dust of their feet, which is the dust collected over several years of their life’s journey, touching which can be beneficial.
How to Touch an Elder’s Feet?
The act of touching someone’s feet is called ‘charan sparsh’ where charan means feet and sparsh means touch.
According to Indian tradition, there are three ways of touching the elders’ feet. One, where you bend forward and touch the elder’s feet. The second way is to sit on your knees and touch the other person’s feet. The third way is to lie down on your stomach and touch your forehead to the ground (which is known as sashtang pranam).
The correct way to touch an elder’s feet is to bend forward in the waist, without bending your knees, and touch the left toe of the person with your right hand and right toe of the person with your left hand. In response, the elder then covers your head as a gesture to give you blessings.
Health Benefits of Touching Someone’s Feet
When you bend forward to touch someone’s feet, your back and waist are stretched, which is good for the muscles in that region and helps provide relief from pain in the area.
When you sit on your knees and touch someone’s feet, your knees are bent and upper body gets stretched, which is good for the muscles in that area and helps with pain relief in those body parts.
During sashtang pranam, the entire body gets stretched, thus providing relief from body pain.
It is said that the left side of the body carries negative energy and the right side carries positive energy. When a person touches the feet of another person, the two bodies link with each other and a circuit is completed, thus achieving the correct balance of energies.
Touching the elders’ feet is an integral part of the Indian cultural etiquette. Most people follow it as a tradition while some argue about its necessity and question the hygiene factor in actually touching someone else’s feet.
A modified version of this Hindu tradition is to join the hands, bow or bend down, and touch the hands or the head to the ground in front of the elder. The action of bending and bowing are symbolic of modesty and surrender, which is how the practice of touching the feet of elders can help in keeping oneself grounded.
In essence, the tradition of touching elders’ feet continues to be a meaningful and heartfelt practice, weaving threads of respect and familial bonds into various aspects of life.
