POSTURES AND GESTURES are primal aspects of religious belief and behavior and as such have emerged, with other elements of culturally symbolic expression and communication, at the threshold of human existence. Their use is not, of course, restricted to the human species; nonhuman animals display a wide variety of postures and gestures that serve to demarcate species from each other and to signify territorial dominance, propagation procedures, and social hierarchy. However, culturally generated and transmitted postures and gestures, which may retain elements of phylogenetically evolved ones, nevertheless transcend these in their specific configurations of learned and intentional patterns, significations, and symbolizations.

Every religious tradition recognizes an intimate relationship between inward dispositions and external postures and gestures of the human body, which is capable of expressing and celebrating a great range of attitudes, moods, motivations, and intentions, whether sacred or profane. The study of postures...