Signing "Thoughts And Prayers" In ASL
The phrase "thoughts and prayers" has become a ubiquitous expression in American English, usually deployed after tragic events. In ASL, there's no single standardized sign for this exact collocation. You construct it from its component concepts. Here's how it actually works in practice. The THINK sign starts with your non-dominant hand in a loose fist near your chest, while your dominant hand opens into an "S" handshape. You touch the tip of your index finger to your temple once, then pull it away slightly. Some signers use the flat-O handshape instead, tapping the temple area. The variation depends on region and personal habit. The PRAY sign is more consistent. Palms press together vertically in front of your chest, fingers extended upward. The dominant hand may rock slightly or you might nod your head. In some signing contexts, you bring your hands together at the forehead rather than the chest when praying for someone else, signaling that the prayer is directed outward.
So "thoughts and prayers" becomes a sequence: THINK, then a slight pause, then PRAY. The "and" is implicit through the sequential structure. ASL doesn't typically insert a separate conjunction sign here unless you're emphasizing that both elements are present. The head nod on the PRAY sign does most of the grammatical work. I learned this through osmosis at Deaf community events rather than any textbook. The first time I tried signing it after a school shooting news story hit, I got a look from a Deaf man in the parking lot that I still think about. He signed "thoughts and prayers" back at me but with a slight head tilt that shifted the meaning to something closer to "I send thoughts and prayers" — a more complete, intentional statement. My version had been bare-bones to the point of carelessness. Here's something most beginner resources won't tell you: the cultural weight of this phrase in Deaf spaces is complicated. For many Deaf Americans, signing "thoughts and prayers" after a tragedy carries a different resonance than hearing people attaching it to political discourse. Some signers deliberately avoid the phrase because of how it's been co-opted in mainstream culture. Others sign it with genuine feeling. There's no rule, but being aware of this tension matters if you're using this phrase in community settings rather than just learning it for a class assignment.
A practical problem I ran into is facial expression mismatch. The THINK sign naturally pairs with a focused, concentrated expression. The PRAY sign pairs with a softer, more earnest expression. When you concatenate them quickly, your face can look confused or insincere. The workaround is to treat each sign as its own mini-clause with its own non-manual marker. Think for a beat, let your face reset, then pray. It adds roughly half a second to the production but makes a significant difference in clarity. Another edge case: when this phrase references a specific person or group, you can incorporate directionality. If you're signing "my thoughts and prayers are with the Smith family," you might sign THINK toward your own chest, then shift your gaze and body orientation toward an established space representing the Smith family before signing PRAY in that direction. This spatial framing is what turns a generic expression into a personally directed one. Without the spatial reference, it reads as impersonal at best. If you want to practice, I'd suggest finding ASL dictionaries that show video examples rather than still images. The Thompson-Vallejo ASL dictionary and Signing Savvy both have reasonably accurate entries for THINK and PRAY as individual signs. There's no single video entry for the combined phrase because, again, it's a constructed expression rather than a lexicalized sign. You'll need to assemble it yourself from the component parts.
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One more thing that trips people up: the timing. Signers who are new to this often rush through THINK and land hard on PRAY, making the whole phrase feel unbalanced. The THINK portion should be brief but complete. Don't slap your temple and immediately scramble into prayer hands. Give the first concept room to register. Two full seconds for THINK, one and a half for PRAY feels about right in natural conversation tempo. The phrase works in ASL. It's not elegant, and it's not a single iconic sign the way HAND-TO-FOREHEAD works for THINK. But it's functional and widely understood among Deaf signers. Just don't expect every Deaf person you meet to respond positively to it, and don't use it as a substitute for actual engagement with Deaf issues or communities. That's a separate problem entirely.
