Placing Them on the Chest, and the Prohibition of Ikhtiṣār
He ﷺ would place his right hand on the back of his left palm, wrist, and fore-arm, and he instructed his Companions to do likewise. At times he would clasp the left hand with the right, and he put both hands on his chest. He ﷺ forbade ikhtiṣār in the prayer—that is, the posture of resting one’s forearm on the hip, a form of ṣalb (propping oneself up) that he had prohibited. (ص 209 - 229).

Gazing at the Place of Prostration and Cultivating Humility
Whenever he ﷺ prayed, he lowered his head and cast his eyes toward the ground. When he entered the Kaʿbah he did not let his gaze move beyond the spot where he would prostrate until he left it. He ﷺ said, “Nothing that distracts the worshiper should be left inside the house.”

He used to forbid looking up to the sky and stressed this ban so strongly that he said, “People must stop lifting their eyes to the sky during the prayer, or their sight will not return to them (in another wording: or their eyes will be snatched away).”

In another report he said, “When you pray, do not turn aside, for Allah sets His Face before the face of His servant while he is in prayer, so long as he does not turn away.” He also said about turning one’s head, “It is a theft that Satan steals from a person’s prayer.” He ﷺ said, “Allah continues to turn toward His servant in the prayer as long as the servant does not turn away; but when he turns his face, Allah turns away from him.” And he forbade three things: “pecking like a rooster, sitting like a dog, and turning like a fox.”

He ﷺ would say, “Pray the prayer of someone bidding farewell, as though you see Him; for if you do not see Him, He sees you.”

He also said, “No Muslim who is present for an obligatory prayer, perfects its ablution, humility, and bowing, except that it becomes an expiation for the sins committed before it, so long as he avoids the major sins—and this holds for all time.”

He ﷺ once prayed in a striped khamīṣah that had markings. He glanced at those markings, and when he finished he said, “Take this khamīṣah of mine to Abū Jahm and bring me Abū Jahm’s plain anbajaniyyah, for it has just distracted me from my prayer” (in another wording: “I looked at its pattern during the prayer and it almost tempted me”).

ʿĀʾishah had a cloth with images that was spread over a niche; the Prophet ﷺ used to pray facing it, and he said: