From The Main Central Jin Shin Jyutsu Newsletter, Number 70, Fall 2010, Anita Willoughby shares her experience throughout the movement of the mudras in Text 1, page 47:

…Magical Mudras

How does one create magic in one’s life? How do we become magicians and create miracles in our own lives? The number eight, in Hebrew, is the number of new beginnings, the number of miracles. The eight dwells outside the natural order of things; the eight lives outside the created world – the seven days of creation, the seven days of the week, the seven musical notes, the seven colors of the rainbow. The eight lives in the realm of infinite possibility. The miracle of the Chanukah holiday is that there was only enough oil to last one day, but miraculously it lasted for eight days. After the flood in the Bible, Noah, known as “the eighth person” stepped out onto a new earth to commence a new order of things. Anytime there is an eight around, there is the possibility of a new birth; there is the possibility of a miracle.

In Jin Shin Jyutsu we have been given many gifts; one of them is the gift of the eight mudras to help us create miracles in our lives. These eight mudras were distilled from hundreds of Buddhist and Hindu mudras. “Mudra” is a Sanskrit word which means “seal”. it comes from two words, “mud”, to delight or pleasure, and “dru”, to draw forth. In Japanese, these hand gestures are know as “In”, “Inzo”, or “Kakunin-In”. “In” means “seal” or “sign” in Japanese.

Mudras are simple hand gestures, which connect us to the energetic, invisible world. The purpose of mudras is to evoke a higher state of consciousness out of the ordinary daily consciousness. Mudras have been defined as “mystical and evocative, sacred hand gestures which communicate our deepest intention in a single moment of physical poetry”. (Sara Ivanhoe, Yoga Journal, April 2006) Mudras are spiritual exercises which connect us to a mysterious cosmic force, which can only be understood through experience. (How serendipitous that we have eight mudras to connect us to this mysterious force.)

According to the Kabbalah, our fingers/our hands are our magic wands which connect “that which is below, with that which is above”. Our fingers/our hands are the connecting link to the heavenly domain. The fingers are our direct access to the heavenly gates, to the realms of the invisible world. Our fingers/our hands are our antennae or magic wands to connect with the planets in our solar system. When we practice these mudras, we are plugging into heavenly light; we are connecting to the planets which provide the energy for the depths in the body.

To be continued…