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

in the process of writing this article on the mudras, I went over my notes and came across a simple expression in one of my earliest classes. The mudras are the “start of all this”, the start of Jin Shin jyutsu. By this time, most of us know the story of Jiro Murai in his family’s mountaintop cabin, where he used fasting, meditation, prayer and mudras to heal himself. He stayed for seven days, and on the morning of the eighth day he woke up and was healed. A miracle had happened there – eight mudras for a miracle.

It has been said that mudras, finger positions, finger poses, are the first language of man. We communicate with our fingers before speaking with our mouth and tongue. Indeed many of us still use our fingers, our hands, and our arms to support verbal speech. The hands are connected to the speech center of the brain. In yoga the touching of the fingertips has been proven to help harmonize the brain. The language of the hands is the oldest form of communication – communication before the spoken word.

A few years ago, while staying with organizers Maurice and Roberte, in Genk, Belgium, I had the opportunity to experience mudras as the first method of communication. Playing with their two children, Lore and Roos-je, where we didn’t share a common language, I suddenly found myself showing them the mudras. And from there we proceeded to have a conversation with our fingers. We had a dance of the fingers where we spoke non-verbally and created a magical relationship. We spoke with these ritualized hand gestures and circulated spiritual/universal energy. Through this process, I began to understand the language of fingers and pre-verbal communication.

Another quality of the eight is “get in rhythm with the universe”. The rhythm of exhale/inhale is immediately established and continued throughout the movement of the mudras in Text 1, page 47. This basic pattern (exhale/inhale, involution/evolution, contraction/expansion) connects us to the primary rhythm of life. Therefore, these eight mudras help us get in rhythm with the universe in order to create miracles in our lives.

The first four of the eight mudras connect us with our Trinity Flow, the energetic pattern of creation we study in Text 1; which includes the Main Central Vertical Universal Harmonizing Energy and the Left and Right Major Vertical Supervisor Universal Harmonizing Energy. With these four mudras, we energize our Trinity Flow and lay the groundwork for bringing ourselves into the material world, the four being the number of form, the number of the material world and exactly one-half of the number eight.

These first four mudras utilize the left hand, the left side of the body, energy of generation, our descending, exhaling and masculine energy. Through the Trinity Flow, the dynamic activity of the Diagonal Mediator Universal Harmonizing Energy is released. The next mudra, the fifth mudra in this sequence, actively connects left hand/left side with right hand/right side – past with present, exhale with inhale, masculine with feminine. A seal is created through the thumb and middle finger of the right hand and the thumb of the left hand, to seal left and right, to seal duality and ensure the wedding of opposites for the activation of life.

To be continued…