mudra
मुद्रा mudrāA seal or gesture. The word first means a signet, stamp or lock, and names four things: the hand-poses of deity images (abhaya, varada, jnana), the hand-gestures of classical dance, the gestures of ritual worship, and the whole-body seals of hatha yoga. A fifth, unrelated sense is parched grain, the fourth 'M' of the panchamakara.
Where this term appears
- Meditation and the Eight Limbs Yoga
Hatha yoga emphasises asana, pranayama, mudras (sealed gestures and locks), and the awakening of kundalini , the coiled energy of the subtle body.
- What is Hatha Yoga? Yoga
Then the mudras and bandhas , the seals and locks, such as the mula bandha at the root of the body, by which the yogi traps the life-force and turns it inward and upward.
- How to Read a Murti Deities
The empty hands are speaking in mudras , gestures with fixed meanings, and three are worth knowing because they appear everywhere.
- Tantric alchemy: rasa-shastra and the deathless body Lineages
In the Hatha-yoga-pradipika , the yogi performs khechari mudra , curling the tongue back and up behind the palate to seal an inner opening, and there drinks the amrita , the nectar of immortality said to drip p…
- The 64 Śākta Tantras Lineages
The 64 Śākta Tantras are the Goddess-centred tantric scriptures, named in a famous verse of the Saundaryalaharī. The number 64 is a traditional and symbolic…
- The Kularnava Tantra: The Kaula Path and the True Guru Lineages
The Kularnava does discuss the pancha-makara , the "five Ms": madya (wine), mamsa (meat), matsya (fish), mudra (parched grain), and maithuna (sexual union), the ritual substances of the left-hand Kaula path.
- The Nāth Sampradaya Lineages
…the promise in the tradition's own flat terms: "The Yogi, wearing the mudra , becomes immortal." The body is not a prison to escape.
- The Types of Tantra Lineages
…a had already named, and puts them in ascending order: Maṇḍalapīṭha , Mudrāpīṭha , Mantrapīṭha , Vidyāpīṭha , with the Siddhayogeśvarīmata highest inside the Vidyāpīṭha and the Mālinīvijayottara its essence.