Easy to start, years to master

The moment you start practicing Kuji-In, it will take effect in various forms of enhancements: better thinking, quickness of mind and body, more willpower. Yet, Kuji-In will keep on delivering new abilities and expand your awareness over years of practice.

Adapted to everyone

Kuji-In was first created for everyone to use. Over hundreds of years, it was adapted in different forms for: martial artists, holistic healers, spiritual seekers and the general public. Our first approach is global, followed by adaptations to each tradition.

One might think that the only apparent features would be the commonly seated posture holding some kind of hand position, However the Nine Hand Seals method actually combines five main tools:

- a hand position, called “mudra” in sanskrit

- a spoken expression, called “mantra” in sanskrit

- a focus point in the body, called “chakra” in sanskrit

- a mental visualization, called “mandala” in sanskrit

- a philosophical " concept " to ponder

All or a few of these tools are used while breathing in a relaxed posture. The beauty of this technique is that it can be done by combining only two of the five tools, helping in the assimilation of the technique, yet it reaches its full potential when all the tools are applied at once. This way, it becomes much easier to assimilate each step one by one.

When to Use

The techniques can be used from a few minutes to a full hour each day. It works great right before you go to bed.

In time, the practice of the technique will automatically put you in a state of relaxation and inner awareness, most of the time at the cost of a lesser awareness of the surroundings. It is the goal to attain. You will naturally generate your own mental cocoon when you practice, thus it becomes necessary to warn you of an important side effect. If you start doing even a part of the technique while you are driving your car, or doing something that requires your attention, you might get into this isolated mental state for a moment, putting yourself and other people at risk. It is often stronger than your own will to drive carefully. Practicing this technique will put you in a state of inner awareness. You would not like to use this wonderful technique to lose your concentration when it is the most critical. So, we recommend you practice the Nine Hand Seals techniques in a suitable place for it, when your concentration is not required to keep you and other people safe.

Since this technique focuses your attention within yourself, it is not a technique to use while you are actually training or performing some other activity that requires your attention. Even if the techniques will give out great benefits by themselves, the Nine Hand Seals assists your development by making your potential fully available when you need it in your other training processes. In this sense, an athlete must not use the Nine Hand Seals or its component tools while he is doing his actual routine, but before it, or use the mental focus tools when simply training in the gym. In the same manner, a musician will only disturb his concentration if he tries to hold the mental concepts in mind while also trying to play with efficiency, but having practiced the Nine Hands Seals before, more neural connections will be available for him to benefit from his practice.

For example, the first technique is used to develop both physical strength and self-confidence. Those who practices enough of the first technique will have quicker results when bodybuilding, and faster recovery periods between each training. A businessman who takes the time to use the full technique 15 minutes each day for a week will feel much more comfortable afterwards, when doing his presentations or holding negotiations.

Mudras
The body is filled with nerves that carry electricity, but it also has a more subtle circuitry, known as meridians. These meridians are commonly used in traditional Chinese medicine in the application of acupuncture. They are also the base of many massage techniques, since they have many beneficial influences on the body and the mind. Their use normally induces a state of relaxation, making the body prone to recovery.

The hand positions, or mudras, that we will use crosses and extends the fingers in ways to benefit from these meridians. Even though the meridians travel through the whole of the body, most of them start and end at the fingertips, thus, the hand positions and finger puzzles. When you breathe while concentrating on focus points or acupressure points, it will work on these points in the same way a needle or massage would.

In ancient India, the Hindu people tried out every type of: body positions, meditations, endless recitation of prayers, difficult fasting, applying many trials on their minds and bodies, in a quest for the ultimate yoga of self-development. One of the legacies of these experiments was the use of mudras that worked on the body and the mind in manners similar to what yoga would do. Yet, these hand positions are much simpler to apply than holding full body postures. These hand positions traveled to China and Japan along with the propagation of philosophy and meditation techniques.

Mantras
The spoken expressions we will use always represent a reference to the philosophy that we keep in mind, yet it is spoken to accelerate the effect of the technique. It is known in auto-suggestions and neural programming that even though we keep a thought in mind, the concept integrates the mental process much faster if it is spoken aloud, since it uses more parts of the brain to speak than if the concept is only mentally contemplated. The words can be spoken in any language, since the important thing is to involve the brain in physical speech. While many practitioners of Japan’s kuji-in appreciate speaking the Japanese kanji pronunciation, some healers and spiritualists prefer the sanskrit mantra, while some people also like to speak them in common language. Here, we will give the Japanese Kanji pronunciation (jp) and the Sanskrit pronunciation (sk.) for each of the nine steps.

The concrete affirmations of philosophical expressions are a key component for mental training, as it reinforces the concepts they represent in our mind. While repeatedly reciting a few words that hold a certain meaning, the speech interacts with subconscious parts of our mind to make new connections and render the concept more accessible to our awareness, in our conscious mind. Although the spoken expressions used in our techniques might seem to differ a bit from the philosophical concept held in mind, their efficiency is used to its fullest since they work in combination with the mental concept. This entire aspect will become much simpler when you are finished learning the first technique.

Mandala
Visualization is an image that we imagine in our mind. Mental visualization is there to help us keep our attention on the technique, hoping to prevent the mind to wander too far astray. Yet, if you start to think about random subjects, do not put pressure on yourself to come back to the visualization, but try to come back in a peaceful and relaxed attitude, calmly resetting the imagery in your mind.

The image kept in mind will assist in placing our attention on the focus point, but it will also use colours in ways known as chromotherapy (colour therapy), combining the psychological effect of the colour to enhance the efficiency of our practice period. Of course, the visualization itself will have a subtle reference to the philosophical concept held in mind. These visualisations are suggestions, and will vary from one tradition to another. We will even give out different visualisations in future books.

Chakras
When we pay attention to a place in our body for a long enough period of time, the focus point will become relaxed and our awareness of this place will be enhanced. Paying attention to a part of our body will accelerate its healing or regeneration, since our mental attention does lend more neural electricity to the area of attention. This available extra energy is always used in the best possible way by the body. For example, people who use pain killers heal slower than those who do not, since feeling pain continually attracts our attention to the hindered area. While the time difference is not miraculous, it is notable. Each of our nine techniques requires us to focus on a specific point in the body, not to heal it but to enhance it. These focus points, specific to each of the nine techniques, are simultaneously a part of the meridians system, nervous system, and endocrine system, associated with an acupressure point, a main nervous centre and a gland.

First Set: RIN / Self-Empowerment

The following technique is the RIN technique taken from the three books of the Kuji-In trilogy. RIN is the first of nine techniques to achieve a wonderful and powerful spiritual experience. The technique is presented so that it can be absorbed in a step-by-step manner. You are highly encouraged to learn the process gradually so to provoke the most powerful effect.

RIN: From Book 1 (Qi-Gong and Kuji-In)

Combine the 3 to manifest: movement (mudra), sound (mantra), thought (mind). In each practice, make the hand signs (mudra), say the single word repeatedly (mantra), and visualize the effect of the mudra (mind). Start with one, and don't go to the next until you are comfortable with the 3 parts of a level : hand/word/thought. When you master the 3 parts of a single level, and feel that "something is going on" in the energy planes, add the full long mantra, either in Japanese or Sanskrit pronunciation.

In the following, the first photo is the good way to do it, and the second is there to show you how to place your fingers.

Middle finger extended, all others are crossed

Chakra: Base
Mantra Japanese: On baï shi ra man ta ya sowaka

Mantra Sanskrit: Om Vajramanataya Swaha

The RIN Kuji is used to strengthen your mind and body. This Kuji-in must be performed before any other Kuji-ins can truly be effective. The RIN Kuji-in acts as a sort of hook-up to the Ultimate Source of all Power. By connecting you with this Divine energy, the RIN Kuji-in strengthens your mind and body, especially in collaboration with the other practices of the Kuji-In. A stronger connection to the Divine energy source will make you stronger at every level. Please be aware that this Kuji-in may elevate your body temperature.

Visualize a red shining light descending from Heaven into your body, and lighting a flame at your Base Chakra, the region between your anus and your sexual organs. Relax and begin the visualization, perform the mudra, chant the prayer mantra calmly, slowly or quickly, as you wish, (or even at an accelerating tempo, then come back suddenly to a slower tempo. The Base Chakra is the point where the Sacred flame emerges into your energetic body.

Philosophy introduction

It may be hard for you to believe, but the Universal Fire is situated at the base of your own experience: the base Chakra at the tip of your spine. You are all that there is; you simply don’t clearly understand what that means yet. On this path you will learn that, as the Sacred Flame grows brighter in you, it actually rises up your spine until it fills your entire body.

Breathe deeply and softly. Every inhalation nourishes the flame at your Base Chakra, encouraging it to fill you with Sacred Fire. Visualize the flame increasing in intensity, giving life to your entire body. As you are increasingly filled with this Sacred Fire, all the energy circuitry in your body will repair itself, becoming healthier and more alive as it receives the flow of the Universal Root energy: The Sacred Fire. This is your connection to All That IS.

Each time you make a decision, you will notice that some of your muscles tighten with fear. Muscles tighten when you have to make a decision because of the inherent biological fear that the human animal body holds. The objective of this exercise is to become conscious of the fearful nature of the human, animal part of you. Once you are aware of these fears, release them and trust yourself. Self-trust is the key to success in everything.

RIN: From Book 2 (Advanced Kuji-In)
Partial excerpts

The RIN Way of Life

You have the right to live. Every time you let yourself believe you do not have the right to live, to be, to act, you are telling the Universe that you prefer being the victim of your own life events. Stand up, be confident and declare your own right to live.

On the other hand, do not give yourself permission to act arrogantly, or to say that you are better than anyone else. If you make such comparisons, you are asserting that there are different levels of the right to live, or that some people are more entitled to life, or have more right to breathe than others. When you make those kinds of comparisons, you destroy your own right to live, to be, and to feel good about yourself.

From time to time, we all give in to the tendency to admit to ourselves that we think we are better than everyone else. Yet, this erroneous thinking reinforces the negative aspects of your ego. If you want to achieve true self confidence, you must abandon all attempts at comparing the value of human life. Thus, you may certainly express your various preferences, preferring apples over cherries, or the color pink to the color blue, but it is crucial to the development of full self consciousness that you never judge others as less worthy of life than you.

Once you start trusting yourself, practice projecting this trust into life. Say to yourself, “Life takes care of me, I trust life”. Eventually, this practice will lead you to have faith, the awareness that God takes care of you every moment, and that you can let go of your fears and worries; you are never alone and God supports all of your actions. If He did not, you would simply cease to be.

In fact, as a human being, you don’t really have any control over exactly what happens in your life, but you do have the power of choice. By following these techniques, you will gain the tools to influence the outcome of events in your life, and eventually, you will also develop the power to manifest events more as you desire them to be. You still won’t have any direct control over the outcome of events in your life; you will simply learn to trust life, and to have faith. Faith releases Divine energy into your body and fuels all other spiritual activities.

RIN Technique

 

Extend your two middle fingers and interlace all other fingers.

Chakra: Base
Mantra Japanese: On baï shi ra man ta ya sowaka

Mantra Sanskrit: Om Vajramanataya Swaha

Visualize a flame at your base chakra, which grows brighter each time you inhale air and Prana (more on Prana in the books). The circulation of air and Prana into your body ignites and fans the flame. Strangely, the flame does not go out immediately, even after you stop this exercise; the process seems to be self sustaining. When you exhale, vocalize the Kuji-In prayer three times (3). It is at the inhalation that the flame flares up. Visualize the flame growing until your whole body seems to be filled with this spiritual fire. This is the first Key of RIN. With this sacred technique, 90 complete breaths (1 breath = 1 inhalation and 1 exhalation) set your body on fire. You can begin with 9 complete breaths, (that is 27 mantras), but to gain the full potential of the RIN Kuji, and start the path, you will have to perform the complete set 90 times every few days until you have completely mastered the technique, and you feel the energy strongly inside of you. In the first few breaths, the RIN fire simultaneously grows in the base chakra and fills your lower body and legs. As you complete the set, the RIN fire covers your entire body, legs, arms, and then extends a bit beyond your body (about one inch from the exterior surface of your skin). A bit of dark blue smoke may be seen when a part of your body is set on fire for the first few times. After that, you may see a very little bit of white smoke. Allow the smoke to drift up unnoticed; do not spend any energy attending to it.

RIN: From Book 3 (Kuji-In Mastery)
Partial excerpts

RIN Consciousness

In the introductory and advanced knowledge of the Kuji-In, we learned that RIN was implicated in the concept of trust. We first learned that we should work to become courageous. Courage eventually leads to trust, which leads to self-trust. In time, self-trust will lead to Faith in the self, and then in a universal spiritual concept such as God or the higher self.

Each time you succeed something, you should focus on appreciating this success. This will help you build foundations for your mind to believe you can be successful. In this way, you will gain self-trust thru perseverant application of mental training practices, but also thru life experiences. Yet, whenever you fail, or believe you failed something, you should spend more energy on fighting negativity, and keeping your morale up. Use your apparent failures to build your determination to succeed by refining your future attempts. Trust in your ability to become better.

RIN Technique

RIN mudra

The RIN hand seal binds all fingers together except for the middle fingers, which is the fingers of experiences and events. The middle finger extends to make contact with these experiences.

This mudra brings the human and spiritual hands together, so that the human and the spiritual self can join in life’s experiences. This mudra helps to develop consciousness of each of the experiences that we are going thru, thus making them easier to accept and understand. This is the first step in becoming aware of the creative essence that leads to the manifestation of experiences and events in our lives. Knowing that there is a spiritual force creating all these experiences makes them easier to accept.

In the Transformational Approach, the RIN mudra keeps the bent fingers outside the hand, which means we are focusing on affirming our self-trust and faith. We seek to encourage it, and not only become aware of our actual level of faith.

Using this mudra will also help us trust that all will be fine. Accepting, even inviting our Spirit to accompany our human in its challenges, makes it all look like a lesson, rather than a punition. Whatever happens, if I believe that I am not alone, but steadily with myself as Sprit, it is obvious that everything will be fine, eventually. This is the faith of the Kuji-In, which has nothing to do with having faith in an exterior God.

Faith is the ultimate self-trust as Spirit as well as human, as one. Breathe NOW.

Some Kuji-In traditions will express the index outward instead of the middle finger. Extending the index represents the affirmation of power, as a decree of the self. This version of the RIN mudra will be more frequently used by martial artists and people who wish to build a stronger willpower. The transformational approach encourages the experience (middle finger) of RIN at first, followed by the affirmation (index) of RIN only when much more experience has been gained. Experience and faith is essential to the true expression of power.

RIN mantra
Rin, in Japanese, means face or meet. It has to do with meeting someone, without indication to who we are to meet; thus, we meet ourselves. To meet your self implicates to get to know yourself by observing yourself in a “third person” perspective. Such contemplation, in an honest attitude of self-acceptance, will inevitably lead to trusting yourself.

Traditions
Shinto: In this kuji-in practice, the Shinto Buddhists are referring to Amaterasu, a feminine Goddess. Amaterasu is described as the Goddess from which all light emanates, and is also often referred to as the sun goddess because of her warmth and compassion for the people who worshiped her; an interpretation of "light" or "heat" as passion, or purity. She emits lightning into the body to give it life force. She is like the light of creation.

Buddhists: Here the Buddhists pray Bishamonten, guardian of the north, and thus, of material things. From the traditional Japanese Buddhism point of view, since the time of samurais and great warriors, he is said to be the god of war and warriors. Bishamonten is wearing an armor symbolizing the physical shell over his true self. He holds a spear in one hand, a symbol of the Spirit that penetrates the physical world, and a pagoda in the other hand, like a temple where wisdom resides, another symbol of our physical body.

Hindu:

Most of the Kuji-In process invokes the Hindu God Indra, who is the only King of heavens, holding thunderbolts. The word swaha can be translated as glory, homage or salutations, but is used mostly when doing prostrations, offering sacrifices. Thus, this mantra is also a pledge of sacrifice offered to the God King of Heaven, Indra, know as the one who holds thunderbolts. The Hindu tend to interpret each word with all their possible meanings according to their religious structure, therefore a few Sanskrit words become much longer phrases so that they can transmit all the meaning at once. This Sanskrit mantra could mean, in Hindu terms: Om (Holy Word), I offer sacrifice by the name of the God, who carries Vajra in his hands i.e. Lord Indra.

Transformational approach: We contemplate the powerful force of creation. We contemplate the light that comes from the heavens down into the earth to give it life and movement. This Light is both feminine and masculine. At this point, we celebrate the coming of the Spirit into the human body.