Mudra Flow - Yoga Intensive with Duncan Wong

The practice of yoga is closely related to other ancient, energetic practices and every now and then there is a teacher that not only masters several of them, but also is able to combine them in a practice that allows you to experience their profound effects in your own body. Duncan Wong sensei is one of those teachers. After decades of offering his traditional yet innovative teachings in California and New York, Duncan has lives for the past decade in the Kyoto forest where he focused on raising his twin and teaching out of an old temple house.

We are honored to host Duncan for the very first time in Amsterdam! You can join him for the 04 Mudra Flow Series comprised of Duncan sensei’s essential Warrior Yoga applied mudra structures, or micro hand poses that best develop and sustain a powerfully aligned body temple.

What is Mudra Flow?
Mudra is a yogic term that spans a mind-body spectrum of meanings, and a word that invokes an image of a buddha or yogi sitting with hands folded or resting. Mudra can also be the micro muscles of our tongue and pelvic floor that support our primary bandhas (internal core construct). It is therefore important to make clear that Mudra Flow applies practical hand, and on occasion feet mudras that stabilize our asanas (postures) and vinyasas (movements) while giving direction to our body alignment (rotational direction of our joints as well as the primary and secondary weight bearing and shifts between our hands and feet).

In this introductory ‘Playshop’ experience, the point is to play and flow as a way to enjoy and retain complex information in an open state of mind. Because fun is memorable and the best means of creating this bhav (positive attitude) is to relax and move around while trying on familiar hand poses with refined technical points and connections, with specific purpose that makes sense to our informed mindful body in the spirit of learning new ways of being.

The primary mudra is the Tiger Mudra (finger stance) that supports access to our Tiger Body (flexed spine plank). Through a steady form and the Maha Mudra (tongue lifted to pallet), it encourages and awakens our zen mind (presence of self).

Mudra Flow allows you to experience these awesome connections that exist within us, directly in the ‘now’ in your own body.

These modules are designed to awaken our understanding of how to optimize our body-mind design. Seeing our body as a temple reminds us to fortify our spirit house as our life priority. From a Zen approach, these precepts are called Buddha (Mind), Dharma (Mission) and Sangha (Message).

As spiritual athletes, our mission is to discover optimal performance in all our actions that include a self-love attitude, an energized body, and a positive outlook that serves both ourselves and the people around us.

The 04 essential practice mudras including their actions and benefits are:

01) Butterfly Mudra

02) Tiger Mudra

03) Lace-Lock Mudra

04) Core Mudra

These essential mudras were born from the intuition and insights of Duncan sensei who innovated them from several synthesis paths of wisdom practices, including Astanga Vinyasa yoga, Modern dance, Zen meditation and Mixed martial arts.

Together they comprise the central body of work that he developed from his time on the mat and in the ring; experiences that fuelled his teaching career and style which has spanned 30+ years and continues to evolve each time he interplays and exchanges energy with other people.

All with basic athletic ability most welcome!

THE INTENSIVE: TIGER BODY | ZEN MIND

Saturday Session 1:
Butterfly Mudra – KEYWORD: BASE

The Butterfly Mudra is named for its resemblance to a butterfly body with spread wings. Its greatest attribute is in its ability to provide a total shift of our body weight into the inner wrists and base of the thumbs, while equally distributing the force of our body’s weight through the entirely of our hands and fingers, which allows the natural strength of our upper frontal ribcage core body and the healthy length of the outer side rib body, resulting in more functional flow with the clarity of an integrated inner v.s. outer muscle and joint interaction.

Saturday Session 2:
Tiger Mudra – KEYWORD: POWER

The Tiger Mudra is named for its similarity to a tiger’s claw and flexed spine power body and its refined version of the classical finger stance, with precision alignment points that complete it as the superior functional mudra for general finger, hand wrist and inner arm-to-upper-ribcage strength development. Through this flow you will learn that Buttefly mudra creates a perfect base for the Tiger Mudra’s specific anatomical structure, that involves a gripping action that triggers a hugging of the inner arm design, ultimately resulting in an activation of the upper core construct of the ribcage body that targets the trinity ‘Lat,’ ‘Pec,’ and ’Trap’ muscles surrounding the ‘Body Bandha;’. Duncan sensei refers to this as the missing element from classical yoga, which focused only on the lower bandhas (central core), based on its internal purification roots that focused on meditation more than movement. The modern yoga flow practice of today requires a more comprehensive embodied bandha consideration and Tiger Mudra (Tiger Body) provides it.

Sunday Session 3:
Lace-Lock Mudra – KEYWORD: ALIGNMENT

The Lace-Lock Mudra is named after its inherent interlacing of the fingers as a means to achieve access to larger muscles in the arms, shoulders and upper body components, and is actually a series of precision interlacing mudras that includes variations of classical interlacing and the innovative reverse engineering of Reverse Lace-Lock Mudra, both of which counter complement our body’s ability to internally and externally rotate the shoulders during arm extension, that provides optimal access to shoulder joint and shoulder-blade stretching and a healthy micro-massage of the fine point muscles from their adjacent bones, resulting in freedom of movement and sensation of muscle-to-bone integration, as well as neuro-muscular adaptation.

Sunday Session 4:
Core Mudra – KEYWORD: STRENGTH

The Core Mudra is named for its access to our frontal upper core body (front and lateral ribcage muscle groups) that involves centrally drawing our forearms and hands together from a relaxed neutral position while conjoining the upper backside of our arm bones to our front ribs with elbows together at the navel, that creates a stable brace for our upper body structure that allows a forward flexed position of our spine and torso, which provides a complete support system for our posterior spine, ribcage, and general back muscles. Combined with a Core Warrior (kneeling or standing) stance, we can explore alternate shoulder-blade rotation and weight shifting between feet that allows access to our internal ‘X’ body design, which provides the therapeutic effect of an open back and strong torso to support our core movement.