Waking Energy 7 Timeless Practices Designed to Reboot Your Body and Unleash Your Potential

4. Ideally, you want to perform this exercise at a moderate to fast pace eventually, so start off
slowly and work your way up to greater vigor.
5. Repeat this forward and back action up to one hundred and eight times.
6. Once you finish, bring your hands down to rest on your knees in gyan mudra, inhale deeply to
three-quarters full, and retain the breath, applying your Root Lock by sealing the new energy
inside and coaxing it up the spine. Hold your breath and your Root Lock as long as you
comfortably can and then release, coming to meditate for a minute, connecting to the subtle flow
of prana through your open heart and spine.
Child’s Pose for the Crown
A powerful tune-up, the Child’s Pose for the Crown activates and balances the master glands of the
body, recharges the kidneys and adrenals, and stimulates the nerve plexuses along the spine as it
stretches and soothes the lower back. It also awakens ajna, the sixth chakra, opening the window of
our intuition and higher consciousness.
This exercise is naturally a little uncomfortable when you first attempt it, both because of the
angle of your body and the action you are performing and because the breath exerts a kind of
awkward pressure in your head and neck that you will need to focus your way through. It’s an
exercise that clearly lets you know just how effective it is from the minute you start doing it.
Gradually, you will acclimate to the new sensations and even come to enjoy them. Whenever I do this
exercise, almost more than in any of the others in the Waking Energy flow, I become immediately and
keenly aware of how my glands are being massaged, activated, and “pumped” by the combination of
the action of my breathing and my body position.
I appreciate the intelligence of this exercise, and I respect it for what it offers: the physics of the
positioning and the way a very specific, beneficial pressure is exerted on all the muscles in the upper
body and particularly the neck. It literally turns the body into a purifying engine for your subtle body,
removing stagnation and opening the nadis for the smooth flow of prana. Here, more here than in most
kriyas, you will be especially cognizant of how your body becomes an apparatus that assists you in
your own energy cultivation.
This exercise helps you to burn through the noise of the mind, making your mind clear as it
stimulates the master glands in what you will come to know in the chapter on the Inner Smile as your
Crystal Palace. With bravery and determination, and with your eyes focused on the floor beneath you,
think of this entire exercise as an homage to Mother Earth.
1. On your hands and knees, press your hips back so that you are sitting on your heels with big toes
together and knees shoulder-width apart. Extend your arms in front of you and bend forward so
your upper body is resting on your thighs. Allow your forehead to rest on the floor. Arms are
stretched out in front of you, flat on the floor, palms down.
2. Inhale, and as you exhale, allow your entire body to release even more deeply into the floor as
you draw the arms back behind you and allow them to rest on the floor at your sides with the
palms face up to the ceiling.