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

6
your own fountain of youth: the tibetan rites
About twelve years ago, on retreat in a remote village in Costa Rica, I was awakened before six
o’clock one morning by a loud whirring outside my window. To my surprise, when I pulled the
curtain back, I saw a tall, handsome, shirtless man, spinning like a whirling dervish with palm fronds
in each hand, smiling and singing to himself. Without a moment’s hesitation, I got out of bed and
walked outside onto my porch to get a closer look.
It was clear that I was observing a private ritual. The devotee, completely dedicated to his work,
was in his own world. After what seemed like an eternity, he stopped spinning, tossed the palm
fronds on the ground, placed his hands on his hips, puffed his chest out, and took very deep breaths.
He then lay on the ground, lifting his legs effortlessly up to a right angle with his head up. He sliced
the air like a knife with his legs, lifting and lowering his head in tandem with the movements, not
missing a beat. Mesmerized, I started counting, four, five, six times, all the way to twenty-one!
Leaping up with such ease that he appeared to levitate, the handsome stranger stood with his
hands on his hips and took two deep power breaths, then dropped to his knees to begin the yogic
Camel Pose. Placing his hands on the backs of his legs and arching his back, he inhaled and expanded
his chest as if he had no bones, dropping his head back as he pressed his hips forward. In the same
rhythmic motion he had established in the previous exercise, he inhaled as he arched back and
exhaled as he brought his head forward, softening his chest—again, going all the way to that
mysterious number: twenty-one. He inhaled again deeply, and then without a moment’s hesitation he
began another exercise.
Now it was Tabletop Pose, but instead of simply holding the pose, he literally swung his body
back into Staff Pose, then right back up into Tabletop, in a powerful, unbroken rhythm. With each
repetition of the movement, his skin seemed to glow brighter. I am sure he felt me watching him, but
he stayed in his ritualistic bubble, transcending time and space.
When he moved into Downward-Facing Dog, rather than simply holding it, he flowed right into
Upward-Facing Dog, and then down again, his face and upper torso gliding effortlessly down toward
the earth as if he were a dolphin diving into water. Then he started a pumping, pulsing rhythm with his
movements that seemed to create a kind of invisible energy shield repelling everything away from his
orbit. He made the rest of the world disappear. His movements appeared so effortless. He was