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

doing. This may mean only one of each exercise for the first week. That’s okay! Remember,
Tibet . . . I mean, Rome wasn’t built in a day! Build up to two of each exercise the second week,
three of each exercise the third week, and continue in this way until you’ve reached at least seven
repetitions. You may increase the number of repetitions you do daily or perform the exercises at a
faster pace as long as your body feels good when you do them.
• Twenty-one is the maximum number of repetitions of each exercise you should ever do. If you
want to enhance your program, do the whole ritual at a faster pace, but not more than twenty-one
of each exercise each day. More than twenty-one repetitions of an exercise in a day could
adversely affect your chakras, creating imbalances in your body.
• None of the rites should be so intense that it makes you feel exhausted. For example, you should
be able to speak comfortably after performing any of the rites. If you can’t or feel as though you
are “losing your breath,” it means that you should slow down. When performing the exercises, the
main emphasis should be on your breath and fluency of movement rather than on speed and
number of repetitions. If you’re overly concerned with the latter, that’s your ego talking, and the
whole point of performing these, really, is to renounce it! Remember that when you are tempted to
push yourself unsafely past your limits.
Tibetan Breathing
An important part of the Tibetan Rites is a conscious synchronization of breathing while performing
the movements. Before beginning the exercises, practice the following basic four-part breathing
technique.
Four-Part Breath
1. Inhale deeply through the nose.
2. Hold the breath as long as possible in comfortably filled lungs. Do not overfill.
3. Exhale completely through the nose.
4. With empty lungs, hold the breath out as long as you can.
After finishing each rite, come into the Superhero Power Breath Stance before moving on to the next
rite.
Superhero Power Breath Stance
1. Make your way onto all fours, tucking your toes under and pressing your hands into the ground,
raising your hips to the sky, straightening the legs as much as possible, and pressing the chest
toward the thighs to come into Downward-Facing Dog Pose, forming an inverted V shape with
your body.
2. Walk your feet up to meet your hands and roll up sequentially through the spine to a tall stance
with your feet hip-width apart and hands on your hips.