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

your hips up to a position perfectly parallel to the floor. Do your best not to let your feet slide. Ideally, your feet should stay in the same
place through this whole exercise, and because the movement is accomplished by pivoting at your shoulders, your arms should not bend.
Rite Five: Up Dog, Down Dog
Note: If you have tight shoulders, you will need to gradually work into being able to fully tilt your hips upward. Honor your body’s limits
here, and know that with practice you’ll be able to move into greater range before you know it.
Because your body is moving in concert with the energy rising up your spine, propelling kundalini
shakti up along the central channel, the fifth rite, brings an immediate and positive change to your
subtle body. Up Dog, Down Dog is the most powerful rite for unifying and optimally setting the speed
of the chakras, which in turn then stimulates and opens the organs they are connected to. The
alternation in it makes you feel extra strong and invigorated—as the Tibetan lamas say, “Brings a
happy glow to your face.”
On a physical level, it’s a total-body strengthener and significantly increases the power of your
abdominals as they control and stabilize your arms and legs. It increases overall stamina and
enhances grace, spatial awareness, and balance.
1. Begin on all fours with your toes flexed under, and your weight evenly distributed between your
knees, your palms, and the balls of your feet. Make sure the hands are directly under the
shoulders and spread your fingers wide into the ground as you firm your arms.
2. Inhale and press into your heels, straightening your legs as much as you can, lifting your buttocks
skyward. Maintain a flat back and lower your head, so that your body comes into Downward-
Facing Dog Pose, forming the shape of an inverted V.
3. Exhale and, keeping your arms perpendicular to the floor and drawing your navel to your spine,
press your hips toward the floor until your legs are strong and straight behind you. You’ll
transition through a Plank position (parallel to the ground) and press the hips down so that
they’re grazing the floor, deeply arching your spine, and rolling your shoulders back so that your
chest is open, as you come into the Upward-Facing Dog Pose.
4. Continue now by swinging your body back up into Down Dog again, as you exhale and push the
earth away with your arms strong and straight, and right away again glide your body down with
graceful control into Up Dog.
5. This is a bit of a brainteaser, but you’ll inhale whenever you’re on your way up into Down Dog
and exhale on your way down into Up Dog.
Tips: Throughout this rite, your hands, arms, legs and feet should be kept so energized that not only are they straight, but they actually
make you feel as though you are pushing the floor or ground away (by employing the principle of opposition, which you’ll officially learn
in Pilates). Follow the deep breathing pattern used in the previous rites, but on this one in particular, really exploit the up and down
pumping action of the body, breathing in very deeply as you raise your body, and breathing out fully as you lower it, expelling the air to
cleanse your lungs and move stagnant prana out of your body.