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

1. Lying on your back, stretch your arms long overhead about six inches off the floor, and lengthen
your legs down away from your torso.
2. Draw your ribs together and anchor your back to the mat to the best of your ability, so that there is
little space between your back and the mat. Your abdominals should already be fully engaged in
order to maintain this starting position.
3. Make sure the legs are fully extended and the feet are flexed, with big toes touching, as you
squeeze the inner thighs together. Drive your heels into the floor to activate the backs of your
legs, particularly the hamstrings.
4. Inhale with your arms in the overhead position. Then, as you exhale, lift your arms and circle
them forward over your chest, peeling your upper torso off the floor as you reach your fingertips
forward. Curl your body forward, coming into a deep C shape. Keep going until you are
stretched over your straight legs. Your arms will be extended straight out in front of you at
shoulder height, parallel to your legs. Your eyes should gaze down at your belly button.
5. As you curl forward into the stretch and deepen the navel-to-spine connection, maintain the feet
in the flexed position. Keep your knees as straight as you possibly can and your feet squeezing
together. As you round the body forward and stretch your arms and feet away from you, feel as if
someone is hugging you around the waist and trying to pull you backward while you fight to reach
forward and stretch through your fingertips. In this manner, you’ll feel your core muscles
activated in the deepest way and achieve the greatest range of motion and stretch in your spine
and hamstrings.
6. Repeat five to seven times.
Rolling Like a Ball
Rolling Like a Ball massages the spine and related supporting muscles, bringing improved circulation
to the nerve plexuses that insert themselves in and around the spine. It also strengthens the abdominals
—and sparks laughter, giving you a bonus endorphin and serotonin charge that lifts your spirits
instantly.
1. Sitting just behind your tailbone, round your spine, and pull your knees to your chest, wrapping
your arms around your knees. Lift your feet away from the floor and balance on your buttocks
with your toes pointed down toward the floor, making yourself as compact as possible and
assuming a shape that resembles a small ball. Keep your knees shoulder-width apart, your navel
drawn deeply toward your spine, and your head tilted downward, eyes gazing at your navel.
2. Do your best to squeeze your heels as closely to your buttocks as possible, bringing your heels
together with your toes slightly apart and pointed down to the floor.
3. As you prepare to roll back, draw your shoulders down away from your ears. Also press your
knees into your elbows and your arms against your knees to create your own isometric resistance.
Again, make sure that your head is down and your eyes are focused on your belly button.
4. Inhale, then rock back, going only as high as the base of your neck and no farther. Always take
care not to rock onto the cervical vertebrae (which can be delicate). Then, using your