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

The true test came when we reached my once favorite moment. I started to lie back in savasana,
bracing myself for the devastating disappointment I had grown accustomed to. Extending my right leg
out, barely breathing, I felt . . . no pain. Incredible. Taking a deep breath to recover from the surprise,
I braced myself again, lengthening my left leg down to join the right, allowing my legs to relax and
fall apart. Nothing. No pain! Not an ounce of it. How was this possible?
Liberated from a lifetime of pressure, I felt as though the ten-ton boulder I’d been pushing uphill
had just disappeared in a poof. The angst so big my body couldn’t seem to contain it just one hour
before had morphed into a relief so deep that it overtook my senses, exploding into an ecstasy of the
soul that challenged me to breathe. As if I had just broken through the surface of an icy pond, barely
making it to air again, my body sucked in oxygen, knowing exactly what it needed. Like a thunderclap,
I started crying again.
Wave upon wave of overwhelming euphoria pulsed and billowed through me. What was this
feeling? This extraordinary, internal billowing, this new thrill traveling up my spine? It was energy
moving! It was so different from anything I had ever experienced before. I was emptied of my
troubles, but also full, as in recharged, and somehow grounded! I felt delirious and giddy—I wanted
to live in this new state. Flooded with the deepest relief and calm I had ever known, in gratitude I
started to sob, and I no longer cared who saw me. After only two hours of this practice called yin
yoga, savasana, a pose that had become impossible for me, became my refuge once more. Something
miraculous had happened. I rose from my mat that day reborn.
I hope you find the same exhilarating freedom.
Let There Be Yin
Yin yoga was my first deep taste of hope. In that first yin practice, in the actual poses I did, I was sent
into the very places inside that, unbeknownst to me at the time, were the centers of my pain, upset,
confusion, and feelings of being powerless and overwhelmed in my life. Before then, I’d never been
given the opportunity to physically “go into” what I would come to understand as unconscious
energy, hidden pockets of unresolved trauma and pain that become lodged in the body. Yin yoga gave
me the tools to change my inner dialogue and the energy that had manifested itself around it, inviting
me to acknowledge the inextricable interconnectedness of mind and body and to create the life I
wanted.
During that first yin session and over the course of months of practice, as I went deeper into the
poses, I was surprised to realize that the more I surrendered, the better I felt at the end of them. The
slower I allowed myself to go and the more fully and completely I breathed, the deeper the release
and the greater the reward—new energy flowing through me. Yin yoga is what helped me know, in the
deepest part of who I am, that the only way out is through, and that if I could make significant changes
on my mat, I could expect to be able to do the same in my life.
The practice became a kind of training ground, a place where instead of meeting the difficulty and
resistance I encountered in my body with judgment and condemnation, I learned to respond with
gentleness and kindness. With each practice I did, I began to believe that I really did have the power
to change my life, that I was worthy of love and kindness, and that I didn’t have to face the idea of