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

eing stuck anywhere I didn’t want to be—ever again.
This process of realizing my own power and the change I experienced in the practice wasn’t
gradual; it was rapid. Within the span of seconds, not even minutes, yin helped me know that anger
could turn into sadness, which then could become relief and happiness, even joy! Yin yoga taught me
that the path to liberation and finding your essential aliveness start with awakening the energy of love
within your own being and that truly nobody can love you the way you can.
The “Unworkout”
Yin yoga involves deep breathing and total mind-body intention, leading to an ever deepening
awareness of your inner landscape and the return to a more natural rhythm. It is a cooling, gathering,
meditative “unworkout” that will calm and ground your energy at the beginning of your day, so you
can get off to a steady start, or help you to slow down at day’s end, preparing you for a restful night’s
sleep. Based on the same ancient principles as acupuncture, yin yoga is a needle-less modality that
will enable you to gain access to some of your most deeply held, powerful, long-lasting energy.
Yin yoga’s long-held, deeply transformative stretching poses target the deeper, interior,
supportive structures of the body, the connective tissue known as fascia. The poses stimulate and
open the meridian channels, the rarely accessed subtle energy pathways that run through it,
encouraging prana to flow freely, helping you to restore otherwise unattainable youthful joint health
and mobility. As you release tension, you quietly activate and gather your prana, harmonizing your
body and mind and recharging your batteries.
Because our emotions are stored in the connective tissues and muscles in our bodies, as we send
our conscious breath to those areas of restriction or pain, we experience a sense of physical freedom
and flexibility we never thought possible. Repressed emotions are finally released for an incredible
catharsis and an unparalleled feeling of tranquility.
This deeply energized calm doesn’t just disappear after the practice concludes. Each session
builds on the one before it, so the more you do it, the calmer and more flexible and energized you
feel. By moving slowly and mindfully, you build your energy resources, increase your resilience, and
improve your capacity to cope with the stresses and demands of your daily life.
What a gift, really, to be able to sit still, stop time, and return to the breath, to the pulse of perfect
rhythm that exists in each one of us. It’s a gift of balance and harmony we give ourselves when we
listen to our inner voice. And it can be most easily heard when we surrender to the stillness of yin,
which quiets the mind and heals the body, opening the door to infinite possibility.
Juicing the Joints
Our fascia has different preferences than muscle. Fascia is dense, fibrous tissue that does not respond
to intense, dynamic, rhythmic contractions the way muscle does. Because of its innately more
“stubborn” nature, it prefers to be stretched gently, like taffy. Think slow-motion movie sequences