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

down to your feet and restore your circulation, you’re going to “beat yourself up” with a little love.
Rub your palms together vigorously and then clap them three times fast and hard to dispel any
negative energy. Then bring your hands into fists and gently, but firmly, rap on your legs. Strike your
fists along the outer legs in a rhythmic fashion, moving from the upper thighs down to the lower shins,
and then work your way back up the inner legs. Do a Horse Breath or two as you do this.
Then, as though you were brushing lint off your favorite black pants, work your way down the full
length of the legs. Bounce your legs against the floor for a few moments and then make windshieldwiping
movements with your feet and legs.
Once your circulation is restored, return home by moving into the Child’s Pose, where you’ll rest
and recharge for several breaths before moving on to your next pose.
Now for the practice. Go forth—go deep, open, and energize!
The Practice
Child’s Pose
Meridian pair: Kidney and urinary bladder
IN BALANCE: Wisdom, courage
Shadow emotion: Fear
Just as with all the yin poses, when you enter into a shape, you balance the associated meridians that
are targeted by the architecture of the pose, appease the shadow emotion, and call forth the optimal
balanced state.
Before we move on to the more active of the yin poses, I’d like to begin by welcoming you home.
With the Child’s Pose, we revisit our beginnings, assuming the same shape we took in the womb, and
allow ourselves to receive nurturing feelings of safety and peace. In this enfolding embrace, we
commune with Mother Nature.
The Child’s Pose gives us a taste of what we’re ultimately moving toward at the end of the
practice session, savasana (Corpse Pose). Savasana is the final relaxation and the ultimate surrender,
helping us to cull all the healing benefits of the practice and completely let go. In the Child’s Pose, we
sample deep rest while still consciously directing our energy to our organs. When it’s used to
transition from one pose to the next, not only does it give us a chance to absorb the healing benefits of
our practice thus far; it also serves as an opportunity to harness the bounteous prana we’ve liberated
in the preceding pose, directing it into the prenatal bank account—our kidneys and adrenal glands.