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

higher so that it forms a half V on the floor alongside your head. Turn your head to gaze toward
your left arm or down toward your knees on the right side of your body, whichever position feels
better. Remember that you can shift and change your head position if you wish, after you’ve
started to melt in the pose.
3. If you’d like to open and direct prana into your middle and lower back, keep your knees tucked
higher in toward your upper chest. If, on the other hand, you feel you need more opening and
energy directed into your hips and sacrum, allow your legs to drop down beneath your hips or
lower. You can keep the knees stacked, or if you are looking for a deeper twist and greater
challenge, you can cross your left leg over your right and then drop the legs over to the right,
placing your right hand on top of the legs to anchor them.
4. Once in your chosen starting position, experience a contrast before you start to melt. Stretch your
left arm up away from your body and gently press your right hand on top of your knees and flex
your feet strongly as you draw your navel into your spine. Inhale deeply and, as you exhale, let
your body relax completely.
5. Slowly and mindfully come out of the pose. Move with delicacy as you unwind from the Spinal
Twist, bringing both knees back to center and hugging them in toward your body, where you’ll
take several breaths to realign and center yourself. Then extend the legs straight up to the ceiling,
and do a short Monkey Dance. After several minutes shaking your limbs, stop, draw your knees
into your chest, close your eyes, and breathe into your brain the buzzy energy you will surely feel.
You’ll feel a quiet surge of renewal with this one simple sequence.
6. Repeat the steps on the opposite side. When you’re done, come into the Child’s Pose.
Corpse Pose (Savasana)
Meridian pairs: All
IN BALANCE: Peace, harmony
Shadow emotion: Restlessness
Now it’s time to meet the most important pose of the entire practice, the Corpse Pose, savasana (sava
means “corpse” in Sanskrit), a pose that signifies ultimate stillness and surrender. In every practice I
do, it’s the moment I imagine what it will be like when I one day abandon myself to infinite surrender
—when I let my life go. Although simple in appearance, savasana embodies the complex yogic
teachings of surrender, nonattachment, and self-awareness more than any of the other yin poses. This
is your golden opportunity to practice the “letting go” that is essential to receiving all the healing
benefits from each and every pose we have done in the practice.
1. Lying on your back, bend your knees toward your chest and extend your arms down by your sides
at a forty-five-degree angle away from your body, palms up. Inhale into your chest and belly, and
feel the back of your body resting on the floor. Notice any excess tension. Breathe into your entire