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

energy” is anything but subtle, once you learn how to influence the way it moves and manifests itself
in your body. Very simply, the subtle body is your passport to longevity. It is the place where you can
wake your deepest font of energy.
Aside from creating balance through living in harmony with nature, making wise lifestyle choices
(foods, practices, etc.), and trying to maintain as much emotional equanimity as we can, the way we
integrate those things, the place where we can perform the inner alchemy that is responsible for
waking our most prodigious stores of energy and promoting our longevity, is through the subtle body.
It is here that we can cultivate the elixir of life from the marriage of yang and yin, the balance that
results from all our practices. The subtle body is the place where we merge with nature and awaken
the energy inside ourselves. We use both our physical body and our awakening consciousness to wake
our energy, live long, and prosper.
By being present to and appreciating what you have, by acknowledging and honoring your body,
your mind, and your emotions, you can tap into the elixir that is already in the body waiting to be
discovered. You automatically gain entrance to a world where you have greater influence over the
quality and length of life. Balancing yin and yang automatically means more energy, energy that you
are able to allocate to accessing more still. The key to longevity is consciousness and moderation,
which both lead to balance. On top of loving and nurturing your physical body, balance will help you
learn how to manage your emotions and how to master your mind. That’s in fact why all the practices
I’ve featured in this book were originally developed—to help humans manage the mind and the
emotions!
Working to establish a foundation of calm, peace, equanimity, and nonattachment that you can
always access, working to establish a healthy relationship between your mind and your emotions,
embracing a state of loving interdependence that fosters a positive, respectful, and cocreative
independence, where the two parts are equally strong and in balance, is what to strive for. If you’re
going to strive for anything in life, this is the most important place to begin. And it’s no small thing,
may I add. It is this dedication to self, this utilizing your own body well that beautifies your life. This
putting yourself to good use is something that makes you feel purposeful and inspired. And yes, this is
what makes you eligible for energy cultivation, the act of becoming an energy worker, a practitioner
in your own laboratory. Yes, this is what makes you best friend to your own subtle body and makes it
dance with joy. It is by far one of the most powerful ways that you’ll wake your energy.
A Rose by Any Other Name
Called chi in Chinese practices and prana in the Hindu yogic modalities, the life force is pure energy.
It is universal source energy—the same energy that flows through heaven and earth and every living
thing on the planet. The life force is the vital fuel that infuses the body’s every system, organ, and cell
with new life; it is responsible for feeding and maintaining the myriad functions of the human body; it
is the catalyst and the reason for being that facilitates the body’s perpetual cycles of assimilation and
elimination, growth and renewal, from our first breath until our last.
Your life-force energy has been your constant companion, moving you and circulating inside you
even before you took your first breath. It is in fact the force that made your life possible in the first