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

conservation results in the best reward—more energy for life!
Every breath is an opportunity to wake your body and your mind. The breath itself becomes a
force of change so significant that it becomes a sea change. All it requires is your conscious intention
to manifest a whole new reality in which you feel energized, fully awake, and alive!
Conscious Breathing: The Engine of Transformation
Breath mastery for the ancients was foundational for waking their energy. The breath was a direct
reflection of their “internal weather,” the most accurate reading of their inner emotional lives. They
knew better than anyone how emotions can get the better of us and our breathing and steal our energy.
The practices they developed were all intended to avert energy theft—to quell distraction, balance
the emotions, and calm the mind, so that they could cultivate energy without interruption to reach their
ultimate goal, immortality.
When we let our minds get the better of us, we’re actually blocking the flow of energy through our
own bodies and compromising our own ability to absorb and integrate it fully. Our breathing becomes
compromised by our emotions, the chief culprits in energy stagnation. They are energy enemies—
thieves of the first order. To wake your energy and nurture it, you must first balance your emotional
life, and you can do this by befriending your breath.
Think for a minute about the physiological symptoms you may experience when you’re upset,
anxious, or angry. Does your heart race, your stomach twist in knots, and your breathing become
shallow, fast, and from the chest? These are the kinds of negative impacts emotions can have on your
body’s heart rate, digestive system, and nervous system. They play a powerful role in the chemicals
that are released into the bloodstream. Our muscles react to these chemical cocktails, often leading to
a kind of restriction that reduces our breathing efficiency—the musculoskeletal aspect of breathing,
especially when we feel we are carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders.
Stress can lead to an actual restriction in the musculature of the breathing apparatus itself—the
muscles of the shoulder girdle, the trapezius, and the neck. Our shoulders hunch forward,
compromising inhalation, and rise up toward our ears, preventing proper exhalation. When we inhale,
we engage the muscles of the diaphragm and the intercostals surrounding the rib cage. When we
exhale, we relax the same muscles we use to inhale. When we feel excessively stressed, we can’t
relax the way nature intended, and our ability to thoroughly cleanse the lungs and fully dispose of
accumulated stale air becomes compromised.
When we inhale, we aren’t simply taking in oxygen; we’re also taking in information and feelings
from the outside world. When we exhale, we’re not just cleansing our bodies of carbon dioxide, but
releasing and discharging stagnant chi and all the thoughts, emotions, and tensions that contributed to
it. In order to restore our breathing to its optimal functioning, we need to release ourselves from the
mental and emotional burdens we carry (literally) on our shoulders, so that our body’s systems can
function optimally, reducing stress, and helping us breathe better. When we succeed, we can relax our
shoulders, letting them fall into their natural, comfortable resting position where breathing becomes
easier and more complete.
By going straight to the source, our breath, we can reconnect to ourselves and to the moment, to