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

a human being, improving your overall health and your ability to rebound from life’s twists and turns.
The practices here serve like a kind of internal trampoline, giving you a defensive resilience that
makes you anywhere from strong to virtually bulletproof depending upon how much of yourself you
invest.
You have likely never touched yourself in the ways that you will be asked to touch yourself here.
When was the last time you massaged your gums? Or bathed your eyes in pools of warming chi from
your hands? Or tapped on your own pubic bone, or solar plexus for that matter? Or felt the
irrepressible surge of pleasure that arose when you simply touched yourself in a way that wasn’t done
strictly for pragmatic purposes? Or should I ask, felt the pleasure that arose when you touched
yourself in a way that yielded a surprise, like the warmth that rises to your cheeks when someone
kisses you unexpectedly or you are taken utterly by surprise by a stranger’s smile, a great handshake,
or a hug?
Well, I have news for you. You can inspire and generate the very feelings of the amazing hug or
the kiss, and more, inside your own being. That’s what the energy dance Love Thyself is all about.
You will get this feeling of pleasure when you caress your own body for the purpose of bringing it
into greater balance and vitality and when you experience the unbounded, free-flowing movements
that are the dance of love. In this sequence, you will also explore feeling whatever sensations are
waiting for you inside your own body, as a lover you’ve not yet met would. Perhaps most important,
by allowing yourself to receive the pleasurable sensations that you yourself generate by doing simple
movements and by giving yourself nurturing attention and energy, you are soon going to discover what
feeling good is in your own unique body. When you do, those feelings of pleasure and new energy
will give birth to more. It’s that miraculous, and that simple.
You will move like a river dancing over rocks, flowing effortlessly through the topography of
your own body. You may do things that feel like self-pleasuring and you should allow yourself to
enjoy all of it! Imagine your own laughter dancing over the map of your body and leaving amazing
endorphins buzzing on your skin as it travels along. The extraordinary effects of qigong will feel like
laughter on your skin.
The Practice
Opening the Gates
Our Awaken and Play practice officially begins with Opening the Gates, a sequence of exercises that
invite you to become fully embodied, establishing your place in the energy universe and activating the
dance of internal energies. You’ll greet the chi of heaven and earth and invite this universal energy to
combine with your own.
Unless otherwise specified, stand in Waking Energy Stance throughout this sequence. As with all
the sequences in the practice, perform this one at a moderate pace, with deliberate movement and
quiet intention.