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

excess water from just-washed hands. As you increase the intensity of your total-body shake,
maintain the effortless effort you established when you began and returned to your breath, making
sure that you are exhaling now through your mouth—even letting out an audible sigh occasionally
as you shake and bounce.
3. Now bring your hands down in front of your midsection and start an action that resembles a
sloppy piano player, making your hands flop up and down from your wrists. Shake your hands
from side to side as well, again as though you are shaking water off them.
4. Next, shift your focus to your hips. Bounce from side to side, swiveling your hips and leaning
into each hip as if you’re listening to a new song with a deliciously seductive, pulsating beat. Let
your head move in the opposite direction from your hips, as if you were dancing a sexy Latin
salsa or meringue. (If you don’t know how to do a meringue, just make it up—think of the
sultriest, sexiest dance you can!)
5. Now increase the hip action, so you’re doing a more straightforward 1960s twist. Work your way
through one pass of twisting in one direction and then go back the other way, all the while
allowing your arms to move in a complementary way that feels natural and fun. Let your head go
along with the action; and remember, the movement should feel easy, effortless, carefree, and
inspired by your own rhythms, with no judgment or worrying about how it looks to the outside
world. Care only about how it feels. Know that every shake, twist, and flick of your wrists is
waking the energy inside you. You are removing blockages, facilitating detoxification, and
ushering in some much-needed brand-new chi.
6. After you’ve really gotten going—your heart is beating faster inside your chest—and you’ve
generated some good heat (sweating is a good thing!), come back to center and return to the upand-down
bouncing. Now transform the full bounce into a heel drop, where you rise very slightly
up off your heels, lifting your arms up to the sky with long, loosely straightened elbows, and then,
with very little effort, drop down into your heels, giving in to gravity with all your body weight
and allowing your arms to swing down in tandem with that motion. Do the heel drop with a
coordinated arm swing nine times in total.
7. After you’ve completed the last heel drop, shake each leg separately, as if you were kicking
something off your foot. Shake the leg out and down to kick whatever it is off. (And by the way,
the “whatever it is” is actually stagnant chi!) Lift your right leg and give it one good, full-leg
shake all the way down to your toes, and then immediately switch to your left leg and do the same
thing. Allow your upper body and arms to naturally counterbalance the leg-shaking action.
8. After you have completed four sets of leg shaking, return to your Waking Energy Stance and
maintain it as you breathe for a few rounds, and then get ready for Ringing the Temple Gong.
Ringing the Temple Gong
Ringing the Temple Gong opens the central channel, releasing and liberating held chi as it stretches
the muscles surrounding the spine. It lubricates the spine itself, stimulating the nerve plexuses
radiating from the spine. It relieves tension in the back, neck, and shoulders and unleashes powerful
energy that is immediately distributed to the rest of the body. When you first begin doing this exercise,
you may feel stiff, tight, or restricted, particularly in your spine, upper torso, shoulders, and neck.