Increase Your Energy With The 5 Tibetan Rites

When anything is accomplished on any single level of life, it can be traced back to energy. Energy is the seed that allows reality itself to grow. Everything in life has an energy signature — space, time, objects, nature, and you. Your energy affects the way you maneuver through reality to manifest your dreams and goals. Just as an electron requires a burst of energy to complete a quantum jump, we require energy in order to jump to new ways of being. If you want more love, peace, and connection to oneness in your life, you need energy to get there.

The Five Rites (also known as the Five Tibetan Rites or Five Tibetans), said to be at least 2,500 years old, is a series of five simple exercises meant to be completed in order, with each exercise performed 21 times. Though the meaning behind this number is not entirely clear, it almost certainly is not arbitrary. The Five Rites is a great way to build up energy, and all you need to complete these exercises are your body and a flat surface. So step away from the screen, and get ready to move!

SEE ALSO: The Relationship Between Breathing And The Brain

Rite #1

If you’ve ever been to a Grateful Dead show, you’ve seen people spinning around in circles—the Whirling Dervishes. For many people, that kind of experience is just as spiritual as a church service. This kind of spinning movement is the first of the Five Rites. Stand erect, with arms outstretched horizontally, and spin around until you become slightly dizzy. If you are in the Northern Hemisphere, spin to your right, and in the Southern Hemisphere, spin to your left. Count your rotations as you spin.

In the beginning, you might be dizzy, and it’s not recommended to do it very much. In The Eye of Revelation, Peter Kelder, who helped to popularize the Five Rites, described this exercise as opening up psychic centers in the body, which are not unlike chakra centers. When I first started doing this, it felt weird. Then, around day 60, I noticed that it was generating energy. The spinning motion seems to pull in energy and speed it up, amplifying it in your body.

Rite #2

Next, lay down on a rug or a bed. Place your hands palm down, alongside the hips. Keep your fingers close together, with the fingertips of each hand turned slightly toward one another.

Raise your feet like a leg lift until the legs are straight up—if possible, your feet can go all the way back over your body, just don’t let your knees bend. Hold this position for a moment or two, then lower your feet back to the ground or the bed. Repeat up to 21 times. At first, you might only be able to do one or two or three. That’s fine. There is no need to do more than 21.

After doing this movement regularly, I could feel the energy I had generated from spinning being pulled up to the meridian in my gut.

Rite #3

Kneel on a rug or a mat, with hands out at your sides, palms flat against the sides of your legs. Then lean forward as far as possible, bending at the waist with your head forward and chin on your chest. Next, lean backward, stretching your body and causing your hips to move forward and backward, hands still against the sides of your legs. Your toes will keep you from falling over. Then move into that erect kneeling position, as relaxed as possible, and begin again.

This exercise stretches your spine, pulls your shoulders back, and moves the energy backwards and up. See if you notice the energy moving to your solar plexus. Work up to repeating this movement twenty-one times.

Rite #4

Sit erect on a rug or carpet, legs flat and feet outstretched in front of you with the backs of your knees on the rug. Place your hands flat on the rug, fingers together and pointing outward slightly, with your chin on your chest and head forward. Now, gently raise your body from that position with your hands, bending your knees so that from the knees down your legs are practically vertical, matching your vertical arms. As you lift up, let your head gently fall backward as well, as far as possible. Hold, and repeat twenty-one times.

This is admittedly one of the most difficult of the exercises. If you struggle with this exercise—as I do, because of a bad shoulder—try putting the upper part of your back on your bed or a workout bench with your feet on the ground, then lift your waist up and let it fall back down.

The goal is to stretch your hip area, moving the energy into your heart.

Rite #5

Place your hands on the floor about two feet apart with legs bent, then stretch your legs out to the rear with your feet also two feet apart. Push your hips up as far as possible, like the downward dog position in yoga. Drop your chin to your chest and writhe on your hands and feet, then allow the body to come slowly down to a sagging position while bringing the head up and back as far as possible.

In yoga terms, this movement is basically a downward dog moving into cobra pose. It’s more grueling than the other rites, but if you can work up to twenty-one of them, the energy really starts to flow.

Five minutes a day for greater energy

At the most basic level, regular practice of the Five Rites feels good, mentally and physically, and at a more advanced level, these exercises can provide the energy needed to more effectively manifest your ideal reality.

Altogether, the Five Rites should take about five minutes. With such a short time commitment, what do you have to lose? Energy drives the world, and we can all use more of it. So give the Five Rites a try!