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OTHER TIBETAN EXERCISES

Simple Spine Stretch

This exercise facilitates energy throughout spinal column and increases flexibility of neck, which brings you into a deep state of relaxation and facilitate meditation.

Sit cross-legged, place your palms down on your knees and slowly turn your head to gaze over one shoulder. As you do this you will feel the pleasant stretching and twisting of your spine. Breath in as you turn your neck and head over the shoulder and exhale while returning to the center. Repeat in the other direction and continue several times. Create an even rhythm with your breathing and movement. 

To strengthen digestion and bring balance and harmony to the body while increasing vitality:

Sit cross-legged and straight-backed as comfortably as you can and place hands on knees with fists clenched and palms up. This keeps the energy circulating in the body, rather than dispersing it. Run your tongue from the left corner of your mouth, across the gums ,and up around the roof to draw a circular path. This is a counter-clockwise motion. Repeat this 36 times until your mouth is full of saliva. Swallow the saliva in three parts, which represent heaven, earth and man. It should be a vigorous swallow with the intent to send it down into the abdomen. Listen for the sound of the saliva in the belly. Repeat two to three times.

The Turtle 

The turtle stimulates all the nerves bringing energy in and out of the brain while relaxing and opening the neck area. The neck is vital as a passageway of the central nervous system and thus is the key to our entire body. All the yang meridians converge at the base of the neck behind the head, which makes it a powerful place of protection to the body. Esoterically, the neck is the place where we hold our will. If we make the neck more fluid and flexible, we may change the rigid perspectives that causes us so much difficulty in life. The turtle exercise opens the throat area and stretches the spine while strengthening and dissolving tiredness and stiffness of the neck and shoulder muscles. It is important to do this exercise slowly in the rhythm you imagine a turtle would use. 

Inhale as you touch your chin to your chest. Feel the stretch on the back of your neck and let your shoulders relax downward. Now, bring your shoulders up toward your ears like a turtle pulling back into its shell while you begin to exhale slowly as you tilt your head back to rest on the back of your neck. Repeat at least twelve times. The turtle should be practiced in concert with two other motions, which greatly influence the endocrine glands and the chakras.

FIRST MOTION. As you lift your neck in exhalation, squeeze your anal sphincter as if stopping the flow of urine. This is the action of the all-important pubococcygeal muscles that strengthen the pelvic floor. Hold the pubococcygeal muscle tight until you again bring the chin down during inhalation. Relax while you inhale. As you become proficient at combining these internal and external motions, you can hold the pubcoccygeal muscle through one or two whole cycles.

SECOND MOTION. Rub the breasts for women and the lower abdomen for men, in unison with the rest of the exercise. This seems very complicated at first and demands some effort to master. Men: place both hands, fingers downward, over your lower abdomen just above the pubic bone. As you execute the turtle, rub both hands in a clockwise motion from the pubic bone to the right, up to the belly button, and down your left side back to the pubis. Do this until you feel heat in the lower abdominal area. Women: place your hands with the fingers facing down towards the pelvic bone, between your breasts. Starting with the fingers between the nipples, rub up and outward to each side of the breasts, down around and up through to the starting position, having traced all the way around the breast. Do this about three times as fast as you do the rest of the turtle moves, about thirty-six times to the twelve motions of the turtle. Once you have arrived at perfect hormonal and physical balance, you will no longer need to do the rubbing part of the exercise. DO NOT do this exercise during menstruation because at that time you will be wanting the energy to flow out of the body, not up. It is very common for women who practice this exercise daily to stop menstruating. This fact should give you a clue about how powerful these internal exercises are in terms of regulating the flows of bodily energies. After completing the Turtle, your body will be relaxed and balanced. This is a good starting point for meditation, as your focus and consciousness will be deep within.

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