Five Tibetan Rites

This week, my yoga instructor had us practice the Five Tibetan Rites as a warm up to our class. I really felt inspired by the movements and my body felt wonderful. I often lack the spiritual aspect of the practice and I was really pleased to find a sequence that I felt inspired by in a way that exceeded my physical practice.

Our instructor explained that this sequence is meant to balance out all of the chakras in our body. This sequence is supposed to greatly impact the endocrine system (hormones and aging) as well as many other physical and spiritual components.

This is a great sequence for beginners because all of the movements (rites) are pretty basic, but they get more challenging to do as you increase the repetitions.

I think this printable guide does a great job explaining The Five Tibetan Rites and illustrating all of the movements as well as alternatives for each rite. I'm sure there are plenty of videos available online for those that would like to see the rites carried out before attempting them.

The first day that our class tried the rites, we were told to begin doing each rite about five times. So we all started with Rite #1 which involves spinning. We spun slowly, five times, although anyone who began feeling dizzy was encouraged to stop earlier. Then we progressed to Rite #2, which we did the same number of times that we did Rite #1 (so it was about 5 times for most of the class). Carry on doing all of the rites, try maintaining the same number of repetitions for each rite. You can gradually increase the number of each repetition (but try to keep it equal for all the rites) as you become more experienced with the movements.

My second experience with the Tibetan Rites was today, in my power yoga class where we did more repetitions. I ended up doing 21 repetitions of each rite. We were encouraged to stop at 21 because anything above that is going into the excess and is no longer a benefit. I felt that 21 was a perfect number. I really felt it throughout my body and as I started to break a sweat, I felt my body ridding of negative energy

To read more about the tibetan rites click here and here.

Image from eHow