EXCHANGE EXERCISE
Concept:
This is an exchange of energies in which you collaborate with the environment to upgrade energies. You are offering the energies in your living system in exchange for external energies and bringing this new quality into yourself. When this exercise is practiced on a daily basis, the benefits for you and the Earth will be cumulative and powerful.
The Exchange exercise is energy circulation, as all acts in life are energy circulation. It involves more than concentration of energy, facilitating alchemy and transmutation as one shares with the universal field and sheds what is no longer useful.
This is only the first level, as the high-quality energy is dissolved and transformed into simple primitive building blocks. In time, with maturity and evolution, the Exchange exercise is one of sharing pure awareness with the field of highest wisdom.
Explanation:
1) Stand with even weight on both feet, parallel to each other, with your knees bent slightly and your buttocks relaxed and tucked under you (Three legs posture).
Your shoulders are in a relaxed position, down and back, opening the chest and allowing you to breathe gently and easily.
In this stance, we are connected to the Earth through both legs, left and right and also with a third leg that extends from our being through our center down to the core of the Earth. Through these three points of connection to the Earth, there is a foundation of balance that supports a connection that comes from our center up through our body out to the cosmos. This stance is fundamental to all of the exercises: exchange, gathering cords, sweeping, clocks and every variation of these that will be described as we advance through this learning.
2) The starting position for your hands is at the base of your pelvic area (Dantian), with your palms up, and fingers pointing towards each other, like a relaxed bowl.
3) Your right hand goes up and out in front of your body, receiving or collecting energy from external sources, and comes back to your body and down, to its original position. Imagine you are drawing a circle.
4) Simultaneously, your left hand comes in and up along the front of your body, gathering or collecting energy from internal sources, and goes out and down in front of your body, back to its original position. Imagine you are drawing a circle. Both hands are moving up and then down in unison.
5) Palms face upward as much as possible, as if they are bowls, to collect and hold the energy. “See/feel/perceive” the energy jumping between fingers at the point of maximum inhalation (hands are up).
6) Fingertips meet at the top and bottom of the circles for the synchronization and exchange of the energy.
7) Eyes follow your outside hand. Gaze at your right hand as it moves up, and then at your left hand as it moves down.
8) Inhale as your hands go up. Exhale as your hands go down. Breathe deeply and regularly. Take your time and keep your attention at your center.
9) When you are ready, return your hands to their original position, palms up at the base of your pelvic area, again as a relaxed bowl.
10) Your fingers and palms may have sensations with the energy you have collected. Perceive with your hands the ball of energy you have created.
11) With your hands at the bottom of the ball, inhale and bring the ball up and in to the front of your body, palms touching your belly just below your navel. Receive it into your Dantian.
When you choose to charge the energy collected in the lower abdomen, Dantian, begin a very soft, slow circular massage, from the umbilicus, using movements expanding out to the sides of the body. Be present with the breath throughout this experience. The circling massage is reminiscent of the spiral of the Hopi, pictography of the Mayans, symbols of the Druids, and the Japanese representation of “perfection.”
12) Exhale and enjoy the dynamic process of self-nourishment that this powerful energy brings to you!
Practice:
Perform the Energy Exchange for 21 breaths/circles-of-hands in the morning before the start of each day, which takes approximately 5 minutes. Stand as near to the surface of the earth as possible. If done at sunrise, face east toward the sun, with the eyes closed, as was explained before. At other times of the day face North with the eyes open.
