The prerequisite for all twelve
5 practices
Written by Desmond Olubunmi · Founder of Sunya
Before you can raise your energy, you must stop wasting it. Most people live with the tap running — leaking life force faster than they could ever build it. Conservation is the simple discipline of plugging the leaks, so that energy is no longer drained away but allowed to gather. It comes before everything else, because there is no use generating more energy into a vessel that cannot hold it.
Energy that is contained does not simply sit still — it pools, concentrates, and begins to rise of its own accord. Recall that the natural movement of gathered life force is upward, along the central channel. The more the outward leaking stops, the more the energy accumulates, and the more it naturally turns vertical, lifting consciousness with it. Conservation forces nothing; it simply removes the constant draining that keeps the system perpetually low. Stop the leaks, and the rising happens by itself.
The life force leaks through a handful of predictable channels. Each practice below seals one of them.
Speech is one of the largest drains of life force there is, because your speech is a projection of your energy — it runs on it. When you speak, you direct life force outward. It is a process of expenditure, which is why it is worth spending consciously.
The senses reach outward all day toward stimulation — screens, noise, endless input — and pour energy out as they go. Sensory rest withdraws them: a detox for the senses, back to a natural state.
A great deal of the body’s energy goes into digestion. Periodic fasting frees that energy, and the effects reach every layer at once — body, energy, and mind.
Sexual energy is among the most concentrated forms of the life force.
A contraction at the base of the body that seals energy in and turns it upward. It is the most direct means of conserving the life force, and the ground the other conservation practices stand on.