Life can feel quite draining, especially if you often find yourself becoming anxious in the uncertainty of life’s challenges and disconnected from your heart in the face of life’s storms. You want to meet life with more vibrancy, clarity, and grounded presence, but you are unsure which practice to start with.

This is a rooted horse stance practice John taught to sharpen and activate the heart through any of life’s circumstances.

If you want to serve your relationships and the world with a bright, clear, sharp, and grounded presence, this 11-minute practice will help.

Standing in a horse stance, with eyes closed, tongue placed gently on the roof of the mouth, legs wide, knees bent, navel pulled in, feet turned out to 45 degrees and strong like suction cups, and sacrum driving toward the ground, bring your arms up to shoulder height & width with your pinky fingers facing your heart. Make your spine tall from the top of your heart, and rooted from the bottom of your heart. Imagine you can pull sky, sun and star energy in through the palms of your hands, making your chest nice and wide.

Feel your heart double or triple in size as you smoothly and deeply breathe into your side ribs, expanding your chest. Through the activation of the back of your heart, let your spine start to get really bright. At the same time, root your sacrum down, like a shiny, glowing metal rod, rooted into the earth.

After a few minutes, drop your hands just below your navel. Take all the wide, bright heart energy you cultivated and place it in your lower abdomen and groin. Continue to breathe smoothly and deeply. You can let your hands move in and out with the inhale and exhale, driving the heart energy down into your root and sending it wide into the earth. Let your sacrum become as wide as your hips and then extend it deep into the earth, as if you can feel the earth’s magnetism through your sacrum.

Then scan your central column from root to throat and make sure everything is wide along that column down into the earth. If any part of you feels tight, like your solar plexus or your throat, breathe into that area to widen and expand it.

Once you feel that everything is nice and wide and your root is established into the earth, feel the crown chakra dilating open and bright starlight streaming in through the top of your head. Send that beautiful light through all of your chakras and down into the earth. Imagine the starlight is a waterfall, so there’s a physical impact to it, and your body has to relax to accept all of the bright, beautiful light coming through your body, but you are so grounded that you don’t move an inch. Delight in how good it is to be alive, have a body, and be a container for this much beauty.

Now leave your right hand below your navel with your palm facing the earth, maintaining your root, and bring your left hand up to the level of your heart. From this space, activate your “Warrior’s Heart.” Feel the part of you that is sharp. You are deep, connected, rooted, and plugged into the earth, and your heart is as sharp as a sword. Feel through this moment those who you would help, serve and open through your bright, clear, sharp, and grounded presence. Feel your force as a human being making a statement like, “I am here,” “I’ve got you,” “I am with you,” or “Follow me.”

Then slowly lower your hands by your side, and come to an alert seated posture with your hands on your thighs, and thumb & forefinger together on each hand. Allow everything to relax, and your breath to smooth out and normalize. Reconnect to the wide channel, pulling starlight in through your crown, with your sacrum rooted to the earth, like wood or stone. Luxuriate in this beautiful, clear wide channel in the center column of your body. Feel your heart smile as you send out your intention for the world.

Disclaimer: Although anyone may find this practice to be useful, it is made available with the understanding that we are not engaged in presenting specific medical, psychological, emotional, sexual or spiritual advice. Nor is anything in this practice intended to be a diagnosis, prescription, recommendation or cure for any specific kind of medical, psychological, emotional, sexual or spiritual problem. Each individual has unique needs and this practice cannot take these individual differences into account. Each person should engage in a program of treatment, prevention, cure, or general health only in consultation with a licensed, qualified physician, therapist or other competent professional. Any person suffering from a sexually transmitted disease or any local illness of his or her sexual organs should consult a medical doctor and a qualified instructor of sexual yoga before practicing the sexual methods described in this practice.