YOU’VE GOT TO TRY THIS...

“Breathe in, slow and deep, and gently push your pelvis forward...” uh.... ok... I opened half an eye and looked around... the room was cool and dark. The curtains had been drawn and the faint light from the aromatic candles bounced gently off the polished wooden floor. On my right, a shockingly graceful septuagenarian was ‘pushing gently’. Five other rather grand dames were also moving in concerted rhythm with their rasping exhalations. I closed my eye and joined in…

I had signed up for a Qigong (for those unacquainted with the term, lets just call it Chinese yoga, a passable distortion) class in faraway Interlaken, Switzerland. And the instructor, an elegant young man in his 60s was gently taking us through the forms. His beatific smile was probably infectious because by the end of the class, all of us perfect strangers to each other, couldn’t help but keep beaming at each other. While the others exchanged pleasantries and shared experiences with each other, the kindly instructor walked up to me and introduced himself. “Guten Tag! I’m Manfred… Manfred Miethe. Is this the first time you’ve tried Qigong? I’m asking because you use your muscles a lot more than you should… To tap into your internal energy, you must learn to relax and not focus on your muscular strength…” Miethe was right. I oft en tend to give in to vanity and focus more on muscular shape and strength even while practicing an internal energy system like yoga or Qigong. While telling him about my usual fitness regimen, I happened to mention ‘the five Tibetans’, a set of five yogic exercises that, legend says, was being practiced by a community of ageless monks near the Indo-Tibet border. Miethe’s eyes lit up… “Did you just say the five Tibetans? It’s funny that you should mention it because I happen to have authored a book on the subject, perhaps the only one in German.”

So what, I thought. I had read a few books on the subject and the five exercises had seemed fairly simple. I had begun training in them and had even introduced a lot of friends to the practice. It was very popular with everybody I shared them with, both for the benefits it promised as well as the legend that surrounded them. If you’d care to remember, dear reader, some years ago, in this very space, I had shared both the concept and the practice as I understood it then in great detail, purportedly, for your benefit. In fact, for those of you who missed it, here’s the story of the five Tibetans for you all over again…

The legend comes to us through a certain Peter Keldar who penned a document called The Fountain of Eternal Youth. Keldar claims that while he was sitting on a park bench, a rather old and bent gentleman, ‘grey and balding’, as he put it, happened to sit beside him. After exchanging pleasantries, the old gent, former British Army officer Colonel Bradford, started recounting his adventures from his time in India. One of his particularly fascinating yarns was the one about a mysterious monastery in the Himalayas. It was said that this place was so miraculous that any man who happened to reach this place, no matter how old and weak, would always return a far younger man, brimming with vitality and vigour. No one really knew what happened up there but Colonel Bradford was determined to find out. In fact he was planning a trip to India to try and reach this monastery where bubbled this ‘fountain of youth’. He invited Keldar to join him on the expedition but Keldar was too caught up in his affairs to accompany the colonel. Then one day, in his study he encountered a strapping young man who had come to call on Keldar. But Keldar didn’t recognise him. ‘Didn’t you recognize me?’ the man had asked. Keldar stared hard, and then it dawned on him. This was the old colonel, not the way he’d known the man but just the way he might have been in his younger days. Ruddy complexion, a head full of thick dark hair, and as straight as an oak… apparently, Colonel Bradford had been soaked to the bone by this ‘fountain of youth’ he’d gone to find.

It had taken Colonel Bradford many months to piece together the puzzle but he was finally able to string together a map that showed him the way. After a long hike in the mountains, the Colonel reached the famed monastery. There was no fountain here but all around him he saw young men and women going about their tasks with amazing grace and strength. As time went by, the monks accepted him and taught him five simple exercises that served one primary function – that of balancing the seven energy vortexes which controlled the body’s endocrinal system, which in turn balanced the hormonal output in the body, thus keeping it youthful and healthy.

Bradford on his return to England taught Keldar and his friends these five exercises which came to be known as the five Tibetan rites of rejuvenation or just The Five Tibetans. And from there it spread amongst like minded individuals and groups till more than half a century later, it found me. Actually I found it, in a book by Christopher S Kilham, a yoga instructor and author. When I first chanced upon the legend, I was fascinated by the idea but it all seemed too good to be true. Is it really possible that mere ten minutes a day invested in a regular practice of the five Tibetans could actually help turn back the clock, not just by a few years but absolute decades? Bradford came back with tales of sprightly nonagenarians bouncing about like people might in their thirties. Bradford himself, claims Keldar, looked like a man in his mid thirties while he was celebrating his 73rd birthday. Apparently, the more years one spends doing them, the more youthful the appearance.

The five Tibetans are a part of my daily regimen now. A lot of friends who I shared the story with were fascinated by the legend and its promise and asked me to ‘baptise’ them with these ‘rites’. And yet although these rites have been a part of my life, for the last few years, I have been never really sure if the magic worked. I felt fi t and strong but I did a lot of other things like yoga and Qigong too, so I wasn’t really sure how much the rites contributed towards my wellbeing. So that day, while Miethe was about to walk away, I stopped him and asked him if would mind showing how a ‘master’ performed the Five Tibetans, and if they really worked… Miethe smiled, spread his arms wide and then started whirling like a tornado (the first of the five Tibetan rites) and then moved on to perform the other four (each of these five movements is repeated 21 times) and all through he moved so fast, he was like a blur. It was difficult to believe that the man in front of me was someone in his 60s, and all this while, instead of breathing hard, he had that beatific smile etched on his face…

Manfred Miethe tells me, the five Tibetans work wonderfully well and looking at him that day I had no choice but to believe him. Since that day, I’ve never missed a single session with the five Tibetans and if you, dear reader, are keen on trying them out, just look for Christopher S Kilham’s book or just type The Five Tibetan Rites in Google and you’ll find multiple options to guide you through the workout. They are easy to comprehend, simple to perform and take very little time. And if they deliver even half of what the legend promises, you really ought to have very little to complain about… All the best… start spinning…