That’s right. For taking the trouble to click on that link a moment ago, you are now going to be rewarded with the sacred rituals of eternal youth. Yet only unto the faithful is the miraculous bestowed. Do you believe that modern and ancient truths are not so very different?

It’s been more than a century since Einstein told us that matter is simply corrupted light, a multi-dimensional dance of energy fields. Still we persist in thinking of ourselves as discrete units of meat, bone, and blood. How about those seven ductless glands, the ones responsible for the secret juices which decide everything from how deep your voice is to which of your hairs turn gray first?

No Hindu mystic ever beheld a pineal gland in a petri dish, yet he knew about chakras, the vortexes of energy whirling about the organic manifestations of the endocrine system. Some of Buddha’s early fans told the Tibetan lamas about it, that youth and energy were pendant on those chakras whirling fast and in-synch, drawing prana into all the processes that give life to meat, bone, and blood.

Things fall apart: age and entropy will slow the chakras. When they spin at different velocities, no plastic surgeon or GNC supplement can long hold off the damage. That’s why you might forgive the lamas who devised this system for calling them rituals – ‘exercises’ is a bit banal for actions which merit a reprieve from Father Time.

Rite the First

Stand up. Put your arms out straight to the sides. Now spin clockwise.

You expected chanting, maybe? Joint-cracking postures only possible for a fifty-kilo ascetic in a diaper? Tut, tut. The atom only exists because it spins, as does the universe. As do children when they want to shake things up. Whirling dervishes are known for more than diverting head gear, by the way, such as conjugal prowess lasting well into eighth and ninth decades, but the modest Turks don’t usually speak of such things.

If you feel too dizzy to turn more than once or twice, do sit down, and be of good cheer. In a few weeks, or months, you will spin the prescribed twenty one times, and in such improved chakric synergy that your bright eyes will stop the room from turning almost at once.

Rite the Second

Lie down, palms down at your sides. Inhale, lifting chin to chest and legs perpendicular, no bent knees unless necessary.

Those who tire after two or three are the majority, the endless legions who glumly snap at their ever-more-snug waistbands. Those who can do twenty-one don’t fear the scale, and seldom pine for the call of nature.

Rite the Third

Kneel, hands on the hams for support. Chin down to the chest for inhale. Exhale and arch head and shoulders back as far as possible.

Twenty-one of these on a regular basis, and even the most slack-shouldered wage slave begins to attain the proud carriage of a nobleman. His mind inevitably turns from morbid worry to superior detachment. Huge groups of lamas perform this ritual simultaneously, claiming that the vibrational energy created clears up all sorts of bad karma. Feel free to laugh at the lamas and their mystical take on mental health and well being. Rumor has it there’s not one monastic dispensary in Tibet stocked with Prozac.

Rite the Fourth

Sit down on the floor, legs out straight, trunk erect, palms flat on the ground. Tuck the chin in. Now inhale, throwing the head back as you make like a table, body parallel to the floor, arms and calves perpendicular. Become rigid like the table you are, then relax on the way back to sitting down.

This ritual is where the secretly incorrigible start bemoaning their tight shoulders and stiff ankles. They deserve sympathy, not for their perceived ailments, but for their sluggish vortexes, spinning wobbily like exhausted tops. Confidence and optimism spring from harmonious velocity. Twenty-one will turn a crybaby into a confident yet compassionate adult.

Rite the Fifth

Hands and feet on the floor, two feet apart. Legs and arm straight, back arched. Throw the head back, and as you inhale push the posterior straight up to make an inverted ‘V’.

This rite passes for isometric exercise, also, and the increased flexibility in the spine compliments one’s toned arms, chest, and shoulders. Once again, however, the true benefit goes to the seven mini-cosmos, whirling faster, at the same speed, harmonious fields of energy that brook no disease or decay.

Twenty one is the optimal number of repetitions for each rite, but as few as three apiece will get things rolling, or spinning, rather. If you find one of the rites ‘impossible’, leave it out, for now. Only daily devotion will have long-term effect, but adepts can do all five rituals twent-one times in under ten minutes. Try for twenty-one days with open mind and heart. You’ve got nothing to lose but years of aging effects. Besides, they’ll still be selling wrinkle cream and face lifts if you change your mind.

* Thank you to 97 year-old Liu Jia, living proof of the power of the 5 Rituals, and a far more pleasing photographic subject than your average Tibetan lama.