When I was in prison I used to practice energy circulation techniques with those who came to visit me. Sometimes there would be as many as four people and myself in the prison visitation room, eyes closed and focused on our breathing and internal visualizations. Other times it would just be Lorri and me doing it to stay calm and give us something to focus on when we were being harassed by guards.

There are all sorts of reasons to do energy circulation with others. For one thing, it’s a sharing of one another’s vital essence. In a situation where I was low and depleted of energy, it gave me a boost and kept me going. Another reason is for practice. The more we work with energy, the more adept we become at generating and directing it—so you want to be doing it constantly, in all different environments, alone and with others.

• To do it with two people, sit facing one another with your feet flat on the floor.
• Each person holds out their hands, right palm facing down toward the earth and left palm facing up.
• The other person’s downward-facing right palm rests on your upward-facing left palm, and your downward-facing right palm rests upon their upward-facing left palm. You’re now face-to-face with one another, touching palms to complete a circuit.
• You each close your eyes and let your attention rest in the center of your chest where you visualize a glowing golden orb that looks like the sun at noon, encompassing both your heart and solar plexus.
• Every time you inhale, visualize yourself pulling in chi or energy from the universe around you and into the golden sphere in your chest. With each inhalation it grows brighter and brighter gold, packed with more and more energy. Do this about six to ten times, just to get the energy center flushed with chi.
• Once you feel ready, you inhale and see the golden orb in your chest glow as bright as you can make it. Hold the breath for a couple of seconds.
• Then, as you exhale, see the golden light you have been inhaling into your chest spill from your golden orb, down your left arm, out your left hand, and up your partner’s right arm. It comes to a stop inside the golden sphere in their chest.
• Hold your breath on the exhale for a couple of seconds. As you begin inhaling again, see the flow of light continue from the sphere in their chest, down their left arm, out of their palm, and into yours.
• It continues up your right arm and back into the gold sphere in the center of your chest. Continue this process through several rounds—aim to do it for five to ten minutes and build up to longer sessions from there.
• As you exhale, the light exits your chest, goes down your arm, up your partner’s arm, and into their chest. As you inhale, the light leaves the energy center in their chest, goes down their arm, up your arm, and back into the golden energy center in your chest.
• Once you get the hang of it, it’s easy to keep up. You’re just inhaling and exhaling, sending energy back and forth from yourself to your partner.

After you master doing it with one other person, you can add as many more as you’d like—you just have everyone sit in a circle touching palms. As you exhale you send energy to the person on your left. As you inhale you receive it from the person on your right. This weaves the energy of the group together and can be powerful to do before having several people put energy into manifesting something together. There are all sorts of variations that can be done with both energy circulation rituals with others as well as group manifestation projects.

In magick we say that everything in the physical world mirrors everything in the energetic plane. This is the meaning behind “as above, so below; as within, so without.” This means that just as our hands are joined to our chests via our arms, so too are our hand chakras connected to our hearts via meridians. This is why it feels so good to hold hands with someone you love—because you have formed a connection that allows energy to flow back and forth between your heart center and theirs. And it’s for this very same reason that it feels so disagreeable to have to shake hands with someone you are really uncomfortable with.

When I talk about how useful it is to master this one single technique it’s because there are so many different rituals that can be done with it that it’s inexhaustible.