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There is a moment most people know well but few have ever named. It arrives somewhere between 2pm and 4pm, or after a long stretch of screen time, or simply at the end of a week where the mind has been working harder than the body. A heaviness settles over the top of the head. Thinking becomes slower, less precise. The inner world feels like it has been pressed down from above.
Most of us reach for coffee, a walk, or simply push through. But according to Dr. Robert Gilbert, a researcher in sacred geometry and subtle body anatomy who spent time training at the Clairvision School of Australia, that familiar sensation of fatigue has a precise energetic cause and an equally precise remedy. He calls it the Pulling Up Practice, and it takes less than a minute to do.
The Energetic Anatomy Behind Fatigue
To understand why this practice works, it helps to have a working model of the subtle body. Most spiritual traditions that have mapped the inner landscape of the human being describe something beyond the physical form: a field of energy that interpenetrates and surrounds the body, organised around a central vertical axis and a series of vortex-like centres commonly called chakras.
The Clairvision School, founded by French medical doctor Samuel Sagan, has spent decades researching what happens to this energy field under various conditions, including chronic fatigue syndrome. What their work revealed is that the column of energy running through the centre of the body extends both below the feet and above the crown of the head, and that these extensions contain their own centres of function.
The centre directly above the head, sometimes referred to in esoteric anatomy as the first platform above the crown, is associated with a very particular quality: rapid, high-clarity mental functioning, the kind of thinking that feels effortless when you are fully rested and completely alert. This centre carries what Gilbert describes as a noticeably higher energetic voltage than the centres within the physical body itself. It operates at a frequency that the body, under normal conditions, is not designed to house directly.
What Actually Happens When You Feel Burned Out
The problem, according to this model, arises from a subconscious tendency that many spiritually inclined or intellectually driven people share. When we are drawn toward heightened states of awareness, towards clarity, insight, and expanded thinking, there is an unconscious pull for the energetic content of that centre above the head to draw closer to the physical body. The higher platform begins to migrate downward toward the crown.
When this happens, the energetic charge that belongs above the head is now pressing directly at or against the top of the skull. The nadis, the subtle channels of the energy body described in detail within the yogic and Himalayan traditions, are not structured to handle that level of voltage at that location. The result, in some Himalayan schools, is referred to as a burnout of the nadis. In ordinary experience, it is simply what you feel as that pressing heaviness on the top of the head, the inability to think clearly, the creeping exhaustion that does not entirely lift even after sleep.
This is distinct from the kind of fatigue caused by physical toxicity or illness, where the approach is different. But for the very common form of depletion that comes from intense mental work, creative output, or extended periods of spiritual practice, this model offers an explanation that conventional frameworks simply do not have.
The Practice Itself
The mechanics of the Pulling Up Practice are built around a simple but precise understanding of the energy column. Gilbert frames it using an anatomical metaphor: muscles, he points out, always pull. No muscle in the physical body pushes. Movement is achieved through opposing muscles pulling in coordinated directions. The energy column operates on the same principle. We have the capacity to pull energy upward through the central axis of the body, but most people have never consciously activated this ability. Like any underused muscle, it has grown atrophied through neglect.
The practice reactivates it through a combination of breath, physical gesture, and focused intention.
To begin, sit with your spine reasonably upright, without tension, but with enough alignment that the back of the head and the spine are in good relationship with each other. A slightly tucked chin often helps. Close your eyes.
Bring your awareness to the top of the head and the column of energy running vertically through the centre of the body, extending above the crown and below the feet.
When you are ready, inhale sharply through the nose and simultaneously raise the eyebrows upward at the exact moment of the inhale. As you do, direct your intention to pulling the energy straight up the column, as though from a position above your own head, you are flexing a muscle that draws the energy upward. The sharp breath and the eyebrow movement are not symbolic. They are the physical anchors that activate the pulling sensation in the column. Without them, most people cannot feel the energetic movement at all, especially in the beginning.
Hold the energy wherever it has risen to. Do not allow it to drop back down when you exhale. This is important. When you breathe out, you lower the eyebrows, but you leave the energy at whatever height it reached. The next repetition begins from that new, higher position.
Seven to eight repetitions is typically sufficient to complete one round of the practice. After the final pull, rest your awareness and simply notice what has shifted in the quality of the energy above and around the head. Many people describe a feeling of lightness or lift, as though the invisible pressure has been removed.
Why the Eyebrows and the Breath Matter
For those familiar with pranayama or breathwork traditions, the use of a sharp intake of breath to direct prana upward through the sushumna nadi will not be surprising. Various pranayama techniques use breath mechanics precisely because the breath and the energy body are in constant conversation. The inhalation naturally creates an upward movement of energy, and the sharp quality of the breath amplifies that movement significantly.
The eyebrows are less immediately obvious. But within the energy anatomy of the face, the brow region corresponds to the ajna centre, the point between and above the eyes that most traditions associate with clarity, perception, and the direction of awareness. Raising the eyebrows creates a physical and energetic lift that supports the upward intention of the practice. It is not a metaphor. Gilbert is quite specific that this combination, sharp breath plus raised eyebrows plus directed intention, activates something that intention alone, for most beginners, cannot.
Building the Muscle Over Time
One of the most important things Gilbert emphasises is that this is not a visualisation exercise. He is quite clear that the goal is not to imagine the energy moving to the moon and consider the job done. What matters is what you can actually feel. If the energy moves only a small amount in the early repetitions, that is the truth of where you are, and working with that truth is more valuable than performing a mental theatre of dramatic movement.
That said, the practice does develop. Practitioners who have worked with this technique for months or years report a considerably stronger activation with each session. The energetic muscle, once reawakened, becomes easier to engage. Groups of experienced practitioners working together can create a collective upward shift that is reportedly palpable to everyone in the room.
The Vesica Institute, where Gilbert has taught for many years, situates this kind of practice within a broader framework of what he calls BioGeometry and sacred science, drawing on traditions from ancient Egypt, the Hermetic lineage, and various Himalayan and yogic schools. The Pulling Up Practice is not an isolated technique. It sits within a larger map of the human energy field and the ways in which that field can be consciously tended.
The Vesica and the Closing Integration
After the pulling sequence itself, Gilbert guides students through a brief integration that involves locating the centre above the head and the corresponding centre below the body, then holding awareness of both simultaneously. He then invites the sense of curved lines of energy connecting these two points, one above and one below, arcing out to either side of the body and forming what is known in sacred geometry as a vesica piscis, the almond-shaped intersection of two equal circles.
This is not incidental. The vesica is one of the foundational forms in sacred geometry, associated with balance, proportion, and the relationship between different planes of existence. By consciously evoking this form around the body, connecting the high-voltage centre above with the grounding centre below, the practice completes itself. The energy that has been drawn upward is not simply released or scattered. It is integrated within a coherent structure.
For anyone navigating the specific kind of depletion that comes from intense inner work, the creative demands of building something meaningful, or simply the accumulated weight of a life lived with full attention, this practice offers something rare: a technique precise enough to be immediately verifiable in your own experience, and deep enough to reward a lifetime of practice.
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