The 1939 practice, paced
Five Tibetan Rites The Climb
The daily practice Peter Kelder described in 1939: five movements, about ten minutes a day, from 3 of each to 21 in ten weeks.
A practitioner drawn in the ink of the original booklet does each rite with you. He sets the pace. A voice and soft bells keep count. You follow.
No ads.
The five rites
Kelder's booklet, The Eye of Revelation, gives five movements to do one after another, every day. Start with 3 of each; add two a week, rite by rite, until you reach 21.
- Rite OneThe spin
- Rite TwoThe leg raise
- Rite ThreeThe kneeling back‑bend
- Rite FourThe table-top
- Rite FiveSag to inverted V
The practice
He sets the pace. You follow.
A practitioner, drawn in the stippled ink of the 1939 booklet, does each rite with you. A voice names each movement and each breath, soft bells mark the poses, and the app keeps the count.
- All five rites, in Kelder's order or your own, with the standing pause he asks for between them. Or one rite on its own.
- The guided style, with the breathing cues later teachers added, or Kelder's original 1939 version.
- A slow, normal or fast pace. The spin is timed rather than counted: turn until you feel slightly dizzy.
Your progress
Ten weeks up the mountain.
Your counts are drawn as a climb, camp by camp, from 3 to 21. Each week is a crossing: six days of practice in seven take a rite across, two higher. Each rite climbs on its own, so a slower one never holds the others back.
- From 3 Rivers, before the tide rises.
- From 9 A mountain pass, before the wind.
- From 15 The snowfields, up to the summit.
A gentler program, and free practice with counts of your own, are there too.
Safety first
A few questions before you start.
Before your first practice, a short safety check asks a few yes-or-no questions. It leaves out or eases the rites that could be risky for you, and says when to check with a doctor first. Your answers never leave your device.
A sore back? Rite Two has a bent-knee version with a count of its own, for as long as you need it.
The library
The story behind the rites.
A small library tells the booklet's story, how the rites are done, and what the records say about where they came from. Each instruction in the practice is stamped with where it comes from: the 1939 booklet, or a later teacher.
- As told in 1939 The Colonel's story
- The practice About the rites
- What the records show Reality or fiction?
Day and night
By day, the sun. By night, the moon.
The app follows your phone into the night: the paper turns lapis, the ink cream, and the sun gives way to a full moon.
Also in the app
On all your devices
Sign in with Apple, Google or your email to keep your practice in step on your phone, your tablet and the web. Without an account, everything stays on your device.
Every day, or six
A calendar of the days you practised. The book allows one rest day a week, and so does the climb.
Yours alone
No ads and no third-party trackers. Only anonymous usage statistics, never linked to you.
Get the app
Your practice follows you from one to the other.