There is a legend around these five rites, according to what I have read these rites were introduced to the west by a British army officer who lived for a while among the Tibetan monks, getting used to their customs, philosophy and their way of life including their work outs.
When he went back to England he taught these exercises to many people among them the person who wrote a book about the rites. He said that these exercises gave much more energy to a person, awoke their chakras and eventually stopped or reversed the aging process, he himself was over seventy years old but appeared to be only about 40 and he was full of energy.
I have been trying out the exercises for a few days now and have noticed no results yet, they are very easy to do and take up no more than 10 minutes so I will keep doing them for a month and see if I notice anything, because after all these monks are actually Lamas and who doesn't trust a Lama?
As for the energy, that I can really believe, I don't know if these exercises are the way to more energy and a longer life, but that energy is out there and some people can tap into it. I have a friend who served time in a Honduras prison for drug peddling and he told me there was an older guy in prison whom everybody hated because he didn't sleep and kept running in one spot, the guards would let him out of the cell around three a.m. to the prison yard where he would run and wouldn't stop all day. Of course one day the prison warden got smart and named him official wood cutter, he'd just chop all the firewood they used in the prison which housed about 500 inmates and all cooking was done on an earthen stove which used firewood, the guy was incredibly grateful.
I'm betting he had a copy of the 5 rites book and followed the exercises (the ebook can be found on the internet, Google will lead you to it) to the letter, of course my friend told me his diet was different he was into insects, lizards and an occasional mouse, so I'm not sure if it was the exercise or the food that
had his energy levels so high.