Home /Yoga/ About Kundalini Yoga

If you are looking for an official description of Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan, please go to www.kundaliniyoga.com or www.3ho.org.    I am going to share with you my personal views and experiences below. First, please understand that there is also another path of Kundalini Yoga teachings in North America from the lineage of Swami Radha. It has a very beautiful and deep approach; however it has a different scope than the teachings of Yogi Bhajan. For more about this path please go to www.yasodhara.org or www.radha.org.

For many who are looking for a yoga path, not as a fitness program, but as a holistic discipline involving all levels of our being, the concern is a purity of teachings. Are we getting the real stuff? Or is this just an ego trip of a yoga teacher? The modern trends of yoga quite distorted its original purpose and meaning. There is a simple clue: if you are getting only physical workout from your yoga practice, or if you practice only meditation without any awareness about your body, then you are getting only a fragment. Yoga reflects a complexity of human being - body, mind and soul - which we cannot separate. Therefore you have to involve all of them at once: strengthen and fine-tune your body, discipline your mind, acknowledge and cultivate your soul.

Kundalini Yoga & Healing

With Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan (further on just referred to Kundalini Yoga) my primary satisfactory finding was that we do not workship a guru in the form of another person, but a guru which is the essence of our own soul. It is our inner Master Teacher that we tune-in on this path. Kundalini Yoga as a yoga of awareness teaches us how to listen and follow in order to illuminate our internal wisdom and true potential. After all, yoga’s ultimate goal is to unify our individual consciousness with an universal one. For some it is a solitary journey, for others it includes a group belief system or organized religion. Yogi Bhajan was a traditional Sikh and many of his students became Sikhs as well. However, Yogiji by himself proclaimed that religions shall soon become obsolete. During his lifetime, he recognized all the religions of this planet with equal importance and made it clear that Kundalini Yoga has nothing to do with any religion. The imprint on the practice of Kundalini Yoga, however, is the system of mantras of the Sikh origin. Naad yoga (yoga of the sound) always evolved around regional traditions and related languages. All of this is important for me to know, because I am one of many Kundalini Yoga teachers who remain neutral from a religious perspective. At the same time I recognize a tremendous effect of sangat (or group energy) on the progress of our personal cultivation or evolvement.

The second important focus for me was that these teachings are set. A teacher of Kundalini Yoga cannot invent or change anything essential. The kriyas and meditations are proven to work by thousands of years of practice. They were handed down from a master to a disciple until Yogi Bhajan started to teach them openly in 1969. How do we know that “his version” is the pure one? There is a simple answer: because they work. The effect is profound, clean, and safe. Furthermore, any teacher of Kundalini Yoga is under an oath that s/he is going to preserve a purity of the teachings as they were passed to him/her. A teacher is a vessel for these teachings, not a yoga instructor. There is a strict protocol for teachers of this lineage to follow. Of course, every teacher has his/her own style and brings a unique creative flow into the set structure of the class.

Kundalini Yoga is a system based on experience, not on belief. You may read thousands of books, but not much is going to change for you. In this tradition we find a key point: sadhana. It is a daily spiritual practice which involves body, mind and spirit. Yogi Bhajan suggested a specific sadhana for the Aquarian Age to keep us attuned. But truly, a sincere practice of our own choice always works its wonders! With sadhana we donate 1/10th of the day to our spiritual growth. This donation comes back to us 10-folds in form of physical health and mental balance during the rest of the day. Sadhana changed my life dramatically and it became my highly beneficial “addiction”. Not to mention cold showers and a diet! Unfortunately, many people are motivated only by their suffering and not by the levels of mental excellence and well-being. When their symptoms of misery disappear as a result of Kundalini Yoga practice, they quit. There is much more potential in this path! Yogi Bhajan revealed these secret teachings to us to be able to cope effectively with difficult times that are coming. Every one of us can already feel the pressure on our nervous system. What a blessing that we have a choice and tools available!

Testimonial:


When I joined Kundalini yoga with Jana in 2008, I didn’t really know what Kundalini yoga was all about.  It just sounded interesting.  I discovered a yoga with movements rather than static postures, classes with a beautiful spiritual side to them, a yoga which offered a deep understanding of the subtle aspects of body mind and soul, and a teacher who held a strong spiritual space for her students.  We learned mantras in Sanskrit and Gurmuki, the sacred language of the Sikhs.  In order to fully understand and progress in this yoga practice, I established a daily morning yoga practice which I have continued to this day.  Gradually the yoga and the mantras and the music that came along with them became more and more important to me. I began to understand some of the words, and the meaning began to seep in.   I began to realize that doing a meditation daily for an extended period of time reaped more benefits than doing it just once in class, and I started doing 40-day sadhanas, or practices, with on-line support from spiritvoyage.com

 

Throughout my practice of Kundalini yoga, Jana has been consistently there for me, always supportive of my practice and my journey.  Even now, when our paths have parted geographically, I can feel that we are still connected.  More recently I have started delving into and chanting some of the sacred writings of the Sikhs, and I find myself growing and moving along a spiritual path that really speaks to me.  These days, the meditations and chanting fill a larger portion of my daily practice than previously.  As I approach my 75th birthday, the physical yoga becomes more challenging, but I continue to do what I can, and I credit this yoga with keeping me fit as I age.  This is a forever practice and I am very grateful to have found it.

 

Judith H.

Nanaimo, BC  

 

Why do we hear about potentially harming effects of Kundalini Yoga practice?  Any effective and powerful tool can be misused if we are not following instructions and do not consider our own abilities. In the past, a disciple had to earn these teachings by proving himself mature and humble enough to conduct the powerful dormant energies, which we are awakening under this practice. This suggests that we have to approach this path with reverence and respect. We have to pace ourselves in this process of gradual integration and be very patient. Nothing real comes instantly in this life unless we earn it and prepare firm grounds for building a solid structure of our own existence in our own unique body, at this specific time and under the current circumstances of our very own life. It is wise to follow a teacher’s guidance at least in the beginning of the yoga practice, so you can learn and understand basic principles and absorb dynamics of Kundalini Yoga technology. We call it technology, because it truly is a scientifically supported system of tools which acts like a forklift for a modern man. It uplifts, attunes, and aligns, so we can operate from the higher Self.

A regular Kundalini Yoga class has the following structure:

1. Tuning in with mantra;        

2. Pranayama or warm-up set;

3. Kriya, which means “complete action“ involving asana, pranayama, mudra, mantra, mental focus and awareness;

4. Deep relaxation;

5. Meditation;

6. Closing Chant.

It all usually takes one and a half hours.

 

Useful Links and Resources

www.kundaliniyogahealing.com
Tel: (250) 716-6753 Email: jana@modranacocreation.com