Kundalini Yoga took me by surprise! I signed up to take a weekend workshop at Kripalu called Curb the Urge: Food Issues. I was attracted to the course as maintaining a healthy body image and weight has been a lifelong challenge for me. I did not know that the course was based on Kundalini Yoga and the teachings of Yogi Bhajan. I had never taken a Kundalini class before and knew nothing about it.
When I walked into the class I was greeted by two amazing women, Mukta Kaur Khalsa and Suchas Kaur. They were dressed in white and wearing white turbans. I was quite surprised, but felt immediately at ease as they were so warm and welcoming. I soon learned that most of the class was unfamiliar with Kundalini Yoga. We were in for an extraordinary weekend. It left me feeling both uplifted and grounded with a heightened sense of awareness.
We learned about habit behaviors and specific meditations, breathing exercises (prananyam) and physical exercises (kriyas) that help break old patterns and create new ones. The meditations were very cool and use a combination of breathing, mantra (chants), mudras (body or hand positions) and movement. This is great for stilling the active mind as it keeps the mind quite busy! Those of you who practice yoga with me may remember my excitement when I returned and the fun jumping set (Har Kriya) I shared with you.
We learned that this course was part of a greater practice and body of knowledge for the treatment of habit behaviors and addictions called SuperHealth. A seed was planted….
This past winter, I met a local Kundalini Yoga Teacher, Sharon Castelli, and started taking her classes. They are physical and challenging, but accessible to all. As with all yoga, one listens with awareness to the body and does only what they can do, feeling free to modify as needed. Kundalini Yoga is known as the Yoga of Awareness and focuses on strengthening the nervous and glandular systems while raising consciousness.
I’m hooked on Kundalini Yoga! I have incorporated it into my personal practice. I love the meditations and started with this one, “Healthy am I, Happy am I, Holy am I” for 40 days. It is a self-healing mantra which is very empowering. I have noticed that my upper body and core strength have greatly improved and I feel fit and strong. I completed the SuperHealth Professional training in March 2018 and highly recommend it to anyone for personal growth, but especially for professionals (nurses, we need this!) and yoga teachers working with clients, habit behaviors and addictions (which is really all of us). I am currently taking the Kundalini Level I Yoga Teacher Training and volunteering to promote SuperHealth.