What is Kundalini Yoga?

Uncoiling the Snake in Your Spine –

Kundalini Yoga and Your Life Force!

Kundalini yoga creates change from within by awakening consciousness, illuminating self-imposed limitations, and developing intuitive mind. The breathwork, kriyas and meditations focus on physical alignment (angles), and through these postures, generate energy that then delivers the practitioner to a more alive and confident energetic state —almost always ending with “still” space and greater awareness within. Over time, kundalini yoga has a profoundly healing effect on practitioners by strengthening the nervous system, balancing the glandular system, purifying the body and calming the mind.

My first kundalini yoga class was quite an experience. I had no idea that kundalini yoga was so different from the “regular” yoga classes I had participated in before – you know, the flow classes. We started with the opening mantras, warmed up, and then spent the hour waving our arms overhead and opening and closing our fists with our arms in various positions until it burned and I thought they would fall off.  The whole time I kept thinking, “hey what about the downward dogs? What is this?” The only reason I came back was because I had bought a monthly pass. By the third class I literally arrived at class, sat down on my mat, and started crying tears of gratitude because I knew I had found a new truth tool and way to heal that would change my life.  I was experiencing my own truth through this technology and was being supported and upheld by a room full of fellow travelers all showing up for themselves in the same way – I knew this through the vibration, the experience-  not the “words”.

Some kriyas have left me feeling blissed out and filled with a sense of connection and love; and others have provoked and confronted me, both physically and mentally. In learning to stay present and “keep up” through discomfort and friction in class, I am able to stay present in life when there is friction. There is a direct translation and correlation.  It works!

Many of my friends have tried kundalini yoga and in essence objected because they do not experience it as a “total body work out”. This is true in the sense that every class is different and focuses on different movements and thus activates different body areas depending on the purpose of the kriya the teacher chooses. Yogi Bhajan left us with 1000s of kriyas and each one is a complete-onto-itself technology with a specific effect on the mind, body and spirit.  So while each kriya might not work on the total body, over time practicing kundalini yoga strengthens the entire system, especially the nervous system, glandular system, and naval center. This is powerful stuff!  A calm nervous system results in a nonreactive mind and healthier body, accessing our glandular system is the doorway to our intuition and connection to source (pituitary and pineal glands) and strengthening our naval center allows us to step into our power and speak our truth. Oh my! 

So What is Do We Mean By Kundalini?

To understand kundalini energy imagine having a snake coiled at the base of your spine, sleeping. Completely still, dormant in fact – until some friction occurs. This is your life force. Now, picture the snake raising its head and rising powerfully, lifting straight up into the sky, ready to strike. If we want our life force to be as fluid and powerful as this snake’s we must create friction to wake up our kundalini energy.

By creating friction through kundalini yoga we are able to access our life force energy.

“The space where the life force is stored is like a kunda, a pool near the sex center; that is why the energy is known as kundalini, as if it is a kunda or pool of water. Another reason it is called kundalini is that it looks like a snake coiled and sleeping. If you have seen a sleeping serpent you know how it lies in coils with its hood on top.  But if you disturb the sleeping serpent it will wake up, uncoil and raise its hood up.  This energy is called kundalini also because the pool of life force, or the seed of life is precisely located near the sex center and it is from here that life expands in all directions.” 

Osho, In Search of the Miraculous.

Kundalini Yoga arouses the sleeping kundalini energy from its coiled base up through the chakras that reside along the spine eventually allowing the energy to reach the crown chakra at the top of the head. Chakras are wheels of energy running along the spine up to and out of the top of the head, where it can then connect to the infinite. Energy gets stuck throughout our chakras,  and kundalini yoga helps release or unblock this energy so that it can flow, creating better physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health. 

 The kriyas and meditations in Kundalini Yoga are designed to raise awareness and strengthen the body, nervous system, and mind. Many of the postures are designed to activate and strengthen the navel center, loosen the spine, and release pressure in our meridians (energy points). Practicing conscious breath work (pranayam) and yogic energy locks (bandhas), along with specific exercises in each kriya, allows the release and flow of Kundalini energy.

“The process of growth through Kundalini Yoga is a natural unfolding of your own nature. The blocks to that growth are your attachments to the familiarity of the past, and your fear of the expanded Self. As you practice Kundalini Yoga you will grow. Like a snake, you will need to shed old skins to be more of who you are.”

 Yogi Bhajan

Each kundalini yoga class (as taught by Yogi Bhajan) is composed of four parts: pranayam, a yoga kriya (a set of specific exercises or asanas designed to create a certain effect within the body), savasana (relaxation) and meditation. As you can imagine, the breathwork creates space to be more total in the yoga kriya, the kriya then allows for deeper relaxation, which then allows for a deeper meditation at the end of class. Kundalini yoga is a system, a science that physically changes the chemistry in the body and brain for better health and well-being on all levels. 

Yogi Bhajan came to the west from India in the late 1960s to deliver this systematic science to us because he knew we would need it now in this chaotic time. This science is 1000s of years old and has been handed down through many generations of Yogis and Sadhus and is now available for us, here now. 

 Kundalini yoga is for anyone who is interested in healing, being more present, and reaching their highest possibility, regardless of age or physical ability. It might not look like a typical flow yoga class, but overtime its effects on all systems in the body are profound - a proven technology that works.

 Additionally, kundalini yoga is also a Bhakti yoga. We use the Naad (music that connects us to the infinite) and chant ancient sacred mantras throughout our classes, opening our throat chakra and heart centers.  We start each class with the mantra Ong Namo, Guru Dev Namo (bowing to the infinite source and the teacher within)  and end each class singing the Long Time Sun, so each class begins and ends with an acknowledgement and connection to both source and our heart-felt compassion.

© Tanya R. Shimer All Rights Reserved