About why I want to teach kundalini yoga

This year I’m starting to teach kundalini yoga. I’ve been practising yoga for 25 years, at least weekly, sometimes daily, ashtanga, hatha, iyengar, with teachers of all shapes and sizes, and have been grateful for the moments of time out it’s given me, of tweaking my body and stretching it so I can feel more flexible in my limbs and stronger in my core muscles. So that a strong and flexible body can help me develop a strong and flexible mind to tackle everything life throws at me.

But kundalini yoga I have found is a different kettle of fish altogether. It’s as if I left the country lanes and have entered a highway towards living my life with a lot more meaning and in a way that feels right.

Considering three years ago I was having a break down and didn’t see any meaning in my life in spite of all the external signs of success – being a mother to my daughters was the only thing that got me up in the mornings-, I have been practicing this yoga like someone swimming in a storm holds on to a raft.

It helps me make decisions, small and big, instinctively, following an intuition that is growing and that seems to know what’s best for me and others around me. For a libra who is used to agonising over every decision, that’s quite a change! 
It’s as if I’m in the middle of the river of Life, and can let myself be taken by the current, trusting I’m going in the right direction. I have less the exhausting feeling of swimming against the current, less the discouraging feeling of having got stuck in muddy backwaters.

How kundalini yoga does that is rather a mystery. It combines mantras with postures and breathing exercises. Lovely music that’s either soothing or very rhythmical and makes you want to move. Teachers with less ego and more of a compassionate aura than many other yoga teachers I came across.

Kundalini yoga was introduced to America in the sixties by Yogi Bhajan, an Indian Sikh, who allegedly broke the secrecy that surrounded this school of yoga as he felt Western society was ready to embrace its technology.
 It has the same goals and effect as all other forms of yoga, except it seems to get there much faster.

What first attracted me was the feeling in Georgie’s class (Georgie is my local kundalini yoga teacher) that all students were embraced. It felt like we didn’t need to try to be anything, we could just let go and go with the flow of the exercises (typically done in a swinging motion, eyes closed, to the beat of the music). Then as we did this, sometimes emotions came up, not always definable. Sometimes tears. But every time, the feeling I was walking into a universe that needed exploring more – myself, the stiffness in my body, but also my feelings, insecurities, loves-. In a safe environment, with no judgement.

It’s not an intellectual exercise, more an exercise in letting go. In noticing physical blocks or pains (eyes closed helps with being mindful, there’s less temptation to look around at what others are doing), or emotions as they pop up, released by such or such posture. Indeed, science probably hasn’t explained it yet, but this is at the core of why yoga works (and indeed other practices), the memory of pain, physical or emotional, gets stored in our body, creating blocks. Yoga aims to release these blocks so we can live more freely.


What hooked me further was how specific kundalini yoga is in dealing with physical or emotional issues. It seems to be a tool that gets you steadily but surely, if you follow the practice, to where the mystics call bliss. A place where you accept and love yourself as you are, and accept others as they are. Where you completely trust the universe to bring to you what you need. Where you’re constantly in the flow. Not a state many people get to, not many at all! But just working towards it gives life a special sweetness.

I like to question things, and so have been experimenting, rather than taking it for granted. I have discovered insecurities in me as large as mountains, which have prevented me from really appreciating what I have. Which have also cowered me away from speaking my truth and protesting when things didn’t feel right. Feeling these insecurities has been rather uncomfortable and painful, but it has been like purging an abcess, the discomfort eventually subsides (til the next one appears. Rather like peeling an onion, there’s always another layer).


I’m starting to think insecurities and fears are the basis for most feelings of pain and ills in the world. Fear of not being good enough. Fear of death. Fear of the future. Fear of not being connected to others or the universe.
 Deal with your insecurities, and you don’t need to change everything around you. Strangely, things around you change by themselves.


“Conquer your mind to conquer the world”, said Yogi Bhajan.

Some magic seems to operate when you let go and trust the Universe will take care of everything. The Universe really does start sending you what you need.
 I’ve been resisting this alien concept. No science has explained this phenomenon. I’ve been questioning whether there’s a mysterious God who orchestrates everything, in an incredibly complex way, so that every experience we all have is beneficial for us as a learning experience, even, or actually particularly, the painful experiences.

But reading “Buddha” by Karen Armstrong, I see Buddhists, and indeed mystics of any creed, give a more simple, yet mind-boggling explanation: we are made of the same divine material as everything else that surrounds us. If we recognize this, and surrender to the beauty of it, stop intellectualizing, and follow our intuition (sharpening it with mindfulness), we tap into a powerful current that takes us exactly where we need to go, and brings to us what we need to grow as souls.

I’m not sure why I want to teach, it’s not as if I feel an irrepressible urge. I think partly I feel it will help me explore the practice more – if I want to explain things, I need to make sure I understand them thoroughly-. Partly curiosity (one of my big drivers): can it do for others what it is doing for me? And partly of course the desire to share something good.

Most students will come because they want to relax and recharge their batteries. Hopefully it will do that for them. Allow anyone to rest for an hour listening to music and they will feel better! Most of us need to rest more and take time out, but we won’t do it unless it’s called “yoga” and it’s scheduled into our day!

Some will see it mainly as a physical practice, which of course it also is. It does help build core muscle and be more flexible. It does act on the endocrinal and nervous system, so that you feel good, and less stressed. I have found that the stiffness in my shoulders and my hips are a lot less, and the meditation I started a few weeks ago seems to have helped clear the chesty cough I usually get in winter, as well as work on fear.

But kundalini yoga aims to work on such a deeper level than that. Most of us don’t really want to go into our murky areas. Our ego finds it difficult to take, we have been told since childhood that we must better ourselves, we don’t want to know about the weaknesses, we just try harder to be who we think we should.
 Yet the ego doesn’t serve us, and actually is what gets in the way. We don’t need it, really. We are perfect just as we are, part of a universe that’s perfect and balanced on a molecular level, we just need to let ourselves shine.
But then I suppose it’s our ego, our free will and power to decide what we do with our lives, which makes us human.

They’ll be interesting, these classes. I have no idea what to expect. Maybe some students will think they’re not working on their physical fitness as fast as they want? Maybe some will find the whole kundalini yoga ritual (wearing white cotton clothes, covering the head, tuning in and out, and chanting) spooky and reminiscent of a sect (which, by the way, I really don’t think it is, Yogi Bhajan did what he could do stop a personality cult and said he wanted to train teachers, not disciples). Maybe some will have practiced yoga before and will find kundalini yoga doesn’t fit their idea of what yoga should be. Maybe some won’t have practiced yoga before, and will find it too challenging? (I conducted a few beginners classes and realise I need to learn to allow more rest periods, I get carried away).

Maybe some will enjoy it as I do?

The good thing is, in one one same class students work at their own pace and get from the yoga what they need, when they need it. They can go deep and experience fast and maybe disturbing change, or take it much more slowly.

Whatever happens, it will be a learning experience for me and the students. 
I’m scared and looking forward to it at the same time!