Kundalini Yoga is a 5,000 year old system of yoga exercises and meditation that promotes health, happiness and awareness. Combining breathing (pranayam), movement (asana) and sound (mantra), Kundalini Yoga is a safe, comprehensive technology that can be practiced by anyone.
Practicing Kundalini Yoga keeps the body in shape, increases vitality and trains the mind to be strong and flexible in the face of stress and change. It balances the glandular system, strengthens the nervous system and enhances creative potential. Through yogic breathing techniques and meditation, peace of mind can be obtained, giving an experience of deep inner calm and self-confidence.
Kundalini Yoga is more than a system of exercises. With this technology, people have healed themselves of the pain of physical illness, mental pressure, drug and alcohol addictions and more.
The technology of Kundalini Yoga is aimed at the spirit that has no boundaries. Therefore, it is universal and non-denominational. No matter what, if any, religious path a person follows, Kundalini Yoga helps practitioners experience fully what they believe.
“What is Kundalini Yoga? The creative potential of the human.”
-Yogi Bhajan
4 comments:
Excellent...,
I'm curious to know what your experience of altered states of consciousness has been through the regular practice of yoga?
If any, have these figured in your motivation to continue and to enlarge your involvement with its practice?
altered states of consciousness...
If by that you are referring to me leaving my body or otherwise "going someplace" during the practice, I would have to say that I have had the difficult to describe/comprehend "white light moment" during a White Tantric course. It was extraordinary and the kind of thing that one might wish to get lost in if not careful. But as with all things altered, it was temporal and not to be grasped. I don't know if I will ever experience it again, but the understanding that grew from that experience will be with me forever.
What has been even more affecting is the keen awareness I have developed for recognizing how my subconscious fears and programming affect my daily thoughts, actions and urgings. I feel this most acutely in my relationship with my husband and children although it is pervasive across all of my relationships and encounters. I am often shocked to come nose to nose with the real motivation behind a thing that I might say or do to them - maybe a thing I have said or done a million times - and how suddenly the real impulse behind such actions or words (often deeply rooted in a childhood experience) will make a subtle presentation in my conscious awareness.
The practice of yoga and meditation has helped me to cultivate the kind of stillness required to "hear" these truths. While the discipline cultivated on the mat and cushion can be brought to the task of changing old behaviors and thought patterns.
All of these things and so many more are the reasons I have continued to practice and why, I believe, I responded to the call to teach. With everything that continues to trip us up as a collective consciousness, it is important that we not continue to get lost in surface causes or grasp at surface remedies. Individuals being able to get still enough and quiet enough to hear from the center of ourselves, and having enough practice at trusting our own bodies, minds and spirits, we can access how to connect with our highest self; that infinite within the finite, and change the world in which we live.
You have spoken very eloquently to a substantive alteration of consciousness right here;
I am often shocked to come nose to nose with the real motivation behind a thing that I might say or do to them - maybe a thing I have said or done a million times - and how suddenly the real impulse behind such actions or words (often deeply rooted in a childhood experience) will make a subtle presentation in my conscious awareness.
Real conscience. Nothing else durable can happen in the absence of this development.
That's very good - I was curious about what an extended course of "work" with ones moving and instinctive centre(s) might yield.
What if any guidance is given within the school of yoga with which you are affiliated, concerning psychological development?
Is it something that's explicitly addressed?
The technology of Kundalini Yoga does not deal with psychology except to say that spending to much time on the why's and wherefores, takes away from the very essential work of creating new habits and patterns to override that which is harmful and/or no longer useful.
I recall having a bit of a meltdown during a meditation and one of my Yogis said to me, "When your thoughts turn to you standing on that corner of that block in that old neighborhood, contemplating what it would have been like to go left instead of right and feeling the pain of the decision made and all of the attendant consequences, don't just stand there, don't just keep re-living it, just say ‘Whatever.’ He said this with a dismissive flip of the wrist. “Just keep it moving. Put it down.”
In that moment the idea of saying “Whatever” to the pain and loss (which was really only the memory of pain and loss) that for so long had subconsciously steered me into all kinds of unfavorable actions and emotions, and the very present opportunity to put it all aside and finally move on to something more productive, more expansive, was even more terrifying than continuing to char in the inferno that had been my experience up until that time.
He encouraged me while standing there to say it with him and to my surprise and horror I could not. I could not say “whatever,” I could not let it go. I was not ready. And so I think it is a key component of this practice which allows us to simply intercept that which plagues our subconscious and replace it with thoughts and actions that move us in total to a higher frequency. Playing and chanting the mantras works wonders for subconscious clearing, especially when they are in a different language. The mind can not grab a hold of the language as easily and make associations that will knock you off the horse.
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