If you were exploring the Yoga universe and got surprised by this Kundalini Yoga thing you know nothing about, don’t worry! You’ve come to the right place.
Let us introduce you to this amazing way of life. But be prepared, once you get to know it, odds are you won’t be the same person ever again.
What is Kundalini Yoga?
Kundalini Yoga’s main goal is to create physical vitality and generate more consciousness about ourselves, our bodies, our feelings and what surrounds us.
For that to happen, there must be a deep and meaningful inner change. Kundalini Yoga presents a whole new life perspective. A brand new way to understand the purpose of life.
As the name suggests, Kundalini Yoga leverages the Kundalini energy, a powerful form of energy located at the base of the spine. It usually stays in a dormant state but it can be awakened, leading to an expanded state of consciousness.
When our energetic centres – the chakras – become obstructed, the energy cannot flow freely. Practising Kundalini Yoga helps to remove blockages from the chakras, thus opening the pathways to higher frequencies of life.
To achieve it, it focuses on a mix of movement, dynamic breathing techniques, meditation and singing mantras. The most common one is “Sat Nam”, which means “truth is my identity”.
This ancient Yoga practice strongly believes that each person is powerful enough to get over unhealthy habits if they set their mind and their energy to do it.
Of course, it does not happen overnight. This type of Yoga becomes a lifestyle that gets perfectionated as long as it’s practiced on a daily basis.
When did Kundalini Yoga start?
Yogi Bhajan was the first person to bring Kundalini Yoga from India to the United States and the west, and he became a great teacher.
His interest in helping people to recover from addictions and break unhealthy habits motivated him to create a rehab and ashram center in Arizona.
This means that it was not only a place for taking primary care of those who needed it but also provided spiritual practices for Yoga and meditation.
Science has proved that the more you do an activity that makes you feel good – even though it’s a negative one or carries bad consequences – the less neural activity it takes you each time to start it.
For example, this means that if you get addicted to drugs, eventually your brain goes a little bit on autopilot and stops thinking whether you should do it or not.
That’s exactly what Yogi Bhajan meant to stop from happening, and that’s why he knew that Yoga Kundalini was the way to make people rethink their acts and be fully aware of them.
If you succeed, you will experience feelings of balance and harmony, thanks to your endocrine system response.
Benefits of Kundalini Yoga
Can you remember the last time you did something just for the sake of doing it? Or the last time you truly enjoyed a simple thing like your morning coffee, cooking or working out?
How many times did you take a shower thinking about getting dressed as fast as you could just to run somewhere else? Whatever you are doing, Kundalini Yoga proposes you should do it with all your heart.
After practising Yoga for a while it suddenly becomes part of you. Likely, you will decide to integrate it into a healthy lifestyle. Once you become familiar enough with this practice, you might even take the leap and go for a Yoga Teacher Training.
Nowadays we all live in a vertiginous rhythm where efficiency and productivity are all that matters. While sometimes that way of living is useful to our purpose, many times it can turn into a real horror movie.
We get our daily schedule filled with work duties and choose to spend our spare time by eating tons of sugar food, buying clothes, checking the Instagram account of friends we barely even know and hanging out with people that don’t let us shine.
As hard as it can be to admit it, most of those activities are just a way to distract our souls and minds from what’s really going on. Maybe stress, maybe pain, maybe sadness?
Avoiding and not connecting with those feelings will make you hang on to them even more. Instead of that, practicing Kundalini Yoga will get you closer to achieving self-awareness, self-control and self-realization.
Eventually, a regular practice of Kundalini Yoga might bring about the awakening of the Kundalini energy, a higher state of consciousness that can set you free from suffering and connect you to the divine essence of life.
How to practise Kundalini Yoga?
Kundalini Yoga requires you to get the physical and mental strength to repeat certain actions in your mind. For that, you will need to go through asana (poses), pranayama (breathing), mudra (gestures), mantra and deep relaxation.
Examples of those actions are doing Breath of Fire while holding Half Boat Pose or Ardha Navasana for up to three minutes.
Each movement challenges you and your nervous system not to give up. This same discipline is needed to gain awareness and power to avoid falling back into bad habits.
Samma Karuna offers regular classes of Kundalini Yoga as part of our Awakening and Healing program. Our experienced teachers will guide you to discover this life-changing practice.
Conclusions
Kundalini Yoga is a very comprehensive and life-changing Yoga style. Besides all the physical, mental and spiritual benefits of a Yoga practice, it stimulates the awakening of the powerful Kundalini energy.
Practising it regularly will bring about calmness of mind, discipline and awareness. When you dedicate to it you will soon find our it becomes a new, empowering way to approach life and pursue harmony.
Check out our calendar and find our when our next Kundalini Yoga class is!
