Kundalini Yoga & Meditation
Kundalini Yoga is called the Yoga of Awareness. It is a dynamic, powerful tool that is designed to give you an experience of your soul.
Kundalini Yoga precisely and consciously combines breath, mudra, eye-focus, mantra, body locks, and postures to balance the glandular system, strengthen the nervous system, expand lung capacity, and purify the blood. It brings balance to the body, mind, and soul.
“In Kundalini Yoga the most important thing is your experience. It goes right to your heart. No words can replace your experience. Your mind may accept the words or it may not, but your consciousness will not accept just words.”
–Yogi Bhajan, The Aquarian Teacher Training manual, p. 20
When we apply the technology of Kundalini Yoga to our bodies and minds, it has the effect of uplifting the spirit. It is for everyone. It is universal and nondenominational. Kundalini Yoga is not a religion.
Kundalini Yoga is a yoga for householders, for people who have to cope with the daily challenges and stresses of holding jobs, raising families, and managing businesses. It is a path for everyone who wants the skills to cope successfully with the challenges of our times.
Kundalini Yoga was kept secret until 1969 when Yogi Bhajan taught it openly in order to prepare humanity for the major changes that this planet is going through as we cross from the Piscean to the Aquarian Age. The ancient technology of Kundalini Yoga gives us the awareness and the fortitude to make this a smooth transition. The legacy of technical and spiritual knowledge that Yogi Bhajan studied and mastered in India is the gift he brought to the West.
“The kundalini experience does not mean you have gone into a deep breathless trance and are beyond this world. … It integrates you more fully with reality and gives you a broader vision and sensitivity so that you can act more efficiently.”
~Yogi Bhajan, from Kundalini Yoga: The Flow of Eternal Power, back cover
Meditation in Kundalini Yoga contains specific, practical tools that carefully and precisely support the mind and guide the body through the use of breath, mantra, mudra, and focus. The range and variety of meditation techniques in the Kundalini Yoga tradition is truly extraordinary. Yogi Bhajan passed on hundreds of meditations tailored to specific applications. There are meditations that reduce stress, work on addictions, increase vitality, and clear chakras, to name a few. While there exist many, many styles and approaches to meditation, what sets this approach to meditation apart is its precision, effectiveness, and practicality.
“Meditation is a process…At any time which is peaceful (the best is the early morning time, before the dawn), you’ll be surprised that in a couple of minutes a lot of thoughts will start coming to you—the X-rated thoughts, the ugly, angry thoughts. If you let those thoughts pass by, this is meditation. All those thoughts that can pass at that moment of your life can never enter your subconscious mind, and they will not bother you again. This procedure of cleansing the mind is called meditation…It takes about three minutes to get those kinds of thoughts. And sometimes they continue to bug you for about half an hour. But, if you physically don’t move, the mind becomes still. That is the foundation, or the beginning of the meditative mind. Once your mind starts becoming still and not having any thoughts, you will feel cozy, and that coziness cannot be described even by me. All I can tell you is that it is very comfortable, it is very cozy, and you will want to do it again and again. But in the beginning you cannot do it for a long time. Gradually, as you develop that coziness, this thought-hitting process becomes shorter and shorter.”
~Yogi Bhajan, 2/21/78
Meditation can frequently be blissful or very cozy as the meditative mind establishes a place of elevated consciousness. Sometimes meditation can be downright miserable. Meditation is a cleansing process. You may find yourself observing some very unpleasant, ugly thoughts while you’re meditating. The important thing is, keep up! The mantras and meditations are doing their job. You’re cleaning out and getting rid of negativity that has been covering up the divine light inside you.