Kundalini Yoga Healing

After 19 years of teaching Kundalini Yoga without taking any breaks, I reluctantly decided to take a few weeks off. By letting go of my regular Thursday night class, and taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic, I had the blessed space that I needed to go deeper inwards and contemplate.

I took time to process Yogi Bhajan’s allegations of sexual, physical, emotional and mental abuse, the book “Premka, White Bird in a Golden Cage”, and the chaos that had been stirred up in the kundalini yoga community.  Going deeper, I realized that my heart was still broken, for I had lost trust and certainty in one of my core teachers, Yogiji.

How could I teach my beloved Kundalini Yoga if these allegations were true?

I mourned, painted in my backyard, and I let my heart crack open. 

There was a painting of Yogi Bhajan hanging in my hallway and about two months ago it fell down with a thundering crash as my stepdaughter and I were sitting on the couch, talking about the book Premka. We both jumped off the couch and looked at each other shocked and wide eyed. “I need to paint over it”: I thought to myself as my stepdaughter turned to me. “You should paint over it.” she said out loud. That was all the confirmation I needed.

It took two months and a coronavirus quarantine for me to muster up the courage to paint over Yogi Bhajan, but inspiration finally came. As strokes of black and blue covered his face I was filled with guilt and worry, fear and rage, devastation and regret, denial and exhaustion. My mind was saying: “ This is blasphemy, you should be ashamed of yourself. How could you paint over a guru?” It was excruciating. And no matter what I did, painting was turning out dark and morbid. I worked on it for almost two weeks and couldn’t find any hope or joy in it. It kept me up at nights and tortured me in my dreams. One morning I sobbed in despair as I sat on the corner of my yoga mat. I saw the dark and heavy energy moving through me and finally gave up and surrendered, deciding to let it be a dark and heavy painting, maybe even turn it into something like “The Scream” by Edward Munch. I let go of trying to make it beautiful and magical like the rest of my paintings.

And that’s when she began to emerge. A graceful goddess, full of hope, power, longing and peace, standing on an ocean cliff, looking into a red sunset being swallowed up by clouds. She took me on a journey, helped me process my suffering and connected me to my loving compassionate heart. As I painted I healed.

As I healed, a Divine Light began shining through the cracks of my heart and I remembered:

I remembered that Kundalini Yoga, As Taught By Yogi Bhajan, was the first yoga class I ever took, and my dearest friend and soul sister, Wahe Guru Kaur, was the teacher.  Before this class, I dreamt about Kundalini Yoga for months. But, I didn’t know what it was, I thought it was some sort of martial arts. I had never heard of it, so I had to search, and when I finally found it, it felt like I had come home. As I moved through the yoga postures in class, bits and pieces of my dreams were flashing in my third eye. At the end of class I laid in corpse pose, and Wahe Guru played the angelic music of Snatam Kaur’s “Ra Ma Da Sa”, which melted my heart.  I marveled at the familiarity of the experience as tears flowed down my cheeks making puddles on the yoga mat.  I signed up for teacher training immediately and started teaching Kundalini Yoga in less than eight months.

I remembered that I have loved Kundalini Yoga for many lifetimes. I remembered the wisdom and power of the incredible technology that has been around for thousands of years, passed from teacher to student, secretly.  I remembered that Kundalini is the power associated with the Divine Feminine, the Great Shakti, the life force that flows through all things.  Precious memories flowed back into my heart and melted the shock that had frozen it.

My heart started to soften with gratefulness for Yogi Bhajan who brought his version of Kundalini Yoga to the West. It was him who made this incredible technology, that I deeply resonate with, accessible to me.  I have also done OSHO’s version of Kundalini Yoga and Kundalini Yoga as taught by Siberian Shamans, but Yogi Bhajan’s version was always my favorite.

Kundalini Yoga saved me from bad habits, helped me heal my life and create a peaceful and balanced lifestyle. I have done my own personal version of Kundalini Yoga mixed with yin, hatha, dance, meditation and Qi Gong every single morning for over 15 years now.

My morning practice is my anchor, my reset button, my release and my connection to the Great Source. I will not give up my beloved morning practice or teaching Kundalini Yoga just because the messenger who brought it into my life had flaws.  He was human and all of us humans have flaws. We are all tormented by our self developed masks and fears.

I know amazing people who became teachers of Kundalini Yoga and helped many people heal and transform their lives for the better. Yet, too many of us have been blinded by unconscious power struggles, masks of coping, surviving, saving face and trying to do the “right” thing. The Aquarian Age is the age of awareness, and we are all continuing to become more aware. There is still lots of layers of illusion to burn through to become aware of REAL TRUTHS!

Maybe becoming aware is a never-ending process in this physical materiality?

As I let go of the constraints of the Kundalini Yoga dogma, I can see that the allegations of Yogi Bhajan have actually freed me.  Now that the kingdom built by Yogi Bhajan and his followers is shaken up, it’s time to let the old ways die, so that the new can be born. I now feel more free as a yoga teacher to expand, to become more of myself, who I have come to this world to be. I pray that all of us who have suffered because of Yogi Bhajan find healing and peace.

Now, I feel deep love, compassion and honor for Yogi Bhajan, his immense spirituality, humility and humanity.  In this world of dualities, a great spirit is balanced by a great ego, and egos are not easy to tame.

Through deep reflection and healing, I have come to allow myself to love Kundalini Yoga, to allow myself to choose what works for me and let go of what doesn’t.  For the messenger, I choose compassion and love, and I appreciate his final lesson: Do not get attached to the messenger.

My new class on Saturdays is one of the ways I choose to expand as a teacher and breaker of chains.  Through this class I plan to integrate my Yin Yoga Certification, my Shamanic Practitioner and Healer Certifications, my Radiant Heart Meditation Certification, my love for dancing and chanting with my beloved Kundalini Yoga.

I release all the ways that I had bound myself!

I choose FREEDOM!

Rester by emailing me at BeatrisHeals@gmail.com

Here is your zoom link to join the Movement & Meditation class: https://zoom.us/j/3260619039?pwd=SjdYQ1lsY25va0U4bWhCTEFZd0pQQT09 Meeting ID: 326 061 9039 Password: 454793