If you're wondering if we'll be open for business as usual tomorrow,
January 28th, just check the news! If AISD is open, we will be too! You
can always check online to make sure your class is on: just go our website and check any of the schedules on the left-hand side of the screen!
North of San Antonio and South of Boerne on Interstate 10 is a beautiful
Hill Country community with its own Kundalini Yoga Studio--Fair Oaks Ranch Yoga!
Penny Scrutchin (Patwant Kaur) began studying yoga in 1970 and became a
certified Kundalini Yoga Teacher in 2001. Her beautiful home-based studio
offers Kundalini classes on Mondays from 6:30 to 8pm and Hatha classes on
Wednesdays.
When you visit her studio, you may be lucky enough to be greeted by Einstein
the Yoga Dog, who also loves to hear the Gong played!
You may have seen Penny at Yoga Yoga on the weekends where she is pursuing
her Kundalini Yoga Level 2 500-Hour certification.
If you are making the trip to San Antonio, or have friends in that area who
are looking for a Kundalini class in beautiful and personable location, give
Penny (Patwant) a visit.
Contact information: 830-755-4500 or 210-241-4064 or email
penny@scutchin.com/yoga.
Here's another post from Kundalini Teacher Training student, Amarpeet Singh. If you're thinking about heading to Winter Solstice, read on to get excited! You may even be inspired to join us for morning sadhana at Westgate--4am on Friday, Saturday and Sunday--or at North on Friday at 4:30am !
I hope that everyone is blessed with the opportunity to experience Summer Solstice in the mountains of New Mexico outside of Espanola and Santa Fe. I went to Summer Solstice in June, 2008 after having only practiced Kundalini Yoga at Yoga Yoga for two months, so I was frightened that I wouldn't fit in--that it would be a lonely 10 days with no contact with no one and nothing familiar--but from the moment I boarded the passenger van from the airport in Albuquerque to take a group of us up the mountain, the 15 of us--mostly strangers--got along very well. We were people who might not normally mix--all shapes, sizes, ages, colors, genders, and socio-economic backgrounds who came together for a common purpose.
It's called the "Summer Solstice Sadhana Celebration" for a reason: at the center of the experience is sadhana every morning from 4-6:30am. I stumbled out of the van behind one of my new friends to set up my tent, and quickly realize that the location we chose was about 25 yards from the main shelter where sadhana takes place every morning. I knew a little bit about sadhana already: that it is recommended that you do it early in the morning when the world around you still sleeps; that there is a yoga set/kriya; that Japji is read; and that you chant the Aquarian Mantras...but that was it.
It really is difficult to describe sadhana on Ram Das Puri, except that there were a BUNCH of us, and we encouraged each other with our energy because there's always strength in numbers. The living energy and enthusiasm of devoted yogis/yoginis plays a vital role in transmuting any discomfort about waking up early, crawling out of a warm sleeping bag, and setting up a stiff body on a concrete floor with small amounts of cloth or sheepskin underneath you. Spirits flow together like osmosis in such an environment. Just do the kriya and you will be rewarded--it's not a large amount of time, and there is so much benefit beyond the physical experience. Listen to the mantras afterward or chant along with the LIVE kirtan during sadhana at Solstice. Some folks simply drag their sleeping bags down to the shelter and sleep through the entire experience because it is well known that you will benefit from the energy regardless of whether you actively participate or not. I confess that there were very few mornings that I actually went down to the shelter for sadhana; however, I was so close to the shelter that every morning I drifted in and out of sleep to the sweet sounds of sadhana wafting up through my tent--I still miss it so much that I can't wait to go back and actually get up and go every morning next time.
Until next the time I'm at Ram Das Puri, though, I'm committed to my daily sadhana. Inspired by what I experienced every morning up on the mountain, I awaken (not as early as I would like yet!) to the sounds that I heard up on the mountain with the hope of reproducing that experience. I long for the experience of doing sadhana with a group--the larger the better--but Yogi Bhajan suggests imagining a million people surrounding us when we are alone doing our sadhana, and we can be certain that there are millions of people with us around the world. There's an ever-growing popluation of people awakening in consciousness and sharing our experience together as we strive to make the world a better place, one moment at a time...
Here's a post from another Kundalini Teacher Training student, Bahadurjot (Chris Roy). Enjoy!
It is said that in the Aquarian Age there are no secrets. Yes, you're welcome to read that again. Please feel free to take a moment, brew some tea, grab your sheepskin and meditate on it, as I assure you I did the first time I heard it. Now, in truth, I am slightly (way) too pragmatic to buy right into that idea. Here's what happens in my brain: "sure, that makes sense...however, there are those exceptions to the rule that I might call my sacred secrets". You know--those things that we think, do, or say only to the select few. Because, let's face it, we all have a handful of sacred secrets. While the idea of no secrets is hard for me to wrap my mind around, it's certainly not just something I said--it came from the man himself, Yogi Bhajan. And I'm learning just how true it is.
Allow me to paint a picture. I enrolled in the Kundalini Teacher Training with the full knowledge that there would be those amazing blissed out moments, but I was also well aware there would be those moments that (as one of my fellow trainees so eloquently shared) will feel like a cold shower. Well, this past Sunday was one of those (cold shower) moments. It's safe to say that Kundalini Yoga is not always passive--it can stir things up--and that's really the reason we do it. For me, a few things got tossed and turned during the course of a six hour training on Saturday and come Sunday I was still processing a bit (a lot). Now, as I was driving to Sunday's training there was an overriding thought in my head: "I am really not sure I can speak to anyone right now." I honestly think one of the mantras flipped my insecure high school switch and it was taking control of the wheel: "I'm not feeling very social. The beginning of class is so social... blah, blah...
When I arrived at class at 11:55, I snuck in and found myself a space that happened to be right in the middle of the room. I'm pretty sure I also opened my book to appear to be deep in a very important (please don't interrupt me) meditative state of study, although I did not retain a word on the page I had open. Rather, my senses were a completely drowned out by that record playing in my brain about needing a moment (day) alone just by myself to adjust to this new internal scenery.
And so it went until my happy place finally arrived--tune in! Yes, I am home free! ONG, NAMO...GURU DEV...and it wasn't until somewhere between the third chant of Namo and Guru Dev that the sober realization set in...I am alone. And I really mean...alone! Imagine a class of 60-70 students with me sitting dead center in the completely full room with not a person to the right or left of me. How can that be? Coincidence? Do I...no, I have my new organic hemp oil deodorant on!
Once I got past the feeling of being the new kid in school during lunch hour, I had the epiphany: thoughts are things, Kundalini is a powerful practice and (whoa) there are no secrets. Wa-hey-guru! My fellow trainees were simply honoring my psychically vibrational request. Acknowledging the humor and the good dose of transparency in the situation, I gently flipped my insecure high school switch back off and tuned into the beauty of the class. And at that moment, like a butterfly, Sophia quietly entered the room and set her mat down in the spot right next to me.
We've asked some of our current Kundalini Teacher Trainees to share with us their experiences as they undergo this immense process of learning and transformation. We hope that reading their stories will help inspire you in your own practice, whatever that may be! Here's an article from one of our guest authors, Amarpeet Singh:
The first 20 adult years of my existence was spent numbing out the seemingly meaninglessness of my every experience. Nothing was fulfilling for any period of time, and it never seemed like I got what I wanted; in fact, even if I got what I wished for I was quick to realize that it didn't fill the void, the loneliness, and the periodic despair. Thank God for moments of desperation because during a time of crisis I developed a willingness to take action and seek change in my life.
Out of a necessity to have some serenity in my daily life, I began a spiritual journey that led me into a morning meditation practice. Having never sat still for more than a few seconds in the previous 37 years of my life--including restless periods of sleep in which I often awoke feeling more tired than when I went to bed--I was forced to incorporate what I later learned in yoga class was considered "long deep breathing." Ahhh what a blessing it was to finally sit still in the quiet (without getting bored!) for 5 minutes, then 10 and 15 minutes. I began to realize that I wouldn't dare leave the house or do much of anything outside of waking up without first "tuning up/tuning in" with my morning meditation.
After a few months I began to crave something more to go along with my morning meditation, and I was advised to try Kundalini Yoga. It was a bit surprising at first how quickly I could transmute my irritating mind chatter and work through some of my feelings of angry self-pity during yoga class. Kundalini Yoga is the yoga of awareness, and I began to delve into the deep recesses of my personality to find that my feelings of helplessness and irritability were nothing more than extreme forms of selfishness--that I was somehow blocking myself off from the Light of my Spirit. I had begun to become determined to rid myself of this selfishness, if only a little bit at a time...
This became my intention during morning meditation. I was soon to know more than just increasing serenity, but also a feeling of usefulness in all aspects of my life and in my community. The realization for me was that unless I incorporate a daily discipline into my life once and for all, I would soon regress back into old patterns of bad thinking and selfish behavior. So I sought out more of the Kundalini Yoga teachers and people on similar spiritual paths that seemed to have the inspiration that I wanted. My attempt to learn more about how I could fine tune my daily personal practice led me to learning about classical sadhana approaches...
More to follow on the experience of Sadhana!
There's a feeling of hope in the air this week in Austin, and we were excited to see another kind of hope being offered to prisoners in this Mexican prison. Prisoners are given the opportunity to practice Kundalini Yoga with the hopes that they will not just serve their sentence and leave unchanged but will be able to emerge with a new sense of understanding about themselves and the world.
In light of the opening of our new yoga wellness spa, Mehtab offered these tips from Yogi Bhajan for becoming fully present and fully neutral before turning your attention to healing another person:
"Whenever you work on someone it is essential to prepare yourself first-
before your first touch. You need to be neutral, fully present and clear of
past imprints from other clients and from emotional bias in your self. Your
body is influenced immediately by its environment. It is not separated from
it at all. It can hold the memory of a state of energy indefinitely. Your
own conscious and unconscious attachments lock different parts of your
experience into the body. So it is necessary to have a habit to clear and
neutralize the body when you use it as an instrument for healing and
transformation of your self or others."
If you give massage treatments, energy work, or use your hands in other
healing modalities, you can use this simple Kundalini Yoga sequence
demonstrated by Yogi Bhajan in 1986 to help clear away residual energy from
previous clients.
This sequence is especially useful to clear out energy patterns you got into
while treating the previous client. It neutralizes the meridian energies. It
focuses energy through the hands and finger tips so you are immediately
ready to sense the next person.
1. Circular Spider Push-Ups: put the finger tips and thumb tips of opposite
hands together. Begin to trace out a slow intentional circle in front of the
chest. Go up and outward as the palms push together. Continue downward and
back toward the chest as the finer tips press hard and the palms separate.
It looks like a spider doing push-ups on a mirror. Repeat 5 to 11 times.
2. Grasp one hand with the other firmly: fingers crossed over the palm,
thumbs crossed behind opposite hand, all fingers of the same hand are
together, not interlaced. Squeeze this lock tightly for 1-2 seconds. Then
reverse hand positions and squeeze again. Repeat this switch and squeeze 2
to 5 times.
3. Press the hands together as you did in exercise #1. Keep the palms
separated. Push the finger tips together with a steady, strong pressure
15-20 lbs for 2 to 5 seconds. Relax the hands. Shake them and you are ready
to begin.
"Kundalini is the creative potential of the human being." -Yogi Bhajan
Yogi Bhajan, master of Kundalini yoga, first described Kundalini energy in
an early lecture he gave in the United States in the early 1970s:
“What is Kundalini actually? You experience it when the energy of the
glandular system combines with the nervous system to create such a
sensitivity that the brain in its totality receives signals and integrates
them. Normally you use a small portion of the brain’s potential. A new
clarity accompanies your perception, thought, and intuition. When Kundalini
awakens, a person understands the effect and impact of an action at the
beginning of a sequence of action and reaction. He has the choice to take
an action or not to take an action. In other words, a person becomes
totally and wholly aware. That is why it is called "the yoga of awareness."
And in 1984, Yogi Bhajan had this to say about the nature of Kundalini
energy:
"The Kundalini Energy is awareness itself. It organizes all the other
energies in the body. If its flow is open and correct, healing results occur
with almost miraculous impact. Our fears and attachments often disturb the
normal flow of energy and functioning of the first three chakras. When that
flow is opened and reconnected to the higher centers, the nervous system,
glands and chakras all synchronize. A deep rejuvenation cascades throughout
the body."
He's always been a star to us, but now Mehtab's on tv! Watch his guest spot on My Fox Austin to see him talk about the healing benefits of gong yoga and then play for just a minute. He explains that the sound of the gong is so intense and complex that it's hard for the mind to wrap itself around it, and therefore the sound naturally stills and quiets the mind. He evens gives the newscaster a surprise when he plays the gong a little louder than she had experienced it in her prenatal class! Go check it out!
Anyone who practices Kundalini at the North studio knows Harimandir: you can often find her surrounded by doting children or whooping it up to Bhangara music in her classroom! For those of you who don't know her or who want to know more about her, here's an interview with her and Lori, our Teacher Coordinator:
Lori: Tell me about your first yoga experience. Harimandir: I was first exposed to yoga by Shakta Kaur Khalsa. My first experience was in 1979 with a teacher named Bakir. I was hooked, years passed, I practiced Bikram Yoga, Ashtanga Yoga and came down to Yoga Yoga North right after it opened. It was close to my house and I stated taking classes from Julie. (Julie Carrion was a former teacher and Yoga Yoga North Center Manager.) Shakta Kaur came to Yoga Yoga and taught the Radiant Child program, a children's yoga teacher training course. I thought it would be great for my son Sky, who was about 4 at the time, and so I took the course. Julie said and it happened right after the end of the course "You know, we need someone to teach Children's classes here." And I said "OK." You taught children yoga before you taught adults? Yes, I started a children's yoga program where my son went to school. Shakta Kaur taught a course for Yoga teachers on how to teach the Radiant Child program. The requirement was that you had to be a certified Kundalini Yoga Teacher, so again I said "OK." I could not do both trainings at the same time so I enrolled in Yoga Yoga's Kundalini Teacher Training course, and that was it. So you enrolled in Kundalini Teacher Training without ever taking a Kundalini class? One, maybe two. I just said OK, what do I do? I told Guru Karam that I wanted to take the training and her response was "Hop on board!" she said "Are you ready for the ride of your life?" and I just agreed and that was it. It was the most amazing experience I have ever had in my life, right up there with the birth of my child. I used to hate the sound of the gong, but during the first weekend retreat, I had the experience of all fear and all resistance being removed. I now feel like I am part of the sound current. I remember trying to explain the incredible healing experience I was having, but everyone just looked at me and smiled. Now I love it. |
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How has Kundalini Yoga affected your life and the lives of your students? You could be like me and jump in feet first without knowing anything about anything. I saw a guy outside of Mehtab's class and I got to talking to him. He was talking about MAYBE wanting to go. I encouraged him to just try it. I have seen people change. I have seen their energy and their health change. My health has changed. I have seen their physical body change. I have seen people heal. I have seen their spirits uplifted. Just come. You will have an experience all your own. Relax and have fun doing it. It has moved so many things through me. Things move through me without me even realizing it. People come into my life through the practice of yoga, in all different areas of my life. I am coming up on 5 years sober. I teach a workshop called "Kundalini Yoga for Healing Addictions." People come to that workshop, it helps them move through and process their addictions. People come from all different angles for healing. Kundalini Yoga helped me to get sober and stay sober. Not just that, it is from 12 step work as well, but it amazing how similar they are. I was a year sober when I began practicing yoga. You are Yoga Yoga's first children's yoga teacher, so you are the most qualified to answer this question. Why should parents bring their children to yoga class? Parents should bring their kids to yoga because they need a break! Right now in the world, we are in such a high vibrational frequency, there is so much information, so much technology, yoga gives children a sense of who they are. And it is fun. They get to have fun and act silly and be who they are. Children often do not get that in school. They get ownership of themselves. I am eternally grateful to Mehtab, Guru Karam and to you for giving me the opportunity to be a part of something I really believe in. I am grateful to Yogi Bhajan for the teachings .and I will always be grateful to Julie. |
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