Regulate Your Nervous System With Kundalini Yoga

I talk to Prakashjot Kaur about Kundalini Yoga. This modality took me by surprise when I first tried it, in particular, the all encompassing approach to health and wellbeing. This is a practice that allows the mind and body to talk to each other using kriyas (asanas or postures) mudras (hand poses) pranayama (breathing techniques) and mudras (hand poses) along with meditations. This really is a joined-up system for life. Tune in and find out more and try Prakashjot's breath of fire exercise.

Transcript

Welcome to Finding Your Right Mind with me,

Vanessa Potter.

This is episode three in my self-care series.

When I first started my meditation road trip back in 2016,

I had never heard of Kundalini yoga,

Let alone the mysterious and elusive Kundalini awakening.

It immediately made me curious to find out more about this mind and body practice.

Don't be deceived by the yoga name.

The practice is a set of breathing exercises,

Its postures called Kriyas,

Meditation and hand poses that can have a really beneficial impact upon your nervous system.

Today I get into the nitty-gritty of Kundalini yoga with London-based teacher,

Prakan Joshkor.

We talk about the positive,

Negative and neutral mind and what those are,

And you'll learn how to do the amazingly beneficial breath of fire.

There's a lot to unpack,

So if you're interested in Kundalini yoga as a modality,

As a means to help yourself,

This is for you.

As usual,

If you like what you hear,

Hit subscribe and leave me a review.

Share the love.

Hi,

Prakan Joshkor.

It's so lovely to have you here today and to see you.

You're my first video recording,

So that's very exciting.

Maybe for those that don't know you,

You could explain how you came to Kundalini yoga and to teach it,

And just a little bit about who you are and yourself.

So now,

My spiritual name,

Like I said,

Is Prakash Joshkor and I am a Kundalini yoga teacher.

I have been a Kundalini yoga teacher since 2012.

Prior to that,

I practiced a different style called Ashtanga.

It was just my own personal practice,

Which I came across when I was a teenager and integrated that into my life.

Then I decided to teach it to my friends,

Because I thought,

Like,

Why not share the beauty with others?

Then I wanted to become an Ashtanga yoga teacher,

But that wasn't possible for me.

I stumbled upon Kundalini yoga quite early,

In a sense,

Prior to my training without even realizing what it was.

So it was really showing itself in my life,

Like here I am,

Take me.

And then I stumbled across Keri Howell and Kundalini yoga meditation with her.

And that's when I first came across a powerful technique of breathing called Breath of Fire and Ocean Breath.

And just doing that meditation from audio practice with Keri Howell's program,

That completely changed my life.

Everything that was in excess,

Chipped away,

Might have looked from the external point of view that it was a disaster,

But really I found myself in a neutral space,

Like a core of the hurricane.

And then when all that didn't serve me chipped away,

Gave me this space to expand and gradually quite quickly,

Because within probably 12 months,

Through the ongoing process of unfolding and dissolving,

All the things that didn't serve me,

Not saying they were bad,

They were just there.

I started my training as a Kundalini yoga teacher and here I am,

Practice that completely changed my life,

Really made me centred and by nature I'm a very positive person,

But at the time I was quite shaken by all the events in my life.

Starting a new job somewhere in London,

Loving the travelling,

Loving the space where I was working at Bond Street,

But then again still feeling this is quite not what it is,

How can I live my life like this,

It's just my own and I remember feeling incredibly self-confident,

Not confident,

Self-conscious,

Quite the opposite.

And when I started to practice Kundalini yoga,

That's when I started to shift and stand in my satnam,

In my truth,

In my namaste,

Unapologetically but humbly being me.

And practice is pretty regular and the more regular it is the better it is,

But even if you don't practice regularly,

If you come across any issues,

The answer to your problems,

Whatever they are,

Emotional,

Physical,

Mental,

Is to me,

Kundalini yoga is the answer.

So thank you.

I think a good thing to explain is what exactly is Kundalini yoga?

Because it's different from what I would call high street yogas,

It stands out quite a lot,

It's a lot more physical.

Perhaps you can just take us through exactly what Kundalini yoga actually is.

Every significant style like Ashtanga,

Vinyasa,

Plohatha yoga and so on,

Integrated in Kundalini yoga,

That's why you very often come across the phrase that Kundalini yoga is the mother of all yogas.

The styles that I have just mentioned,

I wouldn't exactly call them high street styles because they require a lot of commitment,

Just like Kundalini yoga,

They just work more on the external,

Where the Kundalini yoga is very spiritual,

Although non-religious,

Even though Yogi Bhajan brought it to the West and applied a lot of Sikhism and so on,

The mantras and the philosophy,

Etc.

It still isn't a religion.

I personally don't perceive God as a religion,

But it's everybody's personal attitude.

However,

The Kundalini yoga really allows you to get in touch with your inner self,

With your spirit and allows you to be centered and non-judgmental and non-reactive and being accepting of your own self and the rest of the world.

And as we know,

We can't change the world,

We can change our perspective about the world.

And what is the world if it's not what we perceive and what we create and so on.

So the inner self,

The expansion of that,

Creates this beautiful side effect,

Which is your prosperous,

Peaceful and happy life and beautiful body,

Most likely,

If that's your goal.

Because there are lots of physical kriyas as well.

And it's worth again explaining what a kriya is.

Those are what the pose is and these are,

There's many,

Many,

Many different types of kriya,

Aren't there?

So kriyas,

In other words,

Of different styles of yoga are just asanas.

So these are different poses,

Exercises.

Kriya can be an active set of exercises,

But sometimes even meditations can be kriyas because in Kundalini yoga,

We do a lot of active meditations,

Which can be quite strange if you like to say on the body,

But they will really bring you into the core and into the essence of what you are and what is your relationship with the breath and your physical body,

Inner self,

All that connection.

And yogi bhajan,

Now he was an interesting character,

Wasn't he?

In fact,

I was reading about him before and he was brought up,

He went to school in an all-girls school,

Which is quite extraordinary,

But he became very accomplished at yoga and spiritual practice by the age of 16.

And I think he's quite a fascinating guy that he decided he wanted to bring all of this range of practices over to America,

Wasn't it,

Initially?

And he came over in the 60s and found this disenfranchised,

Negative youth culture that needed to connect to themselves.

And I believe that his practices,

Which you said already have a lot of Sikhism and lots of different influences,

Were very well received and spread and his centers opened up very quickly around the states.

So yogi bhajan was a fascinating character,

Wasn't he?

He was a fascinating character,

Just like any other teacher.

It takes a lot of courage to take such an amazing practice to the broader audience,

Especially somewhere foreign to him,

Like the West was.

So everybody has got their own story and interpretation of their own story.

He initially guided to both Canada from what I know and then the journey to the United States,

Where he developed the practice,

Developed the school,

Created loads of different businesses,

Like an infrastructure for the practitioners and the people who were in the sangha,

Upon which they could build,

Live from and rely on.

Just in time,

Really,

The flower power culture had been experiencing the side effects from the hedonistic lifestyle.

He brought the Kundalini yoga and his own experience to the West,

Helped people,

Rightfully so,

To rebuild their nervous system that was damaged by drug and alcohol abuse,

Helped them to reconnect with themselves and the practice itself on its own has done itself justice and that's why people love it.

Kundalini rising when your nervous system is strong,

That's when it rises all the way to the Holy Grail,

To the crown chakra and beyond all the scents,

You are prepared for it and you can receive it in a healthy way.

Whereas when the nervous system is wrecked,

It can go either way and people end up being either mentally ill or really withdrawn and suffering all sorts of different side effects.

So this is one of the beautiful things about Kundalini yoga and the Kundalini energy being protected and looked after and our system as the nervous bodily system repaired and adjusted to channel the incredible force that is within us,

That we so successfully repress and very often when we are under a lot of pressure,

Women experience Kundalini rising during the natural birth because of all the pressure on the chakras,

The first and the second chakra and especially the first chakra,

The root chakra and we don't even realize that but then when we go back to it and we think about it,

The bliss that we feel,

That we can understand everything beyond what just happened,

The miracle of life,

Of birth and so on,

Right?

It's a very deep experience and not just about hormone changes that suddenly change because our state of the body changed.

It's so much more to it and we're not educated about that at all and I think we should be in order to understand that beautiful moment and the process that we go through,

Giving birth and then the two weeks or so on afterwards,

To understand the feeling of the baby blues,

To understand the postnatal depression and how to work with it,

Not necessarily by popping pills but through breathing and learning how to love yourself and cherish yourself as a mother now,

Not just a woman,

Not just as a person that you are and so on,

Yeah.

Gosh,

A lot there for me to pick up on.

I'm going to go back a little bit to what you said earlier about the nervous system.

Now this is something that comes up a lot within kundalini yoga practices that these kriyas,

These movements,

These postures and particularly the breathing as well,

Is really good at regulating and leveling and balancing the nervous system.

Perhaps you can just talk a little bit about how that works,

That interplay with the nervous system.

Breathing can work just on its own very easily,

Very quickly to empower and specifically target certain issues.

We can apply so-called mudras which are pressure points in our body,

Predominantly fingers but can be different parts of the body.

It's like acupuncture but it's acupressure without needles to stimulate the meridians in our brain and the nervous system.

The way in terms of nervous system,

So like I said,

The mudras and then the exercises as well which also help us with applying certain pressure onto certain parts of our body and understanding the blockages of energy in our body which prevent our nervous system and the rest of the bodily system from working properly.

So everything starts in the head,

In your mind and your mind we predominantly think it's our brain but it is also our heart and then we also believe that the brain is in our gut.

So it's all about the breathing and breathing beyond the diaphragm,

So breathing with your belly and going into long deep inhales and exhales in order to stop the aggressive behavior,

In order to stop the negative thinking,

The anger,

The anxiety.

So anybody who is like really really fit and has got really core,

Strong core muscles should also be very mindful about being able to relax those muscles and breathe beyond the diaphragm.

I'm not sure that answers the question but it kind of tends to pull me towards the three minds,

The 10 body system that Yogi Bhajan created which in a sense splits the body into 10 or more elements which equally correspond with our energy centers which are called chakras which can allow us particular set of exercises,

The kriyas can allow us to target the particular body but at the same time allows us to learn and realize that they all integrate and interlace each other anyway.

So just a very quick introduction,

So there are like 10 bodies but really more than 10.

So there is the soul body,

The self-awareness,

The human mind where we have the three minds,

The negative mind which is protective mind and critically the positive expansive mind which always thinks there is more,

The neutral mind which is not the positive mind but the negative and positive mind put together and be in good space so we don't have the inner conflict brings us to the neutral mind which takes the analytical and the creative,

Puts it together and then allows us to,

If it's very well trained,

Puts these two minds,

The negative and the positive in one place and allows you to see the whole picture and make the decisions very quickly,

The right decisions so when it's strong you can balance it quickly.

Then it's the physical body and the physical body is very important.

Under the physical body we also have the emotional body,

The so-called X factor.

After that we have the art life which is the light in the mind.

Art line for women goes from ear to ear loop and that also applies to men.

For women who have additional art line which is the,

I'd like to think of it as a mothering instinct from nipple to nipple and that's something that men don't have.

So art line is the driver in the vehicle of aura which is the energy around you so the more you practice of Kundalini yoga and strengthen the magnetic field,

The aura is stronger,

More expansive and therefore you affect situations around you at a greater distance.

And it's important to look after your aura,

Right?

And this is through your mind and also other actions that you do in your life,

If you smoke or drink alcohol,

Take drugs,

Piercing the aura,

But you can always build it back up and strengthen it and come back to your senses.

Then there's the pranic body,

The mechanism that regulates life-giving energy and that we reserve in our lungs,

In hair oxygen and with carbon oxide back on our exhale and our pranic body continuously connects our finite self with the universal soul.

And the ninth body is the subtle body,

The body that is the only body that survives after the rest of the body cease to function and carries the soul which was the first body over to different planes.

That's like a Sikhi body.

And then the radiant body is the light and the radiance and in body is the golden light in and around our aura that protects us and makes us super magnetic.

And then there's another body which is 11th,

Technically 12th when we think about the X factor body,

Continuous divine connection,

The activation and the awareness that we cultivate in our 10 bodies make it possible to access the 11th state of consciousness.

It's important to look after all of them and stay in that amazing continuous divine connection.

I'm always fascinated with the 10 bodies.

When we met,

When I was doing my experiment with the Cambridge neuroscientists and I approached you and said,

Look,

Would you teach me Kundalini yoga?

I'd like to do this with this headset on my head recording my brain activity.

And we talked about what elements of Kundalini yoga that we could work on and you suggested the 10 bodies and that's what we went through.

And it took us three months,

Didn't it?

And we did quite a quick sort of route through that.

I mean,

We did a Kriya each week,

But we worked our way through all of those 10 bodies week by week and I would practice in the week.

And they were so varied and I think the 10 bodies,

And that's only one element of Kundalini yoga,

It just gave me a snapshot of how vast and how wide-ranging this practice is.

I think the reason I said High Street yoga is having gone to quite a lot of classes in sports centres for exercise and people see it as quite similar to going to a gym and going and,

You know,

You go on the running machine,

You go and lift some weights and it's quite simplified.

Whereas Kundalini yoga,

I realised quite early on,

Is hugely complex and interconnected,

As you said.

And those 10 body practices really opened my eyes to how holistic this practice and how Yogi Bhajan looks at all the different facets of not just your physical body but your mind and then even with the mind by splitting it into this idea of positive,

Negative and neutral,

Which is a concept that you can understand very quickly if you think of the mind on a sliding scale.

You slide between those different minds,

Don't we?

We do it all day long,

But his idea of balancing them,

Bringing it to the centre is a really simple concept.

And so you can see how it was adopted by the West as this incredible practice and we've talked about this in the past,

How it's prescriptive.

So you can bring a problem to your Kundalini practice and your teacher and because there are so many different ways of targeting the body and we can look at it from different angles,

Kundalini yoga can actually be used,

I love this,

It can be used for a particular problem that you can work on in a session and I've found that really helpful in our busy modern worlds that we can actually come with a problem and your Kundalini teacher says,

No,

I've got a career for that because there's a career for pretty much everything,

Isn't there?

That's right.

And I think that just like you said,

It makes this practice a very powerful practice.

It's just another system and if somebody really wants to connect the mind and the body and really go into understanding what is going on with them and then releasing it through the practice,

Then this is the answer,

But not the only answer.

I have this strong pull towards that there are other ways of answering questions too.

Kundalini yoga empowers you,

It gives you this really strong sense of understanding your inner teacher.

Like I keep teaching,

I am here to guide you,

But really tapping to your inner teacher and really through my own practice,

I understood how to honor myself and understand not just my physical body,

Which is super intelligent and it's teaching me a lot during the practice,

But I understand my emotional body as well and my mental side of my life.

Somehow,

When you practice a lot of Kundalini yoga or any type of meditation,

You will intuitively will be guided to the journey,

To the answers,

To the practice that you should do.

It could be the exercise,

Could be the breathing,

Could be the healthy eating,

Right?

Yes and I'd like to go back to one other thing.

I'm just remembering you talked about chakras.

That might be worth just clarifying.

I find chakras quite a complex thought.

It's quite a difficult thing to wrap your head around because chakras aren't physical.

We can't,

You know,

You can't measure them,

You can't see them.

The idea is that they're energy centers within the body.

Perhaps you can just maybe give your definition,

Explain how you understand chakras within the body.

If no one's ever heard of them,

How would you explain what a chakra is?

You have explained it well enough.

I really like how you said you can't wrap your head around it because you will find across teachings that they don't actually exist,

Right,

Physically.

We have these images of different colors and the lineage of the main chakras,

But they're all over your body.

They're energy centers.

How I would explain it is with my practice through applying breathing and applying different body locks,

I can work with my main chakras and the body locks is the root lock where you squeeze the muscles between your burp and your anal organs,

The mula band and there is your diaphragm lock and then the neck lock,

Right?

So I'm just speaking very simple language without giving too complex names.

That would be difficult for people to understand,

But just having the knowledge of these three locks and being able to apply them and stretch the spine and work with that energy,

That's how I learned about the chakras.

It's like,

Oh right,

Okay,

So I'm really pretty much and everybody else is pretty much pure Dab and Three up to here,

Up to the heart chakra and the rest of the practice is like,

Oh my god,

What's happening with the with the upper triangle,

The upper triangle?

Most of the people get the blockage here and then the energy doesn't want to go anywhere higher.

So the practice of Kriyas,

All the asanas,

All the breathing,

Breath of fire,

Which burns the blockage in the diaphragm allows us to open up and understand the other chakras,

At least that's how it worked for me.

Keep having matrix experiences,

So with Kundalini Yoga,

Intensive practice where you realize the illusion and you bend through the through the nuclear structure of everything and understand when you practice the meditation and the Kriya and you have good teachers and you rely on your inner teacher as well,

You will understand all these weird experiences during the Kundalini Yoga practice and Kundalini energy rising.

These are just experiences taking you beyond the illusion.

I teach my students who very often come to me and ask me the question and it's not so much women,

Predominantly men will ask me the question,

What can I do to get that grail,

That holy grail?

I want to reach that Kundalini,

I want to raise it and then I go,

Whoa,

So I don't have any problems and I'm like,

All right,

Okay,

This is not the way to be,

Don't ask,

Don't force,

Let it come.

It's not that hunky-dory when it happens,

It can be a very tiring,

Very daunting experience,

Very out of mind experience where you should surround yourself with loving people who will take care of you.

I have no idea how that feels,

My Kundalini raises up like a queen and goes back to sleep and I like that because she helps me,

The energy helps me to get through day to day and be grounded to raise my family,

To be able to teach and be connected all the time.

Otherwise I could go off and live in a cave and let it come up all the way.

Kundalini energy can be raised very quickly when you're committed.

So I think the most important thing is to be patient,

To focus on your neutral mind and understand that we have so many thoughts during the day and that they go through this process,

Going through the negative mind and through the positive mind and enriching the neutral mind,

Right?

Every thought per second,

How many of them we have per second,

It's just a concept.

And then every thought about the thoughts on top of that goes through that process and get yourself into that neutral state of mind where that beautiful alpha level of mind will allow you to be calm and work with it and trust the process and allow the Kundalini energy to rise and then just allow the process to happen and trust it.

Kundalini rising,

I think,

Is one of the most complex and mind-boggling concepts to understand.

I know when I was researching the subject,

I looked all over the place to try and get an understanding of what this is and it seems to be described as an innate energy that everybody has within them.

And I know Kundalini uses the serpent analogy of this idea of this energy curls,

You described it as being coiled at the base of the spine and through the practice there's a possibility of this energy uncoiling itself and slowly moving up the body and then eventually with what's called a Kundalini awakening.

And there's a lot of people who've written about these experiences and they do seem to be very extreme quite often and,

As you said,

Sometimes positive and sometimes quite challenging as well.

And I've interviewed a couple of people who have had what they describe as Kundalini awakenings and they are comparable to people who've described non-ordinary states of consciousness to me as well.

And so I find this very,

Very interesting and I understand how somebody who's heard of this comes to a teacher and says,

Right,

Give me that,

You know,

What buttons do I press,

What pill do I take,

You know,

How many kriyas do I have to do to get my Kundalini awakening?

Because that's the society that we live in.

We have expectations and I think the fact that you call it the Holy Grail,

It's this ultimate end goal that is natural,

I think,

For people to want to aspire to.

But I think there's a lovely irony with Kundalini awakening that actually it's not about that.

It's not about going to it,

It's actually standing back from it and letting it come to you.

So there's a different mindset,

I think,

But the whole topic is fascinating and I think has a lot of people scratching their heads,

Particularly if you try to visualise it or in any way imagine it on a sensory level.

We can't because it's beyond that.

It's a non-ordinary state,

It's a non-ordinary experience.

But it does mean that Kundalini yoga has a bit of magicalness,

A bit of mysticism surrounding it,

I think,

Because of the anecdotal evidence of people having experienced what seems to be a really quite extreme response to doing breathing and postures.

How moving your body and thinking in a particular way can evoke this incredible inner energy is very exciting,

Isn't it?

It is.

I think the best answer to Kundalini yoga and what it is and so on is to actually practice.

It all depends on the system,

How you feed yourself,

How stressful or relaxed your life is and so on.

But the best way is 99% practice,

1% fear.

So then you realise that talking about this is just like an introduction and showing people here is the tool you can use.

The beauty of Kundalini yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan is that he brought it to the household,

So where we have this crazy life now with homeschooling like you yourself do.

Also,

I think one of my ways would be,

And this is purely theory for me because I don't have to homeschool,

Is to encourage my child to meditate at least in order to be able to focus for those few hours in this beautiful homely environment for X number of hours and then letting the hair down.

The practice is designed around our busy lifestyles.

You don't have to go into the tantric levels of Kundalini yoga in order to evoke all these positive energies to get you through the day.

It's like one of my students told me today,

And she is a very busy woman,

That she does this practice called Subha Kriya and there is a version of short Subha Kriya,

Which is three minutes for each exercise and a long version of Subha Kriya,

Which is 11 minutes of exercise.

And she gives herself that 15 minutes.

She noticed how it really helps her to jumpstart her day and get on with her day to day practice running the busy household because she's got three children,

Very,

Very busy lifestyle.

And it's really refreshing and puts a smile on my face when I hear happy stories like that,

That people really find it all true without judging,

Just observing and taking the best for themselves.

Oh,

I'm doing the shorter version,

But it's enough for me.

I'm not judging myself.

This is enough.

So being in the experience and allowing yourself from one and a half minutes,

Three minutes,

15 minutes,

Whatever the time during the day,

You can involve your family.

One of my students,

She did it with me online through Zoom and then her husband got involved.

And I bet you that the next thing will be that her daughter gets involved and maybe her son.

So it's like expanding that energy,

Which does it on its own.

You don't have to do anything but work on yourself to allow this experience to other people,

Your friends and family through practice.

I think that's very wise.

You work on yourself and it radiates out to our family and our friends in the wider circle.

That's definitely true.

And I love the idea that you can take aspects of the kriyas that you need for yourself.

In fact,

I want to ask you about Breath of Fire because this is fundamental within the practice.

And perhaps you can just talk us through a little bit about Breath of Fire.

I did a little bit of searching on this about the benefits,

Which just seemed to be endless in terms of alleviating stress and anxiety,

Helping with the respiratory system.

There seems to be a lot of things that Breath of Fire can do for us.

Do you want to tell us a little bit about it,

What this practice is?

Yes,

Only today I taught a kriya that involves a lot of Breath of Fire and that will keep your body healthy.

So the key thing with Breath of Fire when you do it is when you do it,

You don't want to hyperventilate.

It's not the characteristic of that breath.

So you make sure the capacity of your inhale and exhale is the same.

Because I naturally know how to breathe.

It just comes naturally to me.

In the Breath of Fire,

You just need to learn how to breathe into your belly and expand your belly all the way like a Buddha would do.

Nothing would inhale into five and exhale into five.

If that's too much,

Then you can do all three.

Inhale,

Filling up the vessel,

The belly,

The lungs will be filled in as well,

But you just keep it relaxed.

The shoulders are relaxed,

Don't visibly breathe with your chest.

And then three,

Five or eight seconds equally inhale and exhale.

Breathing through your nose.

In Kundalini Yoga,

We breathe through the nose unless directed otherwise.

Keep breathing through your nose into your belly and then think about your diaphragm and keep breathing,

Just breathe.

And your diaphragm is considered to feel like a valve.

So you think of your diaphragm as a valve and the rest of the abdomen muscles support that valve on the exhale.

So you push the diaphragm in and up in a very rapid way.

Right?

So this is your exhale,

Contracting those muscles here.

And then relaxing those muscles is your natural inhale.

Making sure that your inhale and exhale are of the same capacity,

Not necessarily the length of time,

But capacity.

Right?

Then you will stay nice and fresh and you won't hyperventilate.

If at any point you're feeling dizzy,

Just moving too long,

Deep breathing.

So this is just like a very precise demonstration of the breath,

Which I'll show you how it works.

So you can see the breath,

Which I'll show you how to take it to another level.

And then you can speed up.

So and when you end,

You just inhale long and hold the breath and then you can squeeze the mula band,

Meaning squeezing the root lot,

The muscles between your breath and your inhale organ.

Important instruction is that for women who are pregnant or are menstruating,

They only motorcycle.

We do not do the breath of fire because same is with the mula band.

So the breath of fire,

Considering that your diaphragm is like a pot of fire,

This is where the digest in your belly,

Your food helps you to burn all the new roses,

All the negativity,

Helps you to open this space of energy,

Right?

Your third chakra and open the gate from the heart chakra to the third chakra.

So you can breathe in deeper and through your breath,

Dissolve all the new roses,

Dissolve all the irrational or irrational stress,

The thoughts.

It starts all in the mind.

So you're able to understand what is it?

Is it my hormones?

Is it the way I ate?

Why am I angry?

What is the reason for me feeling sad?

So with that breath on its own,

You can dissolve it.

That's absolutely,

And I think breath of fire is one of those very portable tools that you can use.

I should say it's quite hard to learn.

If you remember when we were practicing and you were teaching me,

I think it took me quite a few weeks.

What I found difficult was thinking and breathing at the same time because there are instructions to follow.

So it's worth saying that breath of fire needs a little bit of practice,

But obviously you,

When you were doing it,

I could see your breath is so intuitive now and fluid because you've been doing it for many years.

I think it's worth saying a little bit of practicing can go a long way and then this breath can be a very powerful force that you've got for free at your fingertips anytime you need it.

And it does have this ability to balance and I love that it balances the gut and the digestive system,

Which of course we know and I had a great chat with Karen Jones about nutrition and the gut and the brain connection and how intrinsically they are linked and the communication and the signaling that goes up and down.

So of course it makes complete sense that if you are expanding and nurturing the gut,

The digestive part of the body,

That that's going to improve brain function.

And of course with the respiratory benefits and the balancing of the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous systems,

I think this is one of those really brilliant takeaway tools from Kundalini yoga that's incredibly powerful.

So thank you for going through that.

The other thing that I was surprised at when you were teaching me the 10 bodies was how many little meditations appeared.

And of course my background is heavily influenced by meditation so I was very interested and there was one in particular that's always stayed with me the very first time I practiced it,

Which is where I had to think a thought and then think the opposite thought.

And you start off with very obvious things like,

I am Vanessa,

I am not Vanessa.

I am in the room,

I am not in the room,

I am sitting on my mat,

I am not sitting on my mat.

And you did five minutes of this and you just said whatever thought pops into your head,

You sit in there with your eyes closed,

Reverse it.

And I was like,

Okay this is a bit odd and after about 30 seconds I got it because it was such a powerful practice because of course the mind just throws,

It's like a child throwing teddy bears or toys at you,

It would throw all of these thoughts.

And it was really interesting for me to observe what kind of thoughts were coming.

Was it a negative thought that came or a positive thought?

Was it from the past?

Was it from the future?

And because I reversed it,

I felt that I was almost rewiring my thinking and my thought processes during that meditation.

Maybe you could explain why it is Yogi Bhajan had that meditation and what it's,

Well that was my experience,

But what is it actually for?

Why would we do that meditation?

So after having all these thoughts and experience you did not find the answer?

Well I found my answers which was,

That's an interesting thought.

So at the end of it I realised how many of the thoughts were negative and by reversing it I then made them positive.

And that was my outtake from that and I found that really quite grounding and insightful.

It's about that inner teacher you talk about and because my mind was given something to play with,

It played with this meditation.

There was a very playful element to it.

And so yeah that was what I took away which was to switch I suppose a negative thought and make it a positive.

Yeah which is a very powerful experience for the free mind,

The negatively positive with the neutral mind,

Right?

Once again just like,

You see this is the reason why I asked you the question back because it is about individual experience.

In the experience overall this is what it is,

It's exactly what you said.

So like showing the answer why it's within us and the child's play and it is a really great tool to have that meditation at hand plus Breath of Fire to practice with your children because it's so much fun and you don't have to do it silently,

You can do it out loud.

So even more powerful when you practice that with your children when they say I don't want to learn or I don't want to go out and play and it brings us to our inner child as well and being really playful and then observe also the opposite like when you are,

Because that meditation is the negating meditation so whatever you think you're not.

So I'm thinking I'm happy,

I'm not happy.

What does that mean to you,

Right?

So it's really putting another light onto the negativity that is not that bad.

It is a very important aspect of our life in order to be strong and be neutral.

I thought it was a very interesting facet to have a meditation within the physical postures and that was another thing that I found with Kundalini Yoga.

The physical postures were hard.

I mean they were really hard.

There's a lot of holding poses and I discovered a new relationship with my body doing this.

Two things spring to mind.

One,

A lot of the poses put you into a position that you don't normally go into during the day.

So there was one I remember,

I think it was the arc climb where you have your arms held out in front of you in a particular pose with your fingers clasped together and pointing and my arms were screaming,

Screaming in pain within about a minute and you hold it for,

I think it might be,

It's either seven or twelve minutes,

It's a long time,

Maybe eleven minutes and I remember all my thought processes and in fact I can almost remember everything I thought at the time which was screaming no no no no can't do this ow hurts why am I doing this is insane and then you go through this process don't you and there's also a bit of ego going I won't give up I will hold this pose you know and then the beautiful ego and and it can be quite empowering and then I remember going through another phase where actually if I went and focused on the pain which by then had moved off my arms into the middle of my back kind of really went and investigated and got curious about that pain and if I really focused on it enough it started to disintegrate and then you'd have this little eureka moment you go oh the pain's gone the pain the pain's gone brilliant and then the second I thought that it came shooting back so there's this all of these experiences happening within my body and my relationship to my body all just because I put my arms into this unusual pose and I found that fascinating it really made me question my whole physical self and often I would think oh I'm going to do damage I'm going to hurt myself aches and pains and most of the time I didn't and I was quite fascinated that actually the body is much more resilient and physically capable than I thought and Kundalini yoga perhaps made me more confident I think with what my body is capable of it was quite profound that relationship changing beautiful ego right how useful hey is the nervous system and if you're holding your arms out anywhere open then you're really stimulating the free nervous systems that meet under your armpits or in your groin and very very important way to strengthen yourself and not just the nervous systems also your powerful empathic system right so much is going on it's a topic for many many lectures these are all concepts so approaching it from the spirit kind of attitude instead of ego attitude so creative instead of analytical just don't analyze it the moment you start analyzing it will come back right the pain it's a bit of a catch-22 because we can go really deep and you can almost strip away during practice and you're like you're not feeling the pain because you're drifting somewhere there out of your body and then your teacher says something and it pulls you right into an uncomfortable space and you connect with your anger which is a great exercise right it's a very great combination and so much is happening with your body mind and your spirit and this is exactly right you're sitting down you've got your mat underneath your you've got your legs cross whatever and you've got your arms out and it's such a simple thing and yet like you say there is so much going on internally physiologically but also mentally and i think that's what really interested me i didn't have to do very much to learn a lot about myself and that was i think what was so surprising and you're right curiosity i think has to be the guide particularly with something like kundalini yoga which can be physically challenging if there's curiosity inside your mind if there's curiosity within you then that tends to push the analyzing to one side because you're being open because curiosity is openness and that for me was where i had to i had to learn that quite a lot in kundalini yoga but that was a good thing to learn you know i found the experience really enlightening and actually i found it to be very courageous as well yes and courage i like that courage is another good word um curiosity and courage those are two good words to attach to kundalini yoga i think they're very appropriate you've given us the brilliant breath of fire and we've talked about that negative positive mind meditation which i found fascinating is there anything else in the kundalini yoga toolbox that's a really useful tool given where post-pandemic we're a bit stressed everyone's mental health is a big topic it's front of mind is there another practice that we can take away that's maybe very easy to use that you could share with us today i'm really thinking of breathing i could keep the sacria but breathing to me is like so neutral because the way we do it we don't have to use any mantras which can meet a lot of resistance at the beginning and breath is with us all the time and if anybody wants to deepen the practice and get to know other tools then they can join the classes the teachers across the world so you mentioned the negative and the positive mind which brings us to the neutral mind that's the process of thinking breath of fire is brilliant but like let's say i don't know you're in the office space and so on and you don't necessarily want to make that kind of sound right you feel self-conscious so really beautiful way of of calming your mind down is called alternate nostril breathing so you focus your eyes on the point between your eyebrows it's your so-called third eye at first it may be a strenuous physical experience but with time you will find that the eyes just naturally go to your third eye and then what you're going to do you're going to bring your thumb your right thumb into the right nostril and before we do that the left hand goes into so-called jnanmubra so your Jupiter finger your index finger presses against the thumb the rest of the fingers are straight this is the mudra of wisdom and you relax that hand on your lap on your left knee you bring your right hand to your nose and then close up the right nostril eyes are closed and then you inhale through the left nostril long inhale and close up the left nostril with your pinky or your index finger and then you exhale for the right nostril we inhale for the right nostril switch the fingers switch the nostrils exhale to the left inhale to the left exhale for the right inhale for the right but you switch the fingers and the nostrils exhale for the left inhale switch exhale inhale switch after about three minutes or seven minutes or eleven minutes you inhale all the way to the both nostrils.

All the breath for about 20 seconds or as long as it's comfortable for you.

Exhale and then open your eyes.

You can shake your body out of the meditation.

Move in,

Play some happy music and get on with your day.

Thank you for that.

I think alternate nostril breathing is a very good practice I do use that.

It's very good at balancing and bringing you back into your body and grounding yourself and you're right it's really portable.

You could even,

I mean people don't really know what you're doing,

You could easily do that you know quietly on the bus.

I don't think anyone would really give you a second look.

That's brilliant,

Thank you.

Lots and lots of practical things in there today.

We will put notes in the show notes with links and a lot of the information we've talked about so people can go and be curious and look up more about Kundalini Yoga.

So that's been brilliant today.

Thank you for talking to us.

It's been really helpful.

As always,

I love talking about Kundalini Yoga because it's such a fascinating practice and so such a big subject though.

I think we've probably only just really touched the tip of the iceberg there but thank you for talking to me today.

It's an ocean.

It's an ocean,

I love it.

Thank you for having me.

It's been a real privilege and such joy to be here with you and share the knowledge and I invite everybody to at least try the practice.

There are lots of resources and there are loads of teachers and schools across the world.

Just research Kundalini Yoga and Yemi.

Thank you.

Sathna.

Brilliant.

It is a very individualised practice and I think that's probably that's exactly why I like it so much.

Brilliant.

Thank you.

Reviews

I love that you bring your guests back to basics. I find myself put off of yoga because the instructors make it look so complicated for older beginners. I have been searching for a yoga guide to help me start the process but the older age group is just not represented properly. Either ignored or treated as if we are in nursing homes unable to get up of the chair. You are trying to fill in this blanks and maybe without realising you do. I will maybe look for a book to get started with this practice and avoid the online crew for now. I am a fan of yours after two talks I've listened to. Down to earth, curious and practical.