Yoga Talks Live: What is Kundalini Energy and Kundalini Yoga?

Transcript

[Music] hi and welcome to yoga talks live I'm Ashley Sargent I am your host and I'm here with Dana sarey mm-hmm nice to have you here nice to be here actually welcome to the first live screening or live show that we've ever really done here on gaya and originally we were gonna be talking with Nicole golden but she's sick and she's taking care of herself and her baby so she'll be here next week so this week Dana and I are going to be speaking about Kundalini what is Kundalini we also have here in the studio with us Jacqueline Jacqueline is the head of yoga publishing and she is going to be relaying your live questions to us as we move through our conversation so Dana thanks for being here and thanks for having me I love always sitting down and talking with you no fun yeah and especially about this topic I know maleeni there's so much to say about Kundalini really and I actually think there's also a lot of confusion or sometimes fear around Kundalini yeah and I hope we can break that up today huh me too yeah so I want to start with one of the main reasons why we wanted to talk to you about Kundalini is your classes that are on yoga every day our series here on gaya you tend to do practices that a lot of people associate with the Kundalini style of yoga uh-huh and usually associate you with being a Kundalini teacher but I've asked some questions like well she's not wearing white and you know what's what is this all about and so I want to get into that a little bit today because let's start by kind of defining I think the two main key aspects of Kundalini which is Kundalini as an energy of a force of awakening consciousness a force of transformation yeah and also Kundalini as the style or the tradition of yoga then we have seen popularized in the West by Yogi Bhajan yes and that we see kind of in Kundalini classes or studios where the teachers wear white we do particular practices for transform a there's also a lot of mantra practice and how are these things similar and also how are they different mm-hmm so tell us a little bit about your experience and your lineage tradition - yeah hmm well Kundalini really is I like what you said it's that energy of awakening of consciousness and it is said that Kundalini comes in with us when we incarnate into these bodies and then lies dormant at the base of our spine coiled three-and-a-half times around in a little serpentine ball at the base of the spine and the energy of Kundalini is that infinite potential of our true nature and it also sits there at the base of the spine with our blocks to that so that's a lot of fear a lot of energy heavy energy that kind of keeps that energy down and keeps us feeling limited so there's there's really this infinite ability to experience ourselves as consciousness and as vast magnificent brilliant beings but there's all this limitation that we feel on top of that that holds that energy down so once that energy starts to move and awaken in and rise in our in our being and and open our energy centers then we start to feel more of that natural flow of energy that true essential nature that we are so this is how I really approached Kundalini and in my practices and my learnings I've certainly done a lot of criminally new yoga by Yogi Bhajan and I love that tradition it's very it's powerful it's a technology it's it's a system that was developed by a brilliant guru a brilliant teacher who really brought together so many streams in a way that was very applicable to our Western culture and so there's there's there's just an incredible genius to that technology they like to call and I and I love it and for me what I've studied and learned is more of a Himalayan Kundalini stream a Himalayan cria stream so it doesn't use Gurmukhi which is the language that Yogi Bhajan uses from the Sikh tradition it uses Vedic mantras and tantric mantras he just sounds some of the sounds that were more familiar with with hatha yoga and and it's a it's a practice really what I love about the kriya tradition that I've been exposed to and practice so deeply in my life is that it really works to open our energy body works on the energetic level and it increases our vitality it builds prana and oftentimes the asana practices they're really really useful at circulating energy and grounding us and there's activations sometimes but really that that Kriya and the powerful pranayama practices they come in and they build our vitality and then we come into what I like to do is then bring in the asana to help us ground and circulate and sort of embody that fully in every cell and the Kriya really helps to get into the cells and to clear out stuck energy so that can be conditioning it can be limitations it can be emotional stagnation it can be traumas that we've experienced early in life so many things limiting beliefs and it all gets like lodged in ourselves and in our bio-memory and so the crias are so powerful at coming in and moving that energy and increasing our vitality and giving us that experience of you know it's really a natural high that we get through these crias it opens us it's a quick shift of our energy and it has the capacity to really shift our consciousness quickly yeah yeah amazing and this is a really great thing I think to address on and then we'll start to take some questions but this idea of Kundalini awakening mmm you know it's kind of been like a buzzword it's getting really more popular now and there's also been kind of stories about Kundalini awakening z-- being scary you're being dangerous you know when these awakenings of these energetic shifts happen happen within us and my teacher Sally Kempton works with a tradition that really doesn't so much do as many forceful type practices to be able to awaken Kundalini energy kind of move this energy in the body but also still has these profound experiences of awakening and one great question that I've heard her speak to which I really love is you know what what are the signs of a Kundalini awakening what like what does that look like how does how do I know if I'm having one of these and things and the answer that she shares which I really love is that there's many different levels and many different experiences of Kundalini awakening it can manifest as as kind of gentle and as soft as our desire to even do yoga like what is this thing and as we start to get on our mat or just start to learn breathing techniques with movement or meditation techniques that we start to feel like wow this feels really good you know just even that connection of like whoa this feels really good I'm gonna make this a priority in my life that even that is an awakening of our conscious consciousness and awakening of our self that was kind of otherwise turned outward into the world this is another experience of Kundalini is when Kundalini is asleep our primary focus of our energy of our attention is into the workings of the outside world we mostly and we can get wrapped up into status into money into accumulation of material goods yeah and that actually this even just gentle experience of how maybe those things are a little bit less important maybe I'm actually gonna prioritize meditating or doing yoga in the morning as opposed to sleeping right till the end of my alarm and then just you know spurting out of bed and grabbing coffee and leaving like that actually is like you know a gentle Kundalini awakening and then we may feel it even stronger where we start to feel like our major priority is in our life shift like oh my god do I want to be in this job do I want to eat this food do I want to be around these people do what are the choices that I making like our whole perspective of the universe may even start to come into question and and sometimes we go into to crisis and yes types of moments of like oh my gosh I don't know if I can even speak to my family anymore and I wouldn't want to change my whole life am i spinning out of control yeah you know this can be an experience and and those experiences you know evolve and then the kind of most intense Kundalini awakening she speaks about is is the kind of energy that creates gurus it's the energy that completely transforms one's consciousness and we see it not a lot in the world right but to an awakened being you know we've seen it in someone like Mother Teresa the Dali Lama other forms of Indian gurus where they have this capacity to live in a state of blissful awareness you know and actually still be kind of in the world right so I think you know that for me was a really helpful understanding to say like okay what is the Kundalini and so um I want to hear from from you I know there's a lot of people tuned in right now and Jacqueline can you give us a question what are people asking well we have some great questions coming in from our members right now a particular question that's arising is about how Kundalini is all about tapping into that energy source that already exists in our bodies and when we do this how can we actually regulate the amount of energy that is produced and that is being awakened and is there any dangers to this mmm great question yeah you want to chime in on that yeah well the kriya practices and the pranayama practices and the meditation practices are really designed to modulate kind of how much energy comes in and like I said before I think in my personal practice I think it's really important to do the grounding practices to and the circulating practices so always coming back to stillness it's super important always moving the energy in some way through maybe it's the dancing maybe it's moving the energy this way to circulate or asana really helpful to really circulate in the body so I feel like there's a balance of doing these very activating practices that we see in Kundalini Yoga and also really focusing on distributing that energy and grounding it back into the earth like shavasana like sitting in meditation and meditation finding that stillness and really feeling the subtleties and I think that's what you were speaking to before that it doesn't have to be enormous sure but really tuning in to subtlety is also very powerful yeah and it you know we hear of these little of people going through spontaneous awakenings in it and it really shifting them so dramatically that it does feel scary it's sort of like it's it's like a dissolution of the ego and the ego identity keeps us safe that keeps us comfortable as we move through this time-space dimension of reality so we know how to put one foot in front of the other and turn our car on and eat our food in the morning and you know there's this whole structure we know how to relate to our partners or our children and sure work in the world we're conditioned and we have ways that we move through this world that work for us and they're comfortable the when these spontaneous awakenings come it can really shatter this sort of ego identity that helps us move through the world in that way and so it can feel really scary I like to think of it as like kind of like chaos there's a chaotic dissolution and we don't really know where we are anymore we don't know what serves anymore like you said maybe the job it falls away or this partnership isn't working anymore like we put everything can come into question when that what we've been so grounded and based in in our terms of our identity in the world like I'm a mother I'm a daughter I'm a teacher you know when that shatters which I think can really happen with Kundalini cuz we tap into the Infinity the cosmic consciousness that we are so much greater than this physical form and I'm like who are you if you're not just those things who are you if you're not just those things exactly and it can cause a you know we speak of in yoga the cities these superpowers maybe we start to be more psychic we tune in we know something we how how would we be able to know that so I think there's a there a way that some of these spontaneous awakenings can just really like blow us kind of open to the point where it can feel scary yeah and grounding and integrating practice is really helpful for that and then also just the sort of techniques of Kriya and meditations and and maybe some of all kinds of different techniques they modulate us you know the the idea is that we do these regularly consistently so that we're building our energy so we have the capacity to hold more energy yes in our bodies and in our life yeah and this is a great point to understand energy from the kind of more scientific realm of things my teacher I've often heard speaks about this and the idea that you know if we start to turn the energy on so much without doing these grounding practices without actually building the container of our body meaning of actually getting physically stronger without training the breath capacity to be able to be deeper without also training the mind to be able to be more one pointed focus all of these things through breath practices through meditation practices then it's like we're actually just pouring more energy into a cable that isn't grounded exact and that's when you can literally like blow a circuit that's what people can experience so we kind of get like addicted a little bit sometimes especially in our Western world to where there's so much pressure to go go go do do do we can be in a very competitive relative it's it's really about high performance neuro hacking you know top performance you know do things faster do more multitasking more and more and more more that sometimes you know we can get a little bit addicted to the energy right and we see that happening in our society where we just want to do these like really intense physical practices or fast practices and then leave before shavasana when you're like run and like go grab a Starbucks yeah and then you're immediately like all this excuse me is turned on in your body yeah and then you're like pumping it with caffeine and then you get road rage and you start to have an experience maybe that you're like I don't know why I'm so inordinately angry or I'm so inordinately sad yeah part of those things while they are part of the process of awakening and we start to get comfortable you know one of the things people think is like oh my god I'm gonna be on a spiritual path it feels so nice like no usually when we're awakening it's not very comfortable but that we taking this time to really ground the shavasana and the yoga nidra the calming breath practices the still points of meditation are so essential absolutely grounding and it's a balance you know in Yoga Yoga means Union it's the bringing together of the polarities so when we have only the activating practices and not the grounding then we're gonna be out of balance yeah but when we can bring them together and meet their in the middle like know what we need like right now I need a little bit more activating I need to increase my vitality I need to be able to face this day feeling invincible sure fearless you know there are practices for that and then when we need to soften and calm our systems and find that inner peace that so many of us need in this world at this time and we get to find those practices and then bringing them both together because we need both really we need that energy cultivation you know so many of us are depressed yeah in this world right now so there's like a that energy is so low in our system that there's my teacher in India says we have a crisis of energy so some people can't sleep at night but in their liking it but then they're so tired in the day yeah so they don't have the right amount of energy to face life as life comes towards them it's a meat life and whatever is needed they can't sit still and yet they you know they can't sleep at night so there's this and then other people are so overwhelmed there's so much bombarding them and they can't they don't have you know it's like too much yeah so there's this crisis of energy and so what these types of practices when we cultivate them regularly they they give us the capacity to show up to have the right energy for anything that life brings us so we get to sit back into our meditation and it will get to show up and meet whatever intensity arises in our life so it gives you it to be infinitely adaptable and at the same time we really relax and release and surrender when that's what's give us and that's both of those things there's something that I feel like our world needs in mass right now agreed yeah I hear there's some question more questions turning up some ideas here okay Jacqueline you got another question for us yeah so when we're having these powerful spiritual experiences and awakenings they can often be incompatible with our current life situation and even our relationships in our lives so one of our members Gina is asking for some advice and some guidance in her own life she's been experiencing some powerful awakening surfacing recently with her dedication to her yoga practice and she's realizing that her life partner is not really on the same page and it's headed in a different direction she's been with this partner for 41 years and she's struggling with the realization that she is on this journey of change and spiritual growth and he's not on the same direction Thank You Gina that's a that is a really big question and I think we both feel we can talk to that one and 41 years Wow congratulations and and congratulations on really dedicating yourself to your own practice and your own personal path and even go down a couple routes of saying of this because we can know that there's always there's always the paradox right I was going to say that you know sometimes we feel I know I I can speak from my personal experience in a sense is that I have actually acted quite intensely towards this experience before and like turned my entire life upside down feeling that I'm on this path and I need to be a part and with a partner that is has vibration on this path as being the same path as me like turned my life and multiple people's lives upside down for that really only to continue to deeply come back to like this is my path and my awakening and for me I don't necessarily I thought I did many times and to a certain extent I do but I don't need I don't even actually think now that I want my partner to be on the same path as me but of course I want my partner to be tuned and understanding and supporting of that path right and I think there's there's two pieces we learn here which is what is our own individual path and what is what's what's our my needs our needs individually with a partner how close they need to be on that path not at all yeah you know I think you and we've talked about this I think it's such a personal choice you know there's no right or wrong to any of these questions and it's such a personal tuning in to what really deeply we feel we need and I feel like what you just spoke was really interesting like we can be really intense about it like something awakens in us and we get excited and it's like wow like I just want to change my whole life and totally you know which is beautiful and sometimes that's what for short-haul to do and sometimes it's perfect to do that and sometimes it's perfect to do that and sometimes like wow like let me take some breaths I mean just like give it some time and see what happens in a month in a few months in a year maybe you know there's some times we have to breathe a little bit knowing that when these awakenings first start happening I like to think of it as like when we're you know carving like a gemstone or something like it can be so rough at first like the standing we're using the roughest sanding paper and it's like big chunks are flying off and then at a certain point we start refining and it comes like a little smaller and we refine more and we were fine so in that beginning stages it can feel like there's so much happening and to just kind of ride that out a little bit to know that you know this this energy is gonna keep moving keep flowing and we can be patient also with the process and gentle with ourselves and so it's just such a personal tuning in to what our soul evolution is calling for us there's really you know no right or wrong answer to that and 41 years is a whole lot of life someone and to really honor you know where your journey has brought you in those 41 years and the gifts of this relationship and I just feel like that honoring is so important and whatever choice you come to from that honoring you know it's it's it's your souls path that really chooses ya what's right for you and there's no right or wrong I just feel like that's so important for everyone to know and one person's path might be to stay with their partner and another might be to choose to move on yeah it's really such a deep personal decision yeah and like you said when we're tapping into Kundalini energy we're tapping into infinite possibility mm-hmm I think this is one of the trickiest things about really tapping into awakened consciousness is that there literally is infinite possibility exactly the Kundalini energy is is known as the the feminine energy of consciousness so we have Shiva and Shakti energy and one of the things that I've heard many times is that there's no rest to the to the dance to the movement to the potentiality of Shakti of energy unless we choose to be able to to take some rest from that so it can feel and be tumultuous that where you're tapping in Gina to this real infinite possibility and it can be painful and it can be scary and it can be confusing and that what it is that's awakening of your own true intuition and nature and so you're not alone and sit with it and be with it and take some time and also the beauty of really awakened Kundalini can be empowered speech you know and the ability to actually communicate needs and concerns to your partner to yourself and it in a new way and even dream up new ways of being together of being alone that helped to facilitate that awakening for for you I think that's really beautiful to remember that infinite possibility and that when we play in these realms of awakening energy anything's possible and when we change ourselves when we do the inner inner work and really refine our world has to change around us and our and our the people in our world change to their shifts that happen in our you know family system because of what we're doing here and there's shifts that are happening in the world because of what we're doing here so just like to really hold that like change is possible everyone and it looks different very different for everyone and there's quantum healing possibility in it all yeah and everybody is a yogi in one way or another and it's a deep one to go down but you know we sometimes think it has to look one way or beyond way but really you know everyone is in service and is awakening and evolving in their own way and it's happening fast right now and it it is it's happening fast people are waking up quickly and baby they have their own ways of doing that so just really honoring that yeah yeah yeah I think we have time for another question how are how are we looking we're looking real good so how would you guys feel about doing it on the mat question yeah let's do it do it yeah sure sure so Dana you were mentioning earlier that fear and depression and anxiety can sort of inhibit the rising of the Kundalini and so we have a member unbound that's asking our if there's any practices either breath practices or Kriya practices that can help to clear the stuck energy so many yeah so many should we go yeah let's get ready to do it so I want to so how about we do this why don't you show us a practice that is good for awakening the unstuck the stuck energy and thing yeah and also for grounding okay you know so we kind of get the full thing like we spoke up totally okay we got a few minutes right cool yeah let's go we got a couple minutes we got like five minutes okay so we'll come on over to the mat yeah so I think we'll just work really simply for this for a couple minutes with the root chakra and Abby just sound for the root is Lum L AM and the action of mula bandha is where we draw the base of the body up and we squeeze that energy up and it's sort of like beginning to open and activate there's a knot of energy at the base of the body that can so much fear it can be stuck in and so when we we activate in this way we can really open that and start to move the energy so this is a process of that so this one is using the chant Lum and then drawing the base of the body up the perineum squeezes in and up and we'll just do this a few rounds over and over again chanting Lum while drawing mula bandha okay so we can just allow the palms to rest gently on the knees and jana mudra with the index finger and the thumb touching and i can quiet your breath sit upright tall feel your spine feel your breath then I'll begin and just follow along as you're ready every time you can't lump we're gonna draw the base of the body up and actually I'm going to add something here I just remembered I love this part so as we chant Lum we'll bring all the tips of the fingers together in this mudra and then we'll open the Finke hands back up as we release so it's like this Lum Lum Lum Lum Lum Lum Lum Lum Lum Lum Lum Lum Lum Lum Lum and take a full breath in allow your inner gaze to come to your third eye and draw the base of the body up so mula bandha squeeze and really focus at that third eye drawing the energy all the way up and then exhale and soften you can put the palms down and so we'll begin to come into a Sufi grind circulating that energy that we just activated and this helps us to ground circulate feel the base of your body as you're rolling on all the four corners of your sitting bones and just allow your body to move the way it wants to move so you can be as exaggerated in this movement as feels good and you can also be really slow and gentle and soft and subtle and as you're ready we'll just go the other direction to circulate in the other direction the breath flow in and out and as you're ready it come to stillness give yourself a few moments of silence of SIL ness to feel your energy and what might have shifted from just this very short practice notice if you can feel your root chakra a little bit more open maybe more receptive to the energy of the earth maybe your spine feels like there's a little more flow of energy in it well close this tour practice with just three cleansing breaths so we'll inhale through the nose then with a soft sigh from the mouth exhale let all the energy ground back down into earth inhale through the nose exhale get out a sound with this final one big breath in thank you thank you you're welcome yeah beautiful bit yeah so thank you so much for tuning in to yoga talks live and make sure that if you're interested in learning any more of these practices check out Dana's classes on Gaia's she's in the yoga every day series and next week we'll be back same time with Nicole golden talking about the importance of a yoga morning ritual thank you so much for joining us have a beautiful rest of your day namaste [Music]