My Kundalini Yoga Story

I share this story because I feel it is my sacred responsibility to do so. When I learned of the scandal in the Kundalini yoga lineage, all I wanted were answers. I always admired the courage of the Kundalini yoga teachers who dove deep into how to proceed with the practice or with teaching it, and how their relationship with it evolved along with them. This story is almost completely unedited as I wrote it as part of my healing journey and want to share it authentically as it came out, grammatical errors and all.

Kundalini yoga first came into my life when I was a busy young mom of three kids under the age of five. I was living on the west coast of Canada and found out that the leader of our local mom and tot group was a Kundalini yoga teacher and had a studio in her backyard. I started attending some Sunday classes and really enjoyed that I only had to walk a block to the studio so I wasn’t far from my kids, and it was one of the only times I had a break alone from my family for self care. At this point I was fully immersed in motherhood; sometimes I felt I was drowning in it. As a stay at home mom, our home was also my workplace. I was grateful to be home with my children and living in beautiful surroundings but I found myself feeling very overwhelmed at times. I will always remember (because I believe now it was a moment of clairaudience) that my first Kundalini yoga teacher told me that she could see me teaching it one day, when the time was right. It seemed important for me to remember that.

Kundalini yoga is powerful. It amplifies energy, so one might feel energized or inspired after practice one day, and cry most of the way through class the next time. This is why I say that Kundalini yoga must always be practiced with an attitude of self responsibility and emotional intelligence. Many of us have been raised to repress or not feel safe in expressing our emotions. This has kept energy trapped within our physical vessel for years. The combination of movement, breathwork, sound, and meditation in Kundalini yoga can bring uncomfortable emotions or thoughts (which are related to each other) to the surface. These are arising to be healed and we are asked to hold ourselves in a space of unconditional love, to release any emotions that may arise and allow the space that is created from emotional release to be healed and filled with Light. The pause between the physical postures, meditative practices, and savasana are critically important during a Kundalini yoga class. Creating space after class for further processing is also a great idea. Going for a walk can continue to move energy. Going home to have a good hard cry might just be what is called for. Or, one might feel energized and inspired to finally start on that new creative project. Treat this practice as both a way to increase physical vitality and an excellent tool for shadow work. It helps one to get into the body and access energies that are ready to be released by moving, breathing, chanting, or meditating them out of the darkness and into the Light.

When I first started practicing Kundalini yoga, as I said, I was fully immersed in a very busy phase of motherhood and really did not have any other consistent spiritual or self care practices. I was spiritually unconscious, and although I did not realize it at the time, was creating a situation in my life from deep subconscious wounding. We moved back to my home province and as a result of my shadow rearing its head in a massive way, I found myself spiraling into depression. I can now look back and recognize this as a Dark Night of the Soul. The COVID pandemic began shortly after we moved as well, amplifying my feelings of aloneness and depression. It was all I could do to take care of my children, and I really felt they would be better off without me at that time. I had hit rock bottom and the lowest of the low feelings on the scale of emotions. I was the farthest from the Light, the most out of alignment that I had ever been in my story.

I attended some therapy sessions and that was the opening that I needed to begin the slow crawl out of the darkness. I fiddled with tarot cards and a pendulum and my interest in crystals grew. I looked into Kundalini yoga and found a group that met online during the pandemic to discuss what I did not realize at the time was really the process of spiritual awakening, which to me is what Kundalini yoga is all about, separate from the physical practice. These group discussions were beyond what resonated with me at the time. I went to some Reiki sessions and a good friend helped me through some very difficult times with Reiki healing energy. He helped me to connect with the Light and to guide me out of the darkness. Challenge after challenge presented itself in my family, and there were many blessings too though I could not recognize them at the time as I was still in a state of victim consciousness. At some point in the journey, one realizes that everything that arises is a gift to help in the awakening of consciousness.

I started to feel better but there were still strong subconscious forces at play. I could recognize self-destructive tendencies in action once again but I wasn’t sure how to break the patterns. At one point, the same friend who had been supporting me through a very difficult time with Reiki offered for me to be a part of a pilot project in connecting participants with healing modalities that he had found helpful in his journey with the intention of eventually developing service offerings based on the results. I started receiving gentle chiropractic care (using torque release technology) and acupuncture, and connected with a Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine regarding my digestive system, lifestyle, etc. I knew that I wanted to make some real changes in my life and I was ready to take responsibility for my healing. I still didn’t really know how, but once I made that decision, the opportunities presented themselves, as they do. Shortly after this time, I took a trip to Mexico with my extended family. My cousins were operating a hostel out of a local hotel complete with a smoothie and snack bar, fitness classes, and a healing centre. Lo and behold, one of the fitness instructors there was teaching a Kundalini yoga class while we were on vacation. I excitedly signed up and attended the class. She told me she could tell I had done the yoga before. I explained that I really enjoyed the practice, but that there was not a Kundalini yoga community in my city. She suggested that maybe I could start one – another pivotal experience of clairaudience. As I was laying on my cousin’s massage table receiving an acupuncture treatment on the same vacation, it hit me – I was going to be a Kundalini yoga teacher. It felt like a calling, I had such clarity, and this was what I could do to start living more fully and to help others. It just felt so right.

When I got home from that trip, I immediately starting researching how to make my dream happen. As it so happened, a local woman was starting to offer Kundalini yoga classes later that very month in the mezzanine of the health foods store that she worked in. I signed up for those, so excited for the opportunity to get back into this powerful practice that I so enjoyed. I also researched Kundalini yoga teacher training in Alberta, and there was one option – in Calgary. I signed up and paid for the entire training that month that would start in the fall (it was now winter).

I was now practicing Kundalini yoga and had signed up to take Reiki level 1 as receiving energy healing had helped me so much through a really dark time. Once again following in the footsteps of my good friend who had led the way for me to really embark upon my spiritual quest, I signed up for a year-long program with an astrologer/psychic (my friend was just finishing his time with her in this program). The leader of this program taught me two very profound skills: meditation, and being brave enough to sit with and feel and process any emotions that arise at any time. I worked through inner child healing, balancing masculine/feminine polarities, and the process of death/rebirth during awakening based on my birth chart and meditating at the time of particularly powerful and supportive astrological transits. Becoming familiar and tuned in to astrology, working with the moon, and having her psychic guidance and unconditionally loving container in which to heal was so incredibly profound. In addition to having a way that felt good to me to learn to navigate my inner world through this program, I was also practicing Kundalini yoga and after my attunement started using Reiki for self healing.

The local teacher I was attending classes with stopped teaching in the late spring of that year, but she introduced me to the Life Force Academy online. I signed up for a membership and continued Kundalini yoga practice with Jai Dev. At this point I was starting to make more healing appointments for myself on top of the chiropractic care, acupuncture, and diet and lifestyle changes. I was led to exactly the healer, teacher, information, or modality that was needed at the time. Since my return from Mexico, I had also started listening to what became my favourite podcast: The Spiritual Awakening Show with Brent Spirit on Spotify. I learned about Kundalini awakening and Kundalini energy, and I was obsessed. There was nothing that I wanted more than to awaken my Kundalini energy, and I listened to every episode of this podcast over the months as luckily my job allowed me to do so while I worked. I am fortunate that I had much time alone and the space to learn and really be with myself and my inner world during the work day.

In the summer, I was inspired to take a week off of work to participate in an in-home Kundalini yoga retreat with the Life Force Academy. It was called The Return of Shakti. Learning all about this beautiful force of Kundalini Shakti from Brent Spirit’s podcast, the name of this yoga retreat really called to me. I did yoga all day while my kids were at school for that week with the intention of raising my Kundalini energy from her slumber. Shortly after this retreat after summer holidays had started for my kids, I woke up early one morning and was inspired to give myself a full reiki session as I could not sleep. I went upstairs afterward, sat on the couch, and felt an orgasmic feeling in my lower chakras. I knew it was my Kundalini energy. I couldn’t believe it! She was waking up! If I remember correctly, it took awhile for me to consistently feel the energy after that. But I had learned enough from The Spiritual Awakening Show to know that I had to make time to meditate and to allow Kundalini Shakti to do her thing. I started meditating for an hour every night and let the energy take over for that time. The Kundalini energy first rose through the left and front sides of my body. When I started Kundalini yoga teacher training in the fall, my heart space was opening.

As soon as I started teacher training, I really felt it was a calling for me to do this. I knew that even before I started. I had never been so excited to take any other course in my life. It was also a very magical experience to spend one full weekend every month in the big city, learning something that I knew I’d be able to use to help people. I felt so good about it and it felt so right. About two months after I started the training, a documentary came out called Breath of Fire. The astrologer/psychic that I was participating in the healing program with informed me of this documentary and told me I should watch it because as the Divine would have it, she had also taken Kundalini yoga teacher training and so was curious about this documentary. As I watched it, my heart started to sink. And though my Kundalini yoga teacher trainer had warned us that there was a big scandal within the lineage, I was just excited to be there in the beginning and didn’t think too much of it. After watching this documentary, I read White Bird in a Golden Cage by Premka. This book was released just prior to the COVID pandemic, just after the choices that I made that led to a deep dark night of the soul. Halfway through my teacher training, I was feeling very conflicted. Why did this practice that I loved so much have such a dark history associated with it? I read so many articles and opinions. I didn’t know what to believe any more, though I was still really enjoying the yoga teacher training, my teachers had always been so beautiful and genuinely wanted to help people, and my experience at the training studio was always so magical. I sat with the darkness. I cried for all the people who had been harmed within the lineage. I was angry at the teachers that had abused their power. Once again a synchronicity, the man who is most known among the scandalous occurrences in the lineage was a customs officer in India before coming to the United States, and my dad is also a retired customs officer! Following gut wrenching tears on Epiphany Day (which I didn’t realize until later), January 6, 2025, my Kundalini energy rose to the crown and burst through with enough force to crack the cosmic egg at my crown chakra and activate my light body. I had been raising the Kundalini energy from my root to my crown and it had been moving between my heart and the upper etheric chakras for several months. A wonderful quantum enery healer that I had connected with and seen for several powerful appointments helped me to expand my energetic roots three weeks prior to light body activation. This night, I connected with my higher self in a way like I never had before, and I was still advised to teach Kundalini Yoga and also received that perhaps it would be a good idea to study psychology. I had been considering returning to university as well since I had tuition benefits from working full time at a university.

This experience was so beautiful. I couldn’t believe it, my Kundalini energy was awakened six months after it had started to rise. I still felt so conflicted about what was going on with the yoga teacher training, so I decided to email my teacher about where I was at. She sent me such an unconditionally loving response that I decided to finish my teacher training. I still felt so good when I was there and was getting so much value from the training experience that I decided to finish it, even if I felt conflicted about teaching it. I seemed to forget what my higher self told me – my mind stepped in once again. After the time of that crown opening, I discovered that Paramahansa Yogananda was the first true father of yoga in the west. I signed up to receive meditation teachings from the Self-Realization Fellowship. I also connected with another Kundalini yoga teacher I had taken some classes with in Lethbridge, though her style was different from what I knew. I learned that she had studied traditional Himalayan Kundalini yoga, and I started looking into that. After I finished my in-person yoga teacher training, I had read so many articles and opinions about that lineage and was really feeling unsettled about it all. Knowing what I knew, I didn’t feel at the time that I could teach the yoga. I didn’t even know if I believed in it any more. I I ended up deciding that maybe it was my mission to look to the east, to the original teachings. I had connected with Yogananda’s work and read Autobiography of a Yogi and I was hooked. I signed up to take an online course in Himalayan Kundalini yoga. Truthfully though, I was so exhausted from what I had been through in my teacher training and from the recent influx of light into my system. If my Kundalini energy was awakened, why did I feel such a lack of clarity? I was also finishing my year-long healing program working with my birth chart and astrologer. I had been deeply immersed in shadow work and was very tired from everything. Also, it seemed that the Kundalini energy had dropped back down into my lower chakras! It was rising again, this time on the right side and the back of my body. I was suddenly without a human guide for my healing journey and wanting to serve my fellow humans but the modality I had trained in had fallen through. I was devastated. What I did not realize at the time is how much I had pushed that practice into the realm of shadow. I wanted to completely disconnect from that lineage and join the traditional Himalayan lineage, I wanted so badly to be pure and involved in pure practices.

Through the spring and summer, I connected with more powerful women through the healing experiences that they were offering. These connections became very important and very helpful for me. I felt so fortunate to have so many helpers in my awakening journey and I was absolutely committed to my awakening. I decided to take my next level of Reiki training and my teacher decided that because of all the inner work I had done, I could do levels 2 and 3 combined (however, I did not receive my level 3 certificate until the following year after a lot more practice and inner work). I continued to listen to many audiobooks and podcasts at work. By the end of the summer, I had an incredible higher heart activation experience with the quantum energy healer who had helped me to deepen my roots prior to my crown opening. And so began the journey of connecting more deeply to my own Divinity through the continued opening of the heart and the higher etheric chakras. I completed the requirements for my Reiki 2 certification by practicing on willing family members and friends. I had done so much work on my own energy and was learning how to help others with theirs. Later in the fall, I had a soul retrieval experience in deep meditation where the part of me that had been really passionate about Kundalini yoga came back to me. My whole body shook as I sobbed. I shared with two of my best friends that I was reconsidering the Kundalini yoga I had trained in. I wasn’t very committed to my online training as I didn’t enjoy learning that way and did not find it to be the same rich experience as I had in person with the yoga that I fell in love with originally. I still felt though that I did not want to be a part of this lineage – back to the shadow it goes. Shortly after that time, though, my masculine and feminine energies within came into balance. It was a very celebratory time.

There was a time of stagnancy after this. My energy wasn’t moving much. I went for a few months without seeing a healer. I can see now that Kundalini yoga might have helped but I was not ready to accept the practice back into my life at the time. I was connecting deeply with my feminine energy at this time. I decided to reconnect with someone who had really helped to get my energy moving at the start of the summer, and the same thing happened again. Prior to the Christmas season, my consciousness was actively expanding once again, and the journey continued. I had a very sacred holiday season. In all the love that I had cultivated within, I was able to hold space for a lot of my own darkness, and doing so continued to grow the love. I continued to see this healer who practices sacred ceremony rooted in the Divine Feminine. She really helped me to connect more deeply with my own feminine nature and attending individual and group healing sessions with her helped me to come into alignment with my Divine Feminine nature. A year after my initial crown opening, beautiful blessings abounded in my spiritual journey. I really realized that I had been walking the path of the priestess without knowing it. It had been introduced to me in the healing program that I did with the astrologer, and now was deepening as I worked with this very powerful healer in my community. I became much more effectively able to work with and move my own energy. She also helped me to activate my ability to speak Light Language, which was an absolute game changer. It is an incredibly powerful medicine for quickly shifting energy and once activated on the day of the spring Lunar Eclipse, also a 3/3 portal day, I spoke it as much as possible. Luckily I worked alone most of the time and could speak it at work. It helped me to expand much more quickly and more and more dialects came online as more and more of my soul blueprint was being activated and anchored. Although my healing offerings to others had slowed down as I was deeply within my own work once again, I started asking family and friends once again to please see me once the Light Language came online as I wanted to incorporate it into my sessions. My energy healing sessions transformed into more of a soul-led offering. I also officially received my Reiki 3 certificate in the spring, and I believe that was Divinely timed as I was still really anchoring in to my current understanding of myself as a multidimensional being of Light.

Once again, I had a soul retrieval experience related to Kundalini yoga. This time, I had loved myself enough to accept how much I had loved the practice and how much I really wanted to teach it. I believe that through this experience of the practice being part of my shadow, it helped me to face my shadow enough to be able to hold the responsibility of leading a group through this powerful practice from a place of higher consciousness and from someone who has loved and integrated her darkness into the Light. I also believe that I was helping the collective in processing both victim and persecutor archetypes related to Kundalini yoga. Some wise friends, a highly conscious psychic/intuitive counselor, and my own expanded consciousness helped me to realize that the souls who were involved in both victim and persecutor roles within the lineage signed up to do so according to their own souls’ journeys. I was devastated for the victims and angry with the persecutors that I learned about in my research and ultimately self love and acceptance helped me to realize how that story was helping me to heal my own soul. Accepting all of this allowed the Divine Masculine aspect of my soul to strengthen. I started practicing Kundalini yoga again and cried many tears as it felt like a homecoming. I reconnected with my teachers and that was incredibly healing. I am so thankful for this experience to serve in processing the collective karma of the lineage and to have experienced all the emotions and varying perspectives that I did in relation to the lineage that I teach. The sum of everything whole includes its darkness and its light and this practice is no exception. Ultimately, what I know is that within any spiritual practice, those in a position of leadership have the potential to abuse their power. Ultimately though, if the teachings are coming through a clear channel and from a place of pure intentions, and if the practice suits someone, then it is of benefit. This whole experience taught me to really be able to tune in to and listen to my own truth. From the beginning, I loved the practice and was drawn to it to have this whole experience and to grow in love and wisdom. All of my teachers have been beautiful and of pure intention. I take the responsibility of leading people through this practice very seriously and it has helped me physically and energetically to work through a lot of density. The shadow side of the history of the practice has helped me with my own shadow. But ultimately, getting involved in any practice or spiritual community involves discernment. I am so thankful to welcome this powerful practice back into my life. Now that I have navigated Kundalini awakening and am much more energetically open, I am much more sensitive to how powerful it is because I can easily feel the energy moving in my body as I practice. Ultimately, each student of Earth school needs to decide for themselves what resonates and what doesn’t. I have also engaged in so many different practices and modalities that I understand that what works at one time might not work at another. During the time that I had made Kundalini yoga part of my shadow, it would not have been beneficial for me to practice first of all because I did not know what to believe about it at the time, and thought/belief is powerful. I was working through very intense fourth density energies. This was a time for me to focus more on my feminine nature, tending to my emotional needs in a more gentle way, and to just really hold space for myself. I carried on with following my birth chart and the current astrology and that continued to help me immensely. This was also not a time for a lot of movement. I will never tell anyone that Kundalini yoga is appropriate at all stages of the journey. At times, it might be too forceful or too much for the nervous system. At those times, there are many other modalities such as a more gentle yoga such as yin yoga for example, floatation therapy, massage, and really just slowing down in general. During the Year of the Snake, I really took the time to go within and was very socially withdrawn. It was a necessary stage in the journey. Once the year of the Fire Horse started, everything that I had started in the Year of the Dragon began to come together – the healing through the guidance of the celestial bodies, the energy healing that I started practicing on myself getting to the point that I can confidently and skilfully practice on others, and the Kundalini yoga that had helped me so much to awaken and through the stage from third to fourth dimension coming back into my life to heal the Divine Masculine and move from my own healing journey to using my healed wounds (including the practice of Kundalini yoga) to help others on their healing journey. I can see now that all of the confusion and darkness was a necessary part of my growth and learning and I value all of the experiences that have led me to where I am today. I love myself more than I ever have in my journey and I am excited to share that love with others through modalities that have played the biggest roles in my awakening.

I am continually evolving and so is my perspective on everything, including the practice of Kundalini yoga. Some practitioners and teachers choose to follow the original teachings precisely. Some practice Sikhism. I do neither - I simply love the practice, have found it an effective tool in my journey, and appreciate how its history helped me so deeply in my shadow work. I adapt the teachings as I see fit and my classes are infused with my own soul wisdom and personal experience. As with all practices, the experience as a student will be different with every teacher. My studies and exploration continue as I embark upon my teaching journey.