International Kundalini Yoga Teachers Association

If you've noticed the world seems polarized lately, you are not alone. From politics to climate change and from pandemics to wars, it can feel like the human race is having a really hard time getting along. While these times can leave you feeling destabilized and down, the good news is that the polarization is because we're going through a transition from one astrological age to the next, and the coming period promises to be one of higher consciousness, compassion, and enlightenment.

What is an Astrological Age?

I receive many questions from people teaching yoga to children. One issue that comes up is what to do when a child becomes frustrated because she thinks she isn't doing it 'perfectly.'

Question: How do you deal with children who become frustrated when they aren't able to do some of the asanas or keep their eyes closed during meditation? Do you have any tips? Some children become angry with themselves when they can't perform perfectly. I have tried all sorts of different approaches and would love to hear your advice.

"We must go beyond the illusion of separateness so as to realize that we are all interconnected. Whatever our beliefs, we must seek to be instruments of love, peace, and light, so that we may be a force for good in this world."
-Dr. Joseph Michael Levry

Consider the vastness of our global practice community, and that each of us has our own unique reason for finding our way to the mat. With a body of teachings as rich and diverse as Kundalini Yoga, there is beauty in the invitation to choose what resonates, and engage the tools that speak to our soul.

Living a Conscious Life--Say What You Mean, Do What You Say, Live the Destiny of Your Soul

You may be drawn to practice yoga for many reasons. Perhaps you want to increase your flexibility, improve your health, or learn to manage the stress in your life.

The simplest description for stress I have ever heard is from Hans Selye, the Canadian physician, who first borrowed the word from engineering and applied it to a physiological process he observed in his patients. He described stress as simply the body's adaptation to change. It is how we respond whenever an internal or external event occurs.

Change can be as simple as a shift in room temperature or as destabilizing as losing one's job. Since change happens nearly every instant, we have a stress response nearly every instant. Stress is natural and necessary.

What Is Healing?

Healing, from the perspective of Kundalini Yoga, is different from curing. Curing is removing the illness, problem, or issue. Healing means to make whole. A person who is healed may also have an illness or disease.

When your body is in rhythm with infinite consciousness, there is health or ease. When this rhythm is lost, there is dis-ease. Understanding the art of healing in this way allows you to feel liberated and whole throughout your life, even as you encounter times of both conventional health and illness.

In the unconsciousness of our addictions, we are at a Distance from Ease. There is no ease in the body for we are disconnected from it. There is no ease in the mind because of the constant flow of garbage being sent to it from the subconscious. There is no ease in the spirit as we have lost sight of our Soul and its mission. The great tragedy of addiction is simply that we are divine beings that have utterly lost connection with that truth.

Yogis believe you have a thousand-petalled lotus that's partly etheric and partly philosophical at the top center of your head. For every petal, a complete thought is produced every second. So that's a thousand thoughts per second, which is serious computing power.

Some of these thoughts are conscious; most of them remain subconscious. All of these thoughts get channeled into different parts of the brain through neuro-pathways.

This article will take us through each of the eight chakras, offering a brief explanation with a Kundalini Yoga kriya and meditation to help bring each of these energy centers back into balance.

What are Chakras?

Chakras are energy centers that exist within the human body. These energy centers are mapped to different emotional and psychological issues and can be used to help identify imbalances and to establish internal harmony.

The combined effect of our chakra systems become who we are, how we feel, how we behave, and how we change.