The yoga of consciousness

Kundalini yoga is called the yoga of consciousness because it is the yoga that is supposed to awaken the energy of the Kundalini, an energy also called life energy or divine feminine energy Shakti. This energy is supposed to be housed in our root chakra, so between the sacrum and the perineum, roughly in the middle. When this energy awakens, it rises like a snake through our different chakras to finally reach the crown chakra. This is a rather simplified explanation, because in reality this energy makes several round trips in the body. How is it interesting or important to awaken your Kundalini energy? I find it rather complicated, at least for me, to understand the impact it can have. And for that, I like the definition Guru Jagat gave in her book Pour une vie invincible. She says that Kundalini yoga allows you to live an amplified life, in the positive sense of the term of course. I tried to understand why she said that and I explain it through these 5 points: • The first point is that it works on your nervous system and makes it capable of eliminating what it has stored, but also of taking on and processing a greater quantity of information, a greater quantity of stressors. And let’s say that in today’s society, with the avalanche of information, the number of tasks we must face and the acceleration of the pace of life, this is still a quite appreciated capacity. • The second point is that it helps the endocrine system, your hormonal system, to regulate better and therefore necessarily to be able to better eliminate all the toxins from the body, to regenerate you better. And let’s say that this too is an important point because we have a more polluted environment, we are more exposed to junk food, to toxins we can put on the skin, etc. • The third point is that Kundalini yoga helps you become aware of and consciously direct your thoughts. She says in her book that the mind really needs to be trained to become aware of and recognize thoughts so that we can choose them more and more consciously. And I think that this is an extremely important capacity, knowing that we have roughly 60,000 thoughts a day, most of which are somewhat unconscious. And it is work that Kundalini yoga makes it possible to do through meditation. • The fourth point is that it works on your energy system, your chakras, but also your so-called subtle bodies and this impacts what you attract in your life. I will detail this later. • The last point, a little more esoteric I admit, is that the more you practice Kundalini yoga, at least this is my experience, the more you develop subtle qualities. I have the impression that since I have been practicing Kundalini yoga, I have more and more intuition really about myself, about what is going to happen or what others feel, so this feeling has really been amplified with my Kundalini practice. Since I have been practicing Kundalini yoga, I also experience quite incredible coincidences.

The link with your emotional bathtub

I often give this bathtub example to explain your emotional balance. The tap of this bathtub, so what fills the bathtub with water, is the repetitive patterns you have that come from your past and that every time they repeat, generate over-reactions that fill your bathtub, and these over-reactions are activated in your body, in your autonomic nervous system, and not in your head. When you deprogram your patterns it is as if you close the tap of this bathtub. The first time you do it there is always water in your bathtub which represents all the emotions you could not process in your past and which remained stored in your body, and then all the current situations in which you did not manage to regulate your emotions will contribute to filling the water of your bathtub. This will have an impact on your ability to bounce back in the face of situations. As soon as something happens in your life, it will add water to your bathtub which makes it overflow faster. You can empty this storage with breathing techniques and notably the Breathwork technique that I explained in episode 21 with the Breathmaster from whom I obtained my Breathwork certification, Brian Kelly. Kundalini yoga also helps empty this surplus. I would say that the difference for me between Breathwork and Kundalini yoga is that Breathwork is a breathing method that will help you empty a lot but not necessarily in a targeted way. That is, the body will release what it needs to release in the order it chooses. Whereas Kundalini yoga will allow you a gentler and more regular release and depending on the yoga set or the type of breathing you do, you will target what you want to release. The last advantage of Kundalini yoga compared to Breathwork is that, if I keep using this bathtub example, it will work on the quality of your bathtub, so the enamel of the bathtub, the shape of the bathtub if you like, it will give back full health and full capacity to your nervous system and increase its resistance to stress. It will give back full health to your endocrine system and will rebalance the fluids of the brain and your neural connections. The goal of Kundalini yoga is to give back full health to all the systems of your body. And it even goes beyond your bathtub. It also works on the room, on your bathroom, that is, your system of thoughts, your energy, your destiny and your spiritual connection to the universe or to God depending on whether or not you have a belief system in this area. So you see that Kundalini yoga really has a multidimensional effect and I think that is why I feel so much impact. Another of my Kundalini yoga teachers, Harijiwan, compares human beings to a computer and says that human beings do not have a computer problem (the body) but often a processor problem (nervous system), that is, a lack of speed with which we manage to process the information or the difficulties of life that we receive and also a problem of the quantity of information we manage to handle at the same time. He says they also have a software problem, that is, the set of thoughts and the set of emotions through which we see things. For him, Kundalini yoga makes it possible to upgrade our processor and also our software. I find this illustration quite telling, especially for those who are a little more rational. I really experienced this upgrade during my first Kundalini retreat. I came across an image of a three-day retreat that Guru Jagat was offering at Rama in her institute in Mallorca. I went and within three days, I experienced so many changes in my hormonal balance, in my physical balance, on the esoteric level, on the energetic level that it was enough for me to decide to start the yoga teacher training at the Rama Institute which is located either in Mallorca, in Los Angeles or in New York. I am a yoga teacher but I do not offer Kundalini yoga classes in a studio. I really offer it as a tool in coaching so that the participants of my program learn to self-regulate.

A regulation tool for your nervous system

The most powerful tool that can influence your nervous system is your breathing. Depending on how you breathe, you can activate your sympathetic system or on the contrary activate your parasympathetic system and go into relaxation. I give you two quite simple examples of Kundalini yoga breathing. The first is the anger points exercise where you breathe through the mouth and make rather abrupt movements. And you will see that this will rather activate your sympathetic system and will help you express this anger.