This extraordinary yoga manual is a must for any woman! Organized by topic, you can focus your practice on a particular problem, such as clearing old patterns, or you can simply open it up and try something new. Each chapter includes a vigorous kriya or two, several meditations, and a mantra practice to connect you to the divine within. Chapters include "Awakening Your Inner Vitality: Essentials for Daily Practice", "Woman as Her Own Psychologist I: Clearing the Self" and II: Cultivating the Self", "Healing & Relaxation: Becoming Healthy and Happy", Beauty Begins Within: Personal Discipline and the Graceful Woman and nine more.
Yogi Bhajan
Born Harbhajan Singh Puri, August 26, 1929, in the part of India that became Pakistan in 1948, he was the son of a medical doctor. He spent his youth in privileged environments in private schools and his summers in the exclusive Dalhousie mountain region of Himachal Pradesh. As a young boy he attended a Catholic convent school.
"If you can't see God in all, you can't see God at all.â
When he was just eight years old he began his yogic training with an enlightened teacher, Sant Hazara Singh. His teacher proclaimed Yogi Bhajan a Master of Kundalini Yoga when he was sixteen years old.
He married Inderjit Kaur in 1952. They had two sons, Ranbir Singh and Kulbir Singh, and a daughter, Kamaljit Kaur.
In September of 1968, he left India for Canada to teach yoga at Toronto University. After two months in Canada, he flew to Los Angeles for a weekend visit. Arriving in Los Angeles virtually unknown, Yogi Bhajan met a number of young hippies, the spiritual seekers of that era, and immediately recognized that the experience of higher consciousness they were attempting to find through drugs could be achieved by practicing the Science of Kundalini Yoga, simultaneously rebuilding their nervous systems.
Breaking the centuries-old tradition of secrecy surrounding the empowering science of Kundalini Yoga, he began teaching it publicly.
From humble beginnings, teaching first at the East West Cultural Center and then in a student's furniture store in West Hollywood, "The Yogi" was like a magnet. Students flocked to his classes. Soon he was teaching at colleges and universities, including Claremont and UCLA, and accepting invitations to teach in other cities.
"It's not the life that matters, it's the courage that you bring to it"
Yogi Bhajan crusaded tirelessly to educate, uplift, and enlighten everyone he met. His basic message was "It is your birthright to be healthy, happy, and holy". Embodying a rare combination of spiritual and down-to-earth practical wisdom, Yogi Bhajan was equally at home at pulpit, podium, board room, living room, or sitting on a grassy lawn teaching and educating people of all walks of life. His expertise and influence extended into the realms of communication, healing arts, business, religion, and government.
"Don't love me, love my teachings. Become ten times greater than me."
Although Yogi Bhajan has left his physical form, he asked that his students and those who knew him celebrate his Homecoming. The light of his spiritual essence continues to bless all those whom he loved, and that is the entire human race.
Kundalini Yoga
From Lectures and Conversations with Yogi Bhajan, 1969
I have recognized, with the blessing of my Master, that it is possible to be healthy, to be happy, and to be holy while living in this society; but you must have energy so that your dead computer may live and pass on the signal to you and compute all that you want to do in this society. We call this energy, in the old science, the kundalini, which has been blocked in the Mooladhara, the lowest of all chakras or lotuses.
These are all imaginary things. Great big books have been written on them and these books also misled me for many years. Still I learned about it, and all these chakras (or circles as we call them in English), have put us in so many circles that we do not come out of it and we reach nowhere. There is a way we should set our computer to be in direct contact with Him, the Biggest Computer, and all things must then work automatically. That cannot work until the Kundalini, the spiritual nerve, breaks through the blockage at the Mooladhara, and thus, travels up and reaches the stage so that you may have Superconsciousness in Consciousness.
You must generate the pressure of the praana and mix it with the apaana, and thus, when the two join together, you generate heat in the praanic center. With this heat of the praana, you put a pressure or charge on the Kundalini, the soul nerve, which is coiled in three and a half circles ("kundalâ means "the curl of the hair of the beloved," it does not mean snake or serpent) on Mooladhara. This will awaken it so that it may pierce through the imaginary chakras and pass ultimately through Jalandhara Bandha (neck lockâthe final blockage in the spine before the energy reaches the head).
Now, let me define a few terms. Praana is the life forte of the atom. Apaana is elimination or the eliminating force. These are two forces, positive and negative, in us which are governed by pingala and ida; that is, right and left. When we join these two energies under the power and the science of Kundalini Yoga, we mix the praana with the apaana and, under that pressure, bring the Kundalini up. When it passes through the central nerve or shushmuna, it reaches the higher chakras or lotuses, and thus man can easily look into the future. His psychic power becomes activated. He can know his total surroundings and he is a blessed being.
After one inhales the praana deep (down to the Navel Point) and pulls the apaana with the root lock (up to the Navel Point), praana and apaana mix at the Navel Center. This is known as Nabhi Chakra at the fourth vertebra. Heat is felt during the Kundalini awakening and that heat is the filament of the shushmuna or central spinal channel being lit by the joining of praana and apaana. Below the Nabhi Chakra, the energy leaves the navel and goes to the rectum (or lower center) and then it rises. This is called Reserve Channels. It relates to your Astral Body.
Then, there are six more chakras through which the Kundalini must riseâand it will happen all at once. Once you have raised it, that's it. The hardest job is to keep it up, to keep the channels clean and clear.
From the rectum to the vocal cord is known as the silver cord. From the neck to the top of the head is the passage. From the third eye to the pineal gland is the gold cord. To make the energy rise in these cords and passages, you must apply hydraulic locks. You must put a pressure. You live in California? You know how we take the oil out of the ground? Put a pressure and the oil will come out. Your spine is a staircase of energy. 1) Mool Bandh brings apaana, eliminating force, to the navel a fourth vertebra, the central seat of the Kundalini. 2) Diaphragm Lock takes it to the neck. 3) Neck Lock takes it up all the rest of the way.
The pineal gland or seat of the soul, does not work when the tenth gate (top of the head) is sealed, but if the pineal will secrete (when the Kundalini heat comes), your pituitary will act as radar, keeping the mind from negativity.
Yes, Kundalini is known as the nerve of the soul. This is to be awakened. Your soul is to be awakened. When soul gets awakened, there remains nothing. What else?
In the practical reality, these chakras are imaginary and nothing else. This Kundalini is just a Kundalini and nothing else. It is not very important. These praanas and apaanas are just there. Everything is set in us. We lack nothing. We use these terms simply to make the process clear so we can get on with it. It is very simple. After getting myself into the darkness for years together, I found that if I would have known on the first day that it was so easy, I could have saved myself a lot of hassle. When I found out that the Kundalini really can come up like this, I was astonished. It was a surprise to me. I said. âThat's all there is to the Kundalini?â and my Master said, âYes.â
