Teaching Kundalini Yoga

Should we teach what we have not experienced?

This question came in to our student group and I’m feeling a bit like advice columnists, Ann Landers or Dear Abby, but I’m going with it in gratitude, because I prayed for this inspiration.

What is Kundalini?

It is said by ancient sages and rishis that Kundalini is a dormant energy stored at the base of the spine. It can rise or be raised up the spine and through the crown of the head, thereby causing the person to experience a type of transformation. If managed properly, the transformation will look like an improved life. You may have heard about out of body experiences, or near death experiences, where the person came back with a “new” outlook on life. Radical life changes occur, usually for the better. This Kundalini energy can raise spontaneously but for most, it is years long, dedicated and disciplined practice to raise Kundalini intentionally. A lot of people ask, “How will I know if my Kundalini has risen?” and my teacher told us, “You definitely know”, and I didn’t. I didn’t know my Kundalini had risen and descended all the way back in 2014, but guess what? It looked more like a nervous breakdown. It looked like mental illness.

My Kundalini Experience

In 2020 I ran across an online ad on Instagram for Yoga teacher training. I’d long wanted to study yoga more in depth, though I had no idea why, really. I’d never been to a class in a studio. I didn’t love yoga, I didn’t know much about yoga, only that it can help with low back pain and sciatica, stuff like that. The deal was tough to beat, it was the early onset of lockdowns during the Covid pandemic, it was online training for a 200 hour yoga teacher certificate for $99. I couldn’t believe it because all the trainings I’d shopped were thousands of dollars, nothing I could afford, certainly. Yet, here’s this “too good to be true” deal and I took it!

By 2022 I’d studied over 1500 hours of yoga and my studies continue today. Eventually, I found myself in a Kundalini Teacher Training course, practicing in live classes every day and this went on for an entire year. It wasn’t until after I’d studied 500 hours of Kundalini Yoga, practiced an entire year in live online classes with my Yoga Master teachers, and read a book called, Kundalini Tantra by Swami Satyananda Saraswati that I remembered my Kundalini awakening eight years earlier. So, do I teach Kundalini Yoga, even with my experience. Not yet. Here’s what I told my classmates;

“I graduated the 500 hour course and have not taught Kundalini yet.

I sell the course (for a small commission)that I took on my website because I can’t do better than that. You can check that out here if you like.

I AM moving towards teaching it now after a long time integration because I actually did have a spontaneous kundalini rising in 2014 and it took me 500 hours of training, a year of live Kundalini classes and reading the book Kundalini Tantra to realize what happened and because of my experience, my opinion is: “No. One should not teach Kundalini Yoga unless they have experienced Kundalini rising, descent and integration”. At the very least, teach only what you’re absolutely comfortable with and sure about. But this is only my opinion and free will is a thing. Why haven’t I taught it?
Because sometimes Kundalini rising presents as mental illness and unless the person has a solid foundation and discipline to practice controlling the Kundalini, I can’t work with them and I also don’t know and haven’t found anyone yet with that discipline…or the desire. Note: Each person’s experience will be unique to them. No Kundalini awakening will be the same and this is why we typically avoid discussing individual experiences.

I also cannot work with someone drinking alcohol or taking drugs and people do that too, especially while experiencing mental health issues (kundalini rising).

Being diagnosed with bipolar 1 disorder, generalized anxiety disorder and ADHD, I thought my kundalini rising was another nervous breakdown.

Every one of my tiny “awakenings” have been terribly traumatic and not at all “peace, love and light” and all “yogi-like” while sitting in a lotus pose.

I wanted to shave my hair off like Brittany Spears! I truly understood her in that moment.

I heard music and chimes and tinkling in my head and Pink Floyd “is there anybody….out there?”

I was crying and hyperventilating and probably breath holding during my long cries out when I heard a crack in my head and left my body through the top of my head and floated up there like a balloon tied to a toddler’s wrist. So, like, I died. I told this to my mom only just this year and she said “You died!”. I did. I died, I had an OBE (out of body experience), experienced Samahdi. I left my body through my crown and became all that is. I saw everything, I heard everything, everything was happening all around me and I was a silent witness to it all. I couldn’t speak and didn’t have a body, it was down below…

It was what we practice when we practice withdrawing the senses (pratyhara) or how we notice sound far away then closer then closer…and how we practice that “it’s all just music”. It’s happening! Everything is happening! The birds were singing, traffic was trafficking, life was going on and I was just a witness to it.

Then, what no one talks about, Shiva and Shakti had met outside my body at my crown and unified and came back down. The descent of Kundalini, something we don’t talk about when all we’re trying to do is raise it.

Then I tore my life apart. I ripped it to shreds. I destroyed my family but it needed to be. My life needed to be ripped to shreds and made to align with my soul’s purpose, that’s why we’re here.

So, it was messy and it was heartbreaking and I had to choose myself and it was life or death for me because I was killing myself running from (my SELF) soul’s purpose.

I used being diagnosed as disabled as a reason to overcompensate in the household because I “couldn’t work” outside the home so instead of taking care of me I took care of them and made myself a doormat and finally it ended with another nervous breakdown, but really it was Kundalini and yes, I probably did look insane to dismantle my marriage, my life, distance myself from toxic dynamics and become what I’ve become. Peaceful, content, equanimous (that’s a practice).

Yes, you can imagine how no one I know or knew then wants to learn from me. I have diagnoses, broke my marriage vows, took up yoga, sold everything and moved 3 states away and live in a camper on 20 acres with chickens and goats and two dogs and a garden with a lifelong and trustworthy friend.

It’s been a decade since my kundalini rising , I earned my 500 kundalini hours in 2022 and haven’t taught a single kundalini class but I’m leaning into the idea.

May this help whoever it needs to help.

Namaste!

MiYogini