// Notes from Kundalini Yoga Class, 4 Day Journal
Day 1
November 10th, 2017.
Today was a total shift in my otherwise controlled behavior.
I let go of my anxiety completely and I took control. What I have been going through these couple of weeks has gone from black to light without me even noticing the shift that has been so incredibly transforming. I have had some great days at school for the last couple of days. We started the first day at 09.00 am with so many hugs and greetings from our fellow students. We sat together on our yoga mats in the spacious meditation hall as a sea of turbans united in one breath. We began by initiating our yoga practice with three “Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo” which is the Adi Mantra we tune in with on every class. We tune in to the divine flow and self-knowledge we all have within ourselves and then it links us to the Golden Chain of teachers. After the tune-in, we continued with the Kriya for Awakening the 10 Bodies with a 22-minute Meditation called “Humme hum Brahm hum”. The Mantra is good for creative expression and communication, which I personally feel I have reaped so much benefit from. I was so happy and grateful to even hear our teacher say that we were going to do this meditation since this is a Mantra I have been listening to at home. I just love it, it`s simply beautiful. You can listen to it here if you would like 🙂
In the latter part of the meditation the sun lit up the whole room, it awakened me from within with its bright light. My eyes were closed the whole time while the sun embraced me in Savasana. It was the most beautiful experience to start Yoga before sunrise and experience how life suddenly awoke with the light that spread throughout the whole meditation hall. I felt so blessed.
In school, we have a buddy group were we share how our assignments from when we don’t attend school have gone. We shared our opinions on The Code of Ethics and Professional Standards of a Kundalini Yoga Teacher. We talked, listened, laughed and said our thanks when suddenly interrupted by our teacher saying out loud to all of us, Inhale and exhale. We are around 20-30 students of yoga here in class. The teacher then asked if any of us wanted to share what we had talked about together in the class. Previously I would have thought something in the line of, “I know have so much to say but I don`t know how” “I`m scared to voice my opinions and share my ideas in class” I used to let my anxiety take control of myself. I had forgotten I had a voice within. I knew all the time I had the power within me, but I was too scared to voice my opinion openly.
This time was different. I raised my hand after a fellow student had shared her story first. I spoke. I have never heard my voice this strong ever before. I felt free at last as I listened to the depths of my own heart that carried the voice that had finally found a home.
I am ready to speak
I am ready to face my fear
I am vulnerable but I find great courage in finding my voice.
It has been long hidden
And now I have come home
I am not afraid
People were clapping and some even winked at me. It felt so incredible to have finally have been liberated from the imaginary chains that previously had held me down. I had myself to thank this time. Another student came up to me a bit later during our break and told me she too needed to find her voice. Another student told me how beautiful it was to hear me speak from my heart.
If I would summarize this experience in one word I would call it a (massive) BREAKTHROUGH!!
Day 2.
November 11, 2017
It`s 05.42 in the morning and its raining outside now. I can hear the sound of chattering pipes playing tunes from the drumming rain. The sound of cars humming by in the darkened streets. The coolness of winter sweeping across and up my legs. There is a dance of silence that spreads amidst the single standing street lights as a mindful breath of fresh air. I enjoy the silence just sitting here and just being home in the present with my thoughts.
My Sadhana (spiritual practice) begins just before sunrise in about 45 minutes and I have to get ready for school. I have made some oatmeal cereal and chocolate oat milk for breakfast. Before morning yoga and meditation, one should only eat a light meal since it doesn’t feel that good to sit in meditation or do yoga asanas on a full stomach. I’m really looking forward to today I’m also so excited to try the new essential oil that I bought the other day here in Stockholm. The essential oil has an “awakening” effect and it smells like I have gone to heaven, so uplifting. Our morning meditation continues for 3 hours and I have fallen asleep during some of the mantras previously, I’m excited to see if this actually works to keep me awake.
The first meditation we chant is actually a Sikh prayer that talks about the stages of the creation of man from his soul. I love this chant as it assists so powerfully to the mind, you don`t have any thoughts at all and you simply recite the words which are in Gurmukhi. The frequency of the words you express continuously vibrate throughout the body, in my chest, in the sinuses and my forehead.
I have to go no.
btw I fell asleep.
We have by now gone through the 10 bodies + the 11th embodiment which is the radiant body. I will do a whole blog post on this later on since it requires more in-depth details on what each of the bodies means and how we can begin to attend to them. Our teachers handed out a numerological booklet where we were assigned to calculate our own numbers. Soul number, gift number etc. We were also to sit down and talk to a student whom we hadn’t talked to today. The numbers I got gave me the message that I needed to find more faith that I have the truth in me.
Our days are 12 hours long, they can be quite challenging due to lack of sleep but I need to get to bed early tonight. I was talking with a student sitting next to me in class during our lunch break. She told me she always had to be perfect all the time. She continued to talk about how she had refurbished her entire home to have natural materials and everything was perfected to each detail. She told me she wanted to go home but didn’t want to miss class and the rest of the assignments for today. She had to cook and pack her school bag before going to sleep and get ready for the morning after and felt really drained. I told her to go and also listen to herself and what her body was telling her. She was tired and I tried to help her the best way I could. It’s very important to break the unhealthy habits of always wanting to control everything. There is nothing in this world that is perfect, everything can be perfected to some degree but having the idea of perfection controlling your every move is not a healthy way that contributes to your mental or emotional state, neither your body. She stood up and folded her blanket we use in Savasana (rest pose) and put it neatly on the bench and she left the room waving back at me. Less than a minute later she came back and went straight towards the bench and folded the blanket again even more neatly. We smiled at each other and then she was gone.
This is what I was talking about, it is hard to break habits that are controlling our lives. But if we mindfully set our intentions to notice and observe what is healthy and unhealthy actions that we partake in our daily lives, we can step by step alter the network of our own minds and bring a more balanced way of living to ourselves.
Our class ended at 18.15 pm
Day 3.
November 12, 2017
I woke up 05.45 AM
Good morning, I`m setting the intention of the day. The healing power of the self through initiation and morning meditation. When we start our day by listening to our inner needs we become even more aware of our perceptions and what we allow ourselves to feed off in our minds. We need to awaken within ourselves the power of intention to become more receptive about what we actually need and start to live in truth and accordance with that truth we have within to know our true potential as souls living a human life. I’m eating my breakfast, I filled a bowl 1/5 parts of cereal and drank one cup of Classic Yogi Tea just to get me going these 3 hours of morning sadhana. I`ve been loving these Yogi Teas for a while now, I even started collecting the quotes. I cant drink one single teacup without reading what quote it is this time.
Today the theme was happiness.
Wouldnt it be a better world if we all started our mornings with a smile and happiness? Today is a new day I can choose to fill with whatever intention Id like and I chose to heal as my goal.
I’m off to morning sadhana now.
Day 4.
November 13, 2017
Good Morning.
I have been trying to write every single day now, just to keep track on what’s going on during our classes. Today we have our last day at school and I didn’t fall asleep during the 3-hour long meditation. I am so pleased to see that I have progressed and I can stay awake during the whole chanting. I have been disciplining myself to stay awake so today I tried a trick while I was chanting, I rock back and forth on my sitting bones as I prayed. Today we talked about teachings methods and our teachers are so playful in the way they are grouping the students together to talk. Our teachers told us to stand up, she put on Indian music and asked us to dance around in the Meditation Hall. When the music stopped we should freeze and hold our hands out and reach out to the ones standing near to us. I sat down with a group of six students in a ring. Our teacher held up a bowl of notes, she called it the cosmic bowl that each group should pick a note from. On the note, it said: Yoga for Children. The whole day we discussed and wrote down all our ideas since we had to share our group discussion with the rest of the students at the end of the day. It was great, I learned a lot about how you start a business in so many fields of yoga, regarding marketing, what platforms that work for different areas etc. I love learning, I always have. And its very fun also to see that all that we go through during each class I have already been studying as a hobby since my early teens.
I feel that I at last, have found the perfect job where I can share my wealth of knowledge out to the world and how It changed me from within and it still does in many ways.
Since then I have started to meditate every day and made a challenge for myself to grow spiritually and to welcome the now more into my life. I am on the 22/365 days of meditation as of now.
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Thank you for reading!
Tiaga Nihal Kaur,
Namaste ॐ
Metta Yoga: Kundalini Yoga & Meditation for Awakening to Your Infinite Self 