Arjan and Angad are my teachers. They share the practice of Kundalini yoga in the tradition of Yogi Bhajan, about three minutes from the 6 train in Union Square. Arjan and Angad are each a trove of information, which often seems to just spill forth seamlessly and without borders during or in between classes managing the studio. I came to Kundalini circuitously, as many seem to, brought by a mentor, one of my first teachers. What I found was a rich spiritual context which I hadn’t realized I had been looking for in yoga. As I sat and breathed and moved on the soft sea foam carpet amongst an eclectic pool of yogis, I eventually started to see true change happening inside me. The personal evolution I experienced was no doubt due to the collective knowledge of Arjan and Angad. This is but a small taste of their immense wisdom. . . Cutting through the illusion “You know every time you tell a story the story changes. Sometimes you’re 60 years old, you’re still suffering from the molestations you suffered when you were 7. And you’re telling the same story but the story’s not the same and you’re just recreating it over and over and over and in kundalini yoga we deal with experiencing it and moving it from your subconscious mind to your hopefully conscious mind in a way to release it into infinity and that’s why I’m here and I teach.” “There was an energetic issue. There was too much energy when I was younger for not enough physical mass. So I would take a class, I could not sleep for the next three days. So, no, it was not immediate because it was, although absolutely wonderful and attractive as anything else, it was a little disconcerting as well that I could not sleep . . . so, no, it was a gradual process. And as the energy started to stabilize I was able to do it more often and at some point I was like, ‘You know, you should try teacher’s training cause I really love this stuff and I think I understand it,’ in a physical way.” I know some teachers are all about the spiritual realms. I don’t think I can get there if it’s not through the experience of this physical body at this very moment in time and space. It can’t happen. That’s when I feel sacred and then I can go beyond. “It’s the easiest and shortest way. You can sit there and meditate and pray for whatever you want and you can go to a psychoanalyst and talk about your head pains for the next fifteen years. It doesn’t make him bad or worse or anything, it’s just not my path, you know, I like it more immediate. If I need to cry, I cry; if I need to scream, I scream; if I need to run, I run. I can run really fast.” “As the illusions went down, reality started itself and it shifted places and my electromagnetic field became stable . . . a little more stable. But it was not overnight and there were many, uh, big time events in the journey to a more stable being. During my teacher’s training there was a time that I actually couldn’t stop crying for 5 days and nights and there was no specific reason. It’s just that it opened up the stuff, it’s coming out, I didn’t care about what it was.” “And you know I could have talked for ages. And changed the story over and over every time. It would never accomplish the depth of the release that was experiencing and reconnecting: using old connections, creating new connections, enforcing the new connections and weakening and gradually [severing] the old connections that don’t serve you any longer. And the new connections are really great connections. Mind connections.” There’s no Shangri-Lah, babe “It’s a scientifically-based technique that will incorporate the composition of your blood, the depth of your breath, with yoga movements and focus of the mind, assimilations of the glandular system to slowly start fixing your nervous system, making [you] healthier, stronger. There are meditations to release subconscious garbage and are so fast-working in comparison to other techniques… The beauty of it is that it gets it all together at the same time during an hour and a half it’s like ‘Woah!’ [laughs] And then you have the facts right on your hand. I like to scrutinize everything and the reading really does help. I’ve experienced a few religions and a few techniques before this and it’s like ‘What? What did you guys say? I’m out of here.’ That’s why there’s no Shangri-Lah, babe.” — I appreciate that perspective a lot. “Yeah perspective for the 21st century.” “Little by little I recognized that it was doing something to me and that’s when I began to really appreciate it. I don’t think I had one of those experiences in the beginning where it’s like, ‘Wow, this is it.’ But as time passed I recognized I was really somewhere else as a result of that practice.” “It really is everything. It’s my support, it’s my reason, it’s my passion, it’s everything. It’s my friends, it’s my family, it’s my vocation, my avocation.” “I think at a certain point [teaching] is a necessity. Even if you might say, ‘What reason do I have to sit there and share anything?’ It’s part of the deal. Yogi Bhajan said he wanted to create teachers not students. I think in this realm when something puts you somewhere you say, ‘Okay, I’m here.’ And it’s then your mission to do it.” I think as long as you’re here you’re still a student. – Angad “It’s interesting because people look at yoga in so many different ways and there are so many different possibilities of forms and facets and even this one tradition there’s so many different possibilities. One of my most favorite things Yogi Bhajan ever said is, he was laughing at the students, ‘So what are we all doing here?’ And nobody could answer him. And he said ‘Really after all these years you still don’t get it. I’ve been sitting here for 30 years saying, Please do something for your soul.’ And that’s it.” “And so when I think about this practice or think about sharing it – even though it does all these 100 and 1,000 other great things – with me that’s where my most beloved connection to it is. That it really gets you there and it deals with you as a conscious human being who’s aware of themselves as a soul, and the soul of the soul of the soul of the soul that we’re all in.” Photos by Alexis Penny
