Where’s the body?
“What this Kundalini yoga training taught me is how much I love Vinyasa”.
When listening to my friend S.’s voice note I let out a loud snort of laughter. Thankfully I was in a cafe in Goa, India, and there they are likely used to much grander outbursts of emotions. Also, I completely agree with her assessment, which is why I decided to enroll straight into a 300h vinyasa training less than 10 days after completely my Kundalini (as taught by Yogi Bhajan) 200h training.
Paradoxical? Yes and no. But let me take a step back.
Throughout this text, while I will not repeat it, I will refer to Kundalini yoga specifically as taught by Yogi Bhajan, not coming from other Himalayan lineages.
Photo by Pauline Colleu (@paulinecolleu.photography).
Kundalini, as you might know (maybe from my last article about it wink wink) is a style of yoga that works primarily on the energetic body, that complex network of lymph glands, nervous system, organs etc that come together to affect our energy. In many eastern traditions there are specific maps of the subtle energy body that you might have at least heard mentioned once or twice in your life: the meridians in Traditional Chinese Medicine, the nadis and the chakras in the yogic tradition. But I don’t want to get into a lengthy dissertation on the subtle energy body here.
Rather, let me bring you with me on my Kundalini training.
Imagine…
It’s 3:00 in the morning (yes, you read that right!) and the alarm clock rings in the quiet of night. Sharing a room with other 2 women meant a maximum of 10 minutes in the bathroom each, so that at 3:30 promptly, I and other 59 bleary-eyed souls could trudge up darkened staircases to the dimly lit shala. For the next 3 hours we would chant mantras and perform vigorous, quite unusual movements, all aimed at squeezing, pumping, massaging the areas in our internal body that most directly affect the energy body. While the chanting was not physically intense per se (with the exception of some limbs here and there going on strike and tingling like Milan’s summer mosquitoes), other physical practices indeed required strong muscles and even stronger willpower. You try laying on your back and keeping legs, torso and arms up for 6 minutes!
And yet…and yet… There was no real connection to the body in any of those exercises. On the contrary, when your lower back started to hurt from holding stretch pose for too long, or the inner abductors went on fire after too many legs scissoring, the indication was to push past your limits. Never really to listen to your body.
After a week or so of this, a change came. One of our head teachers, Gurmukh, lead us into a practice that included a solid 15+ minutes of stomping and shaking to fast-paced tabla drumming music. After her class everybody was buzzing with energy and excitement and conversations around the daily tray of rice and daahl (lentil curry) were all about “how awesome the practice was”. While giving due credit to Gurmukh’s skills and her heartfelt way of holding space and keeping the motivation high, I’d like to say…well no sh*t you felt energized! We finally got on our feet and moved beyond the confines of our 200x80cm yoga mats!
By the third week of the training, we had a visiting Ashtanga yoga teacher and, while the ashtanga practice is still very rigorous and repetitive (it’s all about perfecting the same sequence over and over again), people again felt great in the bodies. Why? Because we finally got to use those bodies to perform a wider range of motions than what had so far been our staple of stunted movements!
Kundalini practitioners themselves recognize that this practice brings you out of your own bodies, and they often choose to complement it with other movement exercises (from hatha yoga to pilates or HIIT) to stay grounded, aka in your body!
Beyond that, considering the body as just a tool strikes a wrong chord for me, as in our modern society we already tend to disregard our physical sensations.
How many times did you have to go to the office regardless of a splitting headache? Or period cramps? How many times did you just refuse to listen to a painful twinge in your muscles and decide to stick out with whatever form of exercises you decided to slot into your schedule?
Because “you got to exercise at least one hour 3 times per week”. Research says it.
When, during my Kundalini training, one of the assistant actually said “Pain is just weakness leaving the body” I was ready to go buy myself a pair of neon-colored pantsuit and a stepper. I already have sufficiently fluffy hair for the whole 80s aerobic aesthetic.
Mortifying the body is just NOT the way to go. Spending the majority of your time sitting is NOT the way to go.
Being in tune with and compassionate towards the body is the way to go.
At least for me.
I got into yoga through the very democratic doorway of asana (physical posture) practice. Then I added the focus on the breath. Then I loved how I could combine the two. Until a point in which I would practice asanas with my eyes closed because the joy, the wonder, was all inside, in how my body was just TERRIFIC! It supported me through so many different positions and movements! It’s filled with micro-sensations and feelings. If. We. Just. Learn. To. Listen. But don’t just take it from me! People that practiced with me had the exact same experience over as little as a weekly yoga practice over the course of 6 months!
The spiritual practice is a practice of being present in the moment and sit with what is, not escaping somewhere else to numb feelings (emotional or physical).
My 300h vinyasa training turned out to be much, much more body-focused than I knew it to be and I believed to be possible. The types of instructions given throughout the practices also shifted massively. The “Push past your limits! It’s all in your mind!” of the Kundalini training became “Move from the power of your kidneys!”. Which gave me another existential conundrum to solve - but more on that on another post.
As with everything in life, extreme experiences and their spillover effects usually have an expiration date. My friend S. is now devoted to her Kundalini yoga and practices at least an hour everyday, while still being very physically active. I have taken a big step back into my body and into my physical reality and now feel more resourced and balanced to engage again with the energetic practices.
What’s the best way forward? What’s the best style of yoga? As annoying as it might sound to you, it really depends. On the person and the phase of life and evolution in their practice. The only thing I’d say is that any absolutism and lopsided type of practice will likely make you into an absolutist and lopsided person. So at the end of the day the question is:
What kind of person do you want to be?
Photo by Pauline Colleu (@paulinecolleu.photography).
