IKYTA Library

Community Articles

Latest Articles

123 results

Immune Fitness: Teaching Kundalini Yoga to People Living with HIV

By ramdeshk Singh

By Shanti Shanti Kaur Khalsa Dr. Michael Gottlieb together with Dr. Joel Weisman wrote a report that appeared in the June 5, 1981 issue of the Centers for Disease Control’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report identifying Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome as a new disease. That report signaled the official start of the AIDS epidemic. Under the guidance of Yogi Bhajan, I started the first Kundalini Yoga classes for people living with HIV in 1986. The health and fitness industry was booming; Jane Fonda’s Workout studio was just up the street from Guru Ram Das Ashram in Los Angeles. From the beginning…

How Kundalini Yoga Saved my Life

By Ravi Khalsa

How Kundalini Yoga (Literally) Saved my Life in Graduate School It’s August 26, 2014 at 4:15am and I’m taking the old-fashioned elevator up to the 5th floor where my former yoga home is located. As the gate of the elevator closes and the man sitting inside presses a button, I feel like I’m in a time machine that’s taking me back to 2006.  Eight long years have passed since I stepped foot in this magical place, Kundalini Yoga in the Loop, situated between artist shops in the Fine Arts Building on South Michigan Avenue.  My last memories of practicing Kundalini…

Kundalini Co-Op in San Francisco

By Ravi Khalsa

The Kundalini Co-op is the first California worker owned yoga cooperative.  We designed the cooperative to create and support community through yoga classes and events in a sustainable manner for ALL individuals.  It is our hopes that more worker-owned yoga cooperatives follow across the world to make the TRUE art of yoga affordable and accessible to ALL individuals. In 2009 I moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco. The change of cities was welcome and what an incredible city to move to! Yet there was something most definitely lacking…… a thriving Kundalini community such as the one I had been a part of in Los Angeles….

2014 Teachers Conference

By Ravi Khalsa

Teachers Together in ExcellenceGuru Ram Das Puri, New Mexico Friday, June 20th IKTYA Teachers Conference: 8 Elements of Excellence Course – Knowledge Come early to Solstice and join us for this exciting conference to experience transformation, growth and expansion. Coming together to present and learn together as students, teachers and trainers of Yogi Bhajan. An opportunity to co-create as a group of multi-generational yogis where every voice has a chance to be heard to build a culture of mutuality, collaboration and prosperity. Bring your mat/sheepskin, journal/pen, snacks and water bottle “It is very fortunate you have this Association. When I’ll be physically gone,…

Urban Yoga Chicago: Creative, Collaborative Kundalini

By Ravi Khalsa

By DukhNiwaran Kaur Khalsa Creativity and collaboration. These two Aquarian qualities guide Urban Yoga Chicago as we strive to make Kundalini Yoga a household name in Chicago. Founded by three yogis with different levels of experience and a shared passion for Kundalini Yoga, our roots are collaboration. Knowing that the model of a one-owner yoga studio would not work for us or for the coming Aquarian Age, we were looking outside the box to find a new way of bringing Kundalini Yoga out into the world. Our way of doing business needed to match our experience of Kundalini Yoga—empowering, life-changing,…

We went to the Chilean Yoga Festival!

By Ravi Khalsa

by Guruka Kaur This year was the seventh annual Yoga Festival in Chile. For the last two years the festival has been attended by about 350 people from all over South America: Venezuela, Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, Boliva, Ecuador, Peru, and Columbia, and Mexico and as far away as Spain! This year the Chilean Yoga Festival joined 3HO Foundation International in using the same theme—the First Sutra of the Aquarian Age: Reconoce que el otro eres tu – Recognize the other person is you!   It is a very cozy and inspiring event giving people the opportunity to experience the…

How I fell in Love with Kundalini Yoga 40 years later

By Ravi Khalsa

By Ravi Kaur Khalsa Prologue My mother met Yogi Bhajan when I was 4 years old. Kundalini Yoga transformed her life and she had to meet “the Yogi.” My brother and I tagged along as she met with him. Our lives were never the same. We moved into the 3HO ashram in Eugene, Oregon and we did yoga. I went to boarding school in India from ages 11 – 16, and we did yoga. I moved to Tucson to work at 3HO SuperHealth when I was 17 and started teaching yoga. I got married at 18 and started working for…

Kundalini Yoga in South Africa: Opportunities for Expansion

By Dhanjot Kaur

By Pritam Hari Kaur South Africa is a multi-layered society; it reveals itself by degrees if you are committed to finding it and living here for a while. The first interface is the sometimes lush, sometimes stark beauty—the impossibly rich textured mountains and outdoor experiences, the deep valleys, blue oceans, healthy sunshine, abundant fruit and vegetables, and the smiling faces. The next layer is the abject poverty of the 40% that scrape by with barely anything and how this tears your heart right open and you ask how you can live with that. The next layer might be a dance…