Awakening the Coiled Snake and the Inner Sanctum

“Okay,” she says, “let’s open with the Adi Mantra. Inhale to begin.” Eyes closed, I breathe in deeply, and try to keep up.

“OOOOOOONNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGG NAAAAAAAAAMMMOOOOOOOOOO GURUUDEEEEEEEEEEEEEEV NAAAAAAAAAMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.”

This is my first Kundalini Yoga class and it already seems different from any yoga I’ve done. The studio—which is actually a living room without furniture—is lit by dim candle light and a small shrine at the front. Yogic art lines three of the walls, and the back wall is covered by mirrors. Satnam, the instructor, sits peacefully on a sheepskin.

She warms us up with spinal flexes. “Rotate your spine around in a circle,” she says. “But try to keep your head still. Inhale at the front, exhale at the back.” I spin my spine like a jump rope and try to hold my head in place. “Think Sat on the inhale and Nam on the exhale.” I inhale Sat and exhale Nam as I go around. Sat… Nam… Sat… Nam… I am chanting my instructor’s name in my head. “Sat means truth,” she explains, “and Nam means name. As in name of truth, or true identity.”

Next, a breathing exercise: “Clench your stomach muscles hard each time you breathe out. This is called breath of fire.” I start pumping my abs each time I breathe out. At a rate of one breath per second, I am expelling air out of my nose like an angry horse. My abs work hard and I keep going. Soon I start to get lightheaded. How long have I been doing this? Finally she tells us to take a deep breath, so I pull in a burst of air. “Hold it…” she says. “Tighten all your muscles. Hold it! And breathe out.”

Then she has us lay on our backs. Sweet relief. “Lift your hands and feet six inches into the air. Lift your head up and look at your feet. Hold that. Now do breath of fire.” Crap. I start horse-breathing again, and struggling to keep all of my appendages in the air. We go forever. “You’re halfway there,” she says. My body is starting to shake. My feet start wobbling so I hold them together. Just when I think I can’t keep going, she tells us to take a big breath and relax. I drop my limbs like lead weights.

We start the kriya—the main set of exercises. One pose flows into the next and they seem less difficult as we go. I lose track of time and figure I must be going into some kind of trance. Afterward, Satnam says to lay on our backs for shavasana—corpse pose. There’s no feeling like laying down after a hard yoga set and letting all your muscles go limp. She puts on music: a beautiful female voice nestled in soft, ethereal instruments. I have a funny feeling I’ve heard this, sometime before my earliest memories.

Eventually she brings us out of shavasana and back into easy pose—a cross-legged position. The music continues as we do more exercises, this time with pranayama and mantra—breathwork and chanting. We cover one nostril with our fingers and inhale, then block the other nostril and exhale. We get in a circle and chant, ek ong kar sat nam siri wahe guru over and over, until we are a single vibrant voice.

By the time we sing the closing song, I feel like I’ve been in this room since the beginning of time. The yoga has lulled me into another realm of thought, aided by soft candle light and soulful music. I’ve disassociated from the rest of reality and I don’t have a thought for the world outside. This is real. This is infinity. I feel giddy and a little silly, and it feels good.

When I leave the studio, I’m in love with the whole world. I walk down the street and I wish every person I see to be happy. I go to the store for some coconut water and a salad, and beam at the girl behind the counter. I see a person staring back at me, and all that entails. She seems to emerge as if from a shell. I’m bringing a piece of the yoga back with me, to share.

After several more classes with Satnam, I start class with another instructor named Mike. His class is similar, but with some twists. We do one exercise where we clap our hands in the air loudly, and then bend down and smack the ground—108 times. Each smack feels more powerful than the last, until it’s a thunderclap reverberating around the room. When I finish I stand there for a moment with my eyes closed. Then I open them and nearly fall over.

Later, something interesting happens: I’m looking ahead at the ground without focusing my eyes, and suddenly everything starts shimmering. There’s a brilliant pink, gold and blue film over everything I see, undulating like a soap bubble. Later, I tell Mike about the experience.

“Oh, don’t pay any attention to those,” he says. “They’re just a distraction.”

This surprises me—the visuals were powerful. But no, Mike says, they’re just a glimmer on the surface of the ocean. He gives an example of psychedelic drugs that produce vivid visuals for the user. But the visuals are not the point, he says. The point is to go deeper.

Yogi Bhajan: a yogi for a new age

Guru Rattana describes Kundalini Yoga as a science, art and technology that allows one to harness creative energy for purposes other than procreation, in her book “Transitions to a Heart Centered World through the Kundalini Yoga and Meditations.” Kundalini—which translates to “coiled”—describes energy at the base of the spine called shakti, which is thought to remain dormant and untapped most of the time. The idea of Kundalini Yoga is to awaken the coiled, sleeping snake of shakti energy and direct it upward through the spine and into the rest of the body to unite with another kind of energy called prana.

She also writes about Tantric Yoga, a practice that “attains enlightenment through the union and balance of male and female energy, either in sexual intercourse (red Tantra and the left hand path) or in non-sexual union (white Tantra or the right hand path, as taught by Yogi Bhajan).” The yogi she speaks of is her teacher of over 26 years. He is also the man whom Satnam and Mike have to thank for their lineage of teachings.

Yogi Bhajan was born Harbhajan Singh Puri in British India—what is now a part of Pakistan—in 1929. He was brought up in the tradition of Sikhism but began practicing Kundalini at an early age. When he was only 16 he was proclaimed by his teacher to be a master of Kundalini Yoga. He came to the United States in 1969 and began teaching in Los Angeles that same year. When he encountered hippie culture he realized that he could offer support in their quest for enlightenment. His first yoga class was in a high school gymnasium with only one student—himself. But he soon gained a large following.

Today, Yogi Bhajan is credited with bringing Kundalini Yoga to the West. He founded a US-based sect called Sikh Dharma, as well as an organization called 3HO—the H’s are for happy, healthy and holy—for the purpose of disseminating his teachings. The organization has grown to global proportions.

Although there has been some controversy as to the authenticity of the Sikh aspect of Yogi Bhajan’s teachings, this seems to stem from a schism within Sikhism itself—a battle of orthodox versus progressive. While his Kundalini Yoga may break the mold of traditional Sikhism, both lineages are true to themselves. Yogi Bhajan simply taught from the entirety of his own cultural milieu.

Similar to the Hopis, Mayans and a plethora of post-modern prophets, Yogi Bhajan believed that the date of December 21, 2012 would hold a special significance as a temporal threshold for humanity. Though he departed the Earth in 2004, he left quite a legacy, preparing masses of students for what he felt would be the dawning of a new age.

Yoga like a mountain

In one of her classes, Satnam mentions she’s attending the upcoming Winter Solstice yoga retreat in Florida. Started by Yogi Bhajan, the week-long retreat culminates in three days of an intense practice called White Tantric Yoga. I’ve never heard of it before, but Satnam speaks of it with reverence and with a gleam in her eye.

As taught by Yogi Bhajan, White Tantric Yoga is practiced en masse and with a partner usually of the opposite sex, but not always. Thousands of people sit in rows facing each other doing exercises similar to those in Kundalini Yoga. But it’s much, much harder. An exercise may involve holding your hands up in the air, palm to palm with your partner and maintaining eye contact for up to an hour. A quick break follows then more exercises. This goes on all day for three days.

Satnam’s been doing it since before she can remember. As a very young child in Germany, she was already doing Kundalini Yoga with her parents. When they first took her to the annual European Yoga Festival in France, she became aware of White Tantric Yoga as a mysterious and intriguing practice. She tried a half-day of it with her dad before she was even 10 and was doing all three days each year by the time she was a preteen.

“It was very exciting to commit to that kind of practice even for just half a day,” she says. “It was kind of like an initiation, like I’m growing up, I can do this now.”

Mike came to Kundalini and White Tantric Yoga at a later age but it changed his life. He was in his first year of college then, just outside New York City. One day he was searching the web for ideas on how to help him wake up for class, when he happened on a video of Kundalini and Yogi Bhajan. He immediately thought, I want whatever he has. I want to do whatever he’s doing.

He started with breath of fire and spinal flexes and before long he was doing it every day, preceded by cold showers—a standard practice. He’d discovered Kundalini Yoga almost by accident but he felt like a subtle force was pulling him along. As he continued, he began to feel more and more conscious. Bad habits and addictions simply started falling away. He was astonished by the effect the yoga was having on him.

Over the summer he finally went to his first class in the city. Right away his instructor saw his enthusiasm and commitment and suggested he do a teacher training. This wasn’t something he had ever thought about and it caught him off guard. But he went for it, using all his spending money each week to pay for the class. It deepened his practice and strengthened his commitment. And that November he had his first experience of White Tantric Yoga. He says he was a little cocky beforehand, like “whatever, I can do this.” But his confidence didn’t last past the first day.

“Because it’s really hard,” he says, “it’s really uncomfortable and you face a lot. But it’s so worth it.”

It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around such a trial of endurance, but Satnam compares the experience to climbing a mountain. “It’s like the peak, with snow and clouds and a view, and with an elevated feeling. But you’re still grounded, you’re still on a mountain.” It’s that kind of high.

Freedom, she says, is found through discipline. Sitting there for an hour and thinking my arms are going to fall off, the mind freaks out again and again. Emotions come up—some people cry, some people scream. Satnam makes silly faces at her partner. Sometimes her mind wanders all over the place, yet she maintains the form and pushes through, and the meditation gets deeper.

Now, Mike says, he’s always a little scared going into White Tantric Yoga, because he knows it’s going to be hard. But he has a breakthrough experience every time. During the most recent Winter Solstice, he was paired with the girl who he’d done teacher training with. They had to hold their hands up in the air, and press their palms against each other’s palms. For the first half he felt as if he was doing all the work and he became more and more angry. But suddenly something snapped inside him and he broke through and became blissful. “I felt like I could hold everyone’s arms up after that,” he says.

Satnam describes the feeling afterward. “Everyone’s eyes shine. It’s beautiful. Their inner light comes out.” She recommends the practice to those who are yearning to experience life raw and vulnerable. “It’s for anyone who wants to really get to know themselves—and not just the good sides,” she says.

She invariably peers just as deeply into her partner, building a strong connection every time. For this reason she is careful who she does it with. She says that it’s easy to fall in love with a total stranger after three days of White Tantric Yoga, and it’s better to pick a new partner each day unless you’re already in a committed relationship.

Mike discovered that for himself at last year’s Winter Solstice. One of the days he was paired with a girl his own age from Colombia, doing exercises that mostly focused on breath and by the end of the day he felt like he had fallen in love with her. It can also make an already committed relationship even stronger. Satnam’s parents have done all three days together many times, and it’s strengthened their relationship.

The unfathomable mysteries

In 1975, Stuart Sovatsky was at a weekend yoga retreat when he was challenged by an instructor to do something he’d never dreamt he would do: give up sex. The instructor said, “Freud was a very brilliant man. He saw very deeply, but he did not see the whole picture. There are many stages of development beyond sex, but if you want to get to them you will have to give something up.” At first, Sovatsky was in disbelief. But after taking some time to consider what he’d heard, he changed his mind and made a commitment: he would go a year and a quarter without sex of any kind. This was the beginning of a lifelong journey of discovery, a journey he recounts in, “Eros, Consciousness, and Kundalini: Deepening Sensuality through Tantric Celibacy and Spiritual Intimacy.”

As he began his marathon of abstinence, he experienced a buildup of libido without any outlet to relieve it. Normally this would have been a problem. But as he continued his yogic practice something interesting happened: the yoga began to redistribute the intense feeling of libido throughout his body so that it was no longer overpowering. He calls this phenomenon “Tantric sublimation” (which he rephrases as “eros become sublime”). The idea is not to ignore or repress sexual energies but to work with and transmute them, to raise them to a higher level.

Tantric yogis have been experimenting with this kind of practice for millennia. Early on, they explored the full depth of human emotion, allowing themselves to experience every emotive sensation for as long as it took to understand it. They sat with whatever feelings came up, moving through with acceptance and without attachment. Sometimes they would shout or laugh or sing. They contemplated feelings of desire and yearning, allowing the feelings to intensify and expand throughout their body. As this happened they moved and stretched with the feelings, creating postures and poses that are now familiar to anyone who practices yoga.

As the practice intensified, the myriad feelings and desires blended into a passionate sensation snaking its way up the spine. After many years of focused meditation, the energy dissolved inward as a radiant burst of fulfillment and ecstasy. Sovatsky writes that the yogi’s “sense of body and self was that of a cathedral housing a spark of divinity.”

He also describes an inner sanctum of knowledge and experience that is the goal of a Tantric to reach. This mysterious center of truth hides behind myriad layers, starting with surface-level certainty to subtler intimations and still deeper to unfathomable mystery. Archetypal gate keepers guard each layer, protecting the inner truth until the time is right. In reaching for the deeper secrets of Tantra, it may not be possible to see them at first.

Ayurvedic and Tantric instructor Chinnamasta Stiles holds a similar perspective. She says that the mysteries of Tantra are hidden, not only to protect the source of knowledge but to protect the student too. These are intense and fiery practices that can be dangerous for someone who isn’t ready. She says it’s important to take care in finding the right teacher, partly for protection.

Chinnamasta’s husband, author Mukunda Stiles, emphasizes the importance of connecting to a lineage in his book, “Tantra Yoga Secrets: Eighteen Transformational Lessons to Serenity, Radiance, and Bliss.” Both Chinnamasta and Mukunda derived their practices from a guru named Bhagawan Nityananda, handed down through Swami Muktunanda and others. They had each been following this lineage independently and shared an instantaneous knowing the moment they met. She says that this encounter was her first Tantric experience.

There is a general misconception that Tantra is only sexual. But Chinnamasta points out that in Tantric texts, 80 percent of the practices are non-physical. When I ask about a definition of red Tantra she says the line is blurry. In general it means practicing with clothes off, but not always. She explains that it is possible to have very red experiences with clothes on. I’m reminded of Mike falling in love with his white Tantra partner. Hours of gazing into each other’s eyes led to a sensual experience of merging, even though they were sitting across from each other fully clothed.

Chinnamasta admits that prior to discovering Tantra, she was overwhelmed, confused and didn’t feel empowered in life. In Tantra, she found her rock. Now it permeates everything she does, from yoga practice to daily chores to going outside. For her, everything is an act of love and devotion.

She says the Tantric path is a very practical one for dealing with daily life. As she learned to understand herself more, she saw everything else with greater clarity.

In a Tantric relationship, Chinnamasta says that the female must learn to act as the gatekeeper of truth and integrity. Over many years, she learns to hold back and listen to her gut. Then, she becomes sensitive to the signs within. This is very empowering and leads to the potential for a deeper practice with a partner. Likewise, the man must learn to honor her intuition.

That said, Tantra “is appropriate regardless of your sexual preferences,” as Mukunda points out. The physical practices work just as well for same sex couples. And—more to the point—the spiritual element is no different. For any practitioner, the idea is to think of the practice as a sacred event.

It’s important to point out that the goal of a Tantric relationship is not a climatic one. It is a search for openness, expansion and a sense of dissolving into one another. “There is no experience anymore of a separate personal body,” Chinnamasta says, “it is absolutely going beyond a physical experience. There is such an experience of love and bliss and completely feeling fulfilled. And that’s really a higher state.”

Sovatsky says something similar, “the differences in paths notwithstanding, all the yogis agree that the desires of the human body and ego-personality are but pointers to our true identity, the utterly vulnerable self, forever conscious and desireless.”