10/19/2009
the kundalini challenge!Permalink
This week brings us the Kundalini Challenge! Jess and I and a couple other friends are trying out the first-week-free at Minneapolis’ Center for Happiness.
The Center for Happiness is a yoga center based in Kundalini Yoga. Kundalini Yoga is the yoga made popular in the U.S. by Yogi Bhajan. (His group also makes Yogi Tea, which you may see in your supermarket aisle, with a picture of a friendly turbaned man.) It branches out of Sikhism, but from what I’ve read, the practices developed here in the U.S. may or may not be practiced by Sikhs in India. I am by no means any sort of expert on Kundalini yoga, but I will share my experiences with you as I go through the Kundalini Challenge. (Which is just something I made up, to motivate me to attend as much as possible this week!)
Day 1 was with teacher Helena Raghubir, the director of the center, the class was Women’s Yoga. So it was all women. And packed, wall to wall! In Kundalini Yoga, it seems, the teacher is often up on a little stage/altar, and the instructor mostly sits and describes what you will do, more than demonstrating. Helena wore a handy headset and had a speaker system, which is sort of fun. As far as I’ve seen so far, they don’t wander through the class or give adjustments like other styles of yoga do.
The class did include some poses I recognized–like triangle pose, and downward dog (which they call triangle pose, confusingly!) but it also include lots of things where you’d, say, swirl your hands around and around each other, with your eyes closed, faster and faster. She said to thinki of it like you are trying to get the engine to turn over on your car, and you don’t think it will, but then it does! Except instead of your car engine, you are doing this with your mind. It is totally weird and your hands start to bump into each other, but you feel amazing afterwards! She also said often not to be too worried about how many repetitions you do, or how far you can stretch that day, because it might just be where you are at that day–not to read into it as a sign of your overall fitness/strength/etc. I thought this was a great sentiment–to go with how you are in that particular moment. . .
So today I had some odd sore spots around my body–I suppose those arm spinning muscles aren’t ones I use everyday. We also did this crazy walk where you bend over and hold your ankles and scoot around the room an inch at a time. I felt like a toddler and an old woman and an elephant all at once.
Day 2: Tonight’s class was with Lauren, who has a similar managing role at CFH as I do at Blooma. This class was a little less arm swirling and more leg and arm raising and lowering, squatting and stretching while standing on my toes, and using the rapid “breath of fire.” We stuck out our tongues really far and breathed quickly to “release toxins from our tongues.” I had a funny memory of my very first introduction to yoga, maybe when I was 14. It was a VHS tape I got at, I think, Sam’s Club of all places, and it was led by one of the actresses from the TV show Designing Women! (Can you get more random than that?) But I remember she had a “lion’s pose” where we had to stick out our tongues and roar, and I had a flash back to doing that in my basement and probably hoping my brothers didn’t come home at that time (’cuz I’d never hear the end of it)–but it was still fun to do, even though it was so odd, and that’s what I’m really enjoying about this Kundalini Challenge!
I think I may take an soak with some bath salts tonight, in hopes that my hamstrings will be kinder to me tomorrow! Stay tuned for more news on the Kundalini Challenge!
-j