What is kundalini yoga - and why it is unlike anything yoga you typically see
A personal and honest account from a teacher who came to it sideways
The first time I practiced kundalini yoga, I didn’t get it. I bought a dvd based off a casual comment from someone.
Part of it was like a fitness bootcamp, other bits I didn’t get at all. I was new to yoga but I didn’t recognise any of it as yoga at all. So, honestly, I filed it away under “interesting but not for me” and established a yoga practice with dvds that had practices that seemed more familiar.
Around the same time, I was delving into relationship self-development work. And someone I followed integrated a kundalini yoga aspect to his sessions - which I didn’t value but understood he saw something in it that I couldn’t.
When I went on one of his retreats, I knew kundalini yoga would be a part of it and I was quietly intrigued by the opportunity to experience practices with this particular teacher.
In savasana — that final resting posture, the most sacred posture of all — I felt it. Waves of something contracting and pulsing through my body. Undeniable. Unmistakeable. Unlike anything I had felt in my life. I didn’t fully understand what was happening. But I knew to let it happen.
And here’s what I did next — or rather, what I didn’t do. I didn’t ask the teacher about it. Not immediately. I wanted to feel into what I felt it was, without influence. I wanted my own knowing to have a chance to sense into it before someone else influenced my perception.
In that reflection, I knew it to be a reconnection to a place and an energy that had been stagnant and stuck for a long time. The body remembering something it had always known and beginning to move with it again.
For me, at its heart, is what this practice is for. To reconnect you to your own body, energy, and wisdom.
What kundalini yoga actually is
In the West it became widely known through Yogi Bhajan, who brought it to the United States in 1969. Training at his ashram is where I got crystal clear on two things that have shaped everything since: not to put anyone on a pedestal, and not to judge the teachings by the teacher. By the time the allegations against Yogi Bhajan surfaced publicly, I had already begun diving deeper into the lineage of the practices themselves — their tantric foundations, their philosophical roots, their integrity independent of any single cult of personality. Whilst some people felt compelled to reject the practice alongside the man, I was investing in the practices that predated his influence.
You can trace the roots of Kundalini yoga back to the Nath yoga lineage — a sophisticated system of practices working with breath, body, energy, and consciousness that backgrounds many of the yoga traditions most people are familiar with today. Some of its core concepts included:
- identifying the subtle body and energy channels as an primary map of understanding the body
- liberation through the body, not from the body: not trying to escape the world but to master consciousness through it
- gifts and powers were gained through genuine practice, but were never the goal
Kundalini yoga is not what most people imagine when they picture yoga. There are no flowing sequences, no emphasis on physical flexibility, no peak poses. What there is instead is something more fundamental — a technology for working with the whole of who you are.
What makes it different
Most yoga traditions work primarily with the physical body. Kundalini yoga works with everything simultaneously — the physical, the energetic, the mental, the emotional, the spiritual — and it doesn’t pretend these are separate.
A few things that distinguish it:
Breath is primary. You don’t match breath to movement — you match movement to breath. This builds an intimate, embodied relationship with your own nervous system that most people have never experienced before.
You stay in postures for time. Not a few breaths — sometimes minutes. This is where the practice becomes genuinely interesting. You find your edge, you learn what’s sustainable, you witness what happens at the edges of your comfort zone. You discover the difference between pain that needs honouring and discomfort that could be tolerated. That discernment, practiced on the mat, translates directly into life.
You never quite know what you’ll get. The sequences vary. The experience varies. Learning to be present with that unpredictability — to show up without a fixed expectation of what the session should feel like — is part of the practice. Just like life.
You are simultaneously teacher and student. The insights are yours. The curiosity is yours. The practice doesn’t tell you what to think or feel — it creates conditions for you to discover your own knowing. You remain your own authority.
The witness state is cultivated deliberately. There is a particular quality of awareness that kundalini yoga develops — a capacity to observe your own experience without being entirely consumed by it. To notice the mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, and energetic layers of your being, and how they interact. This is not detachment. It is presence at a deeper level.
What the practice gives you
After years of practicing and teaching, here is what I know kundalini yoga genuinely offers:
A lived experience of managing who you are at moments of challenge and grace — safely and in your own sovereignty.
The capacity to discern between pain and discomfort, between what needs honouring and what could be worked with.
A different way of being — breath and body foregrounded, the witness state cultivated, presence as the practice rather than the goal.
Tending to your foundations: alignment, attention, and the experience of living sustainably within yourself.
Yourself as your own teacher — gaining insights, remaining curious, staying humble.
Space and time to feel into the layers of your being and how they interact — mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, energetic — not as separate categories but as one internal ecosystem.
A practice of showing up, even when you don’t know what you’re going to get. Which turns out to be one of the most useful life skills ever.
A cleansing, balancing, strengthening of structures, capacities, and perceptions.
On kundalini awakenings — an honest word
I want to address something directly, because it comes up.
Kundalini awakening is a real phenomenon — a significant energetic event that the tradition takes seriously and describes with precision. Conversations and content about kundalini activations and awakenings in wellness spaces have exploded recently and it is shifting people’s understanding and perceptions dramatically.
In my humble opinion, much of what is marketed as kundalini activation or awakening is not that. Kundalini energy, once awakened, isn’t something you can turn off and on. It is not something that makes you feel a little better or different. It doesn’t necessarily make you shake, convulse, or send you into ecstasy. A kundalini awakening can be blissful or entirely overwhelming.
Whilst it can be awakened by someone, teachings warn of someone initiating energy that they are not fully conversant with and respectful of. This is because a kundalini awakening brings a whole other energy and power into your being - something for which you may not be prepared at all.
Which brings me to something I feel strongly about.
I do not teach with the expressed intention of awakening your kundalini. What I teach is a practice that creates the conditions for the whole of you to show up, move what needs moving, and remember what has always been known. Time on the mat is sacred preparation and empowerment for whatever life bestows on you.
Is kundalini yoga for you?
If you are drawn to a practice that works with more than just the physical body — one that brings the whole of you into the same conversation — then yes. It is not a workout but a work in (a cliche but true)
If you are curious about what your nervous system, your breath, and your energy. If you sense there are layers of yourself you haven’t yet accessed and want to explore.
You don’t need flexibility. You don’t need experience. You don’t need any particular belief system. You need only a willingness to show up and see what’s there.
If you’d like to experience it directly — book a personal kundalini yoga session designed around you or join the live online classes.
Safia xx