Unveiling the Shadows: Deception, Cult Dynamics, and the Arduous Path to Rediscovering My Strength After 10 Years Under Yogi Bhajan’s Influence
I had been there several hours already. My body sore, and at its breaking point from hours of meditation, rapid repeated body movements, and short yet very fast breathing. Basically, hyperventilating for short bursts that ultimately also caused me to feel light headed and admittedly, a tad high.
My teachers had encouraged me to attend the Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training because simply “it is time.” I had been practicing twice daily and sometimes for the entire day for 10 years and honestly, I truly believed them. That it was time. After all, a kundalini practitioner’s ultimate goal must be to become a teacher. Right?
We had begun to rest, finally, beads of sweat dripping onto my woven blanket, and I felt as though I hadn’t rested my body in weeks, because that was precisely accurate. I even woke up at 4 am to meditate and chant, squeeze in a morning kriya. They call it Sadhana, and I was hooked. We would chant the entire Japji in Punjabi. The. Entire. Thing.
They began handing us a piece of paper with bright orange ink in the background of the photograph. I quickly realized it was a photo of our guru, Yogi Bhajan. Throughout the week I had been hearing stories about this man, stories he spread about himself that couldn’t possibly be true, yet it seemed like everyone around me was eating them up, truly believing what I could not bring myself to trust. He could control the weather, being the most laughable. So, it caught me by surprise and made me intensely uncomfortable to find out what we were doing with this quite florescent photograph. We were to tape it to the wall in front of us at eye level, sit cross legged, hold a candle at our feet, and stare into the eyes of this man for a full half an hour. The eyes of a man I was beginning to think was actually a narcissist in disguise as a benevolent spiritual leader.
The next half an hour was pure agony. I wanted to, with all of my being, run away and never come back. Everything in me was telling me I was taking in pure evil’s essence, but I had been taught for 10 years that this man was godlike, spoon-fed quote after quote and lesson after lesson from him that were now beginning to just sound like word salad from a very good liar.
I decided I would count my way through it. I counted to 60, then pressed my thumb into my index finger. Counted to 60 again and pressed my thumb into my middle finger. I did this until I had counted to 60 30 times. I was almost exactly right in my calculations that it had been 30 minutes and afterward something just felt wrong.
Our teachers asked us how we felt now that we had taken in the master’s essence, his pure clean soul that we mere mortals would never be able to truly achieve without his help. The others cited they felt at peace, motivated, enlightened. I just stayed quiet. Feeling as though something in me had somehow been taken though I am not quite sure why. There was just a hollow piece in my heart.
Over the coming weeks I began to ask questions far more than I ever had. Admittedly, I hadn’t asked very many in the 10 years I had practiced there. But now I needed to. For my own sanity and well being I needed to fill the holes of their straw house stories.
For about 3 weekends someone straight from 3HO (the Healthy, Happy, Holy ashram in New Mexico where Yogi Bhajan officially lived and did his work) came to help teach us and I attached myself to her hip, asking her questions of science that simply don’t match what they are telling us. How can this be, if the body works in such a way? How could the guru have done that if this were the case? I asked more questions than I thought I even realized I had and what struck me the most was, she didn’t have an answer to a single one. The first person I had ever met who had worked closely with him for decades, couldn’t answer any of my questions. She simply talked in circles and at times would say “You’ve stumped me Siri Lakshmi” (my given “spiritual name”) and walked away, leaving me feeling more and more empty and lost each time.
I wanted answers so I did what any millennial would do, I took to Google. I had never actually Googled Yogi Bhajan before. I can’t tell you why even to this day I still cannot explain it. I just believed wholeheartedly what I was told. I had all the information right there for me in the books at the village. Why would I need to Google him? On this day I did and what I found out would shake me to my very core. This was 2014 and not much was out yet about the atrocities he committed and the horrific abuse he put women and children through. But there were several anonymous accusations and a handful of detailed stories of what it was like living day to day at the 3HO ashram in New Mexico. I almost felt as though I knew what I was going to find. I saw it in his eyes that day.
I decided I would finish out the training. I finished it because it was being gifted to me through seva, or selfless service, and I didn’t want to bail on them when I felt they were doing something they at least thought was kind, even though very much misguided. Basically, I stayed to fulfill my debt because I believed that was the right thing to do.
At the end of the training there was a small ceremony where each individual walked up to the small stage, was given a flower and a file folder with their certificate, everyone clapped, and you are now officially a kundalini yoga teacher. Something I had wanted to be since high school. But as I walked up toward my teachers, people I have allowed to guide and control my life for 10 years, I felt hollow inside. I couldn’t muster a smile, or even truly look them in the eye. I had officially been brought into the ranks of those brainwashing the students into believing this horrible man was a mystical god and I wanted nothing to do with it. I would not be caught dead teaching any of this!
Kundalini yoga is said to have been around for thousands of years as a private practice amongst a small group of Sikhs in India, and we are told we are so lucky that Yogi Bhajan brought it to the western world to share it with us. This incredible “technology,” the “yoga of awareness.” This is hogwash. We know now that he combined two already established forms of yoga and then threw in his own made up poses and breathing techniques for good measure. Sikhs don’t practice yoga or meditation anywhere in the world, and Kundalini yoga is not real. He bastardized multiple world religions for his own financial and personal gain, and it disgusts me. But what disgusts me more is that I fell for it. Hard.
I worked my body to the bone, I got little to no sleep, my weight began to waste away as I was eating little and exercising like crazy. Moving my body in ways that I now know did nothing but make me high as a kite in order to be further manipulated. There were times, many times, I was unable to drive after a kriya and had to sit and drink “Yogi Tea” in the garden to bring myself back to reality.
It has been 9 years since I left, and I have not fully recovered. Every time I believe that I have gotten passed certain things, something hits that pain button, and I am brought right back to it again. It is 4:21 am and I haven’t slept because I cannot stop thinking about the 10 years I spent in a cult. I had told myself I was only almost in a cult, or maybe just cult adjacent, but no, no. I was indeed fully, 100 percent in a cult for 10 years. The entirely of my late teens and most of my 20s. And I have to live with the fact that I supported all of that nonsense. It makes me feel weak and easily manipulated.
I truly know now that I am stronger. I have grown. I will get through this one day at a time getting stronger and stronger every day I am away from that place.
