From student to teacher
Honouring your journey
Congratulations on taking this first step to qualify as a Kundalini Yoga teacher by choosing to begin the The KRI Level One Aquarian Teacher Training Program. This transition from student to teacher is a self-initiation of profound consequence with the potential budding, flowering and fruiting of consciousness that can then unfold. We live in a world that understands and respects institutionalised education yet can at times dismiss other activities literally as “pass-times” - in other words, fillers of no great significance. We are also programmed to celebrate certain moments in life - getting married, giving birth to a child, beginning college, getting a “great” job, turning 18 - and overlook the magnitude of embarking on a journey such as this one for a soul having a human experience.
Here are a few suggestions to mark this pivotal moment for you:
Refresh or create a yoga space at home for yourself. You’ll make it more magnificent than a palace inhabiting it daily. Dare to declare it your sacred temple. Don’t let your mind get busy with it having to be perfect either. This little sanctuary is for your daily practice.
Write out any prayers, wants and needs. What new qualities do you want to bring to your life? If you love to collage, or express in any other medium, take out some materials and get cutting and sticking, sewing or sculpting.
Illustrate the first page of a new journal dedicated to the Training process. Then shade, pattern, texture and colour at intervals throughout the rest of the pages. This provides a rich backdrop for words you’ll want to highlight and remember from the upcoming lectures.
Remember your yoga practice is not about how you look to others, but establishing first a true loving relationship with yourself. You don't have to have the most fashionable yoga outfit by anybody else's standards including yours.Yet, what a treat to invest in some soft white natural organic cloth or clothes that you then customise with some of your own stitchwork. A fine task to explore as you chant your favourite mantra.
God made you as you are intended: There is nothing lacking in your level of flexibility, body shape and size right now. What you learn over this time is offered to honour the potential that is already inside you. And don’t forget that many of the challenges you’ve come through in life, are already part of your yoga self-qualification for yourself.
Take yourself somewhere you love in nature and collect memento’s for an altar space as a focal point for your devotion.
Then light your candles, arrange flowers on your altar and connect to the sacred lineage of Guru Ram Das with the meditation “The Complete Adi Mantra” (you can download it for free by clicking here). Bowing and salutations to the infinite divine within yourself and beyond the beyond. Bowing to this Great Teacher, transcendental, as much as within the refined subtle form of Guru Ram Das, the humble heart healer who inspires us through the love and light he brought to the multiplicity of humans he served around him.
This is the mantra Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo we chant three times to start each class. Here it is extended into a more lengthy Bakti practice with:
Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo, Guru Dev Namo Guru Deva
Posture: sit in easy pose with a light Jalandhar bands.
Mudra:
Gyan Mudra (index/jupiter finger tips touching). Hands in front of heart centre.
Palms facing up. Sides of hands touching.
Eyes: focus to tip of nose
Breath and mantra:
Entire mantra 3 - 5 times on 1 breath
The sound “days” is chanted a minor third higher than the other sounds and the sound “dayvaa” is held slightly longer on the “aa” sound.
Time: 11 - 31 min
This can be continued each day for 40 days or longer.
Sat naam.
May you blossom into the precious Teacher that you are and enjoy the blessing of many warm sangat moments whether in group Sadhana, community seva or a meal prepared together: because like birds taking the long journey to cross an ocean, Kundalini Yogis understand the wisdom and the grace of supporting each other to reach the highest level of Consciousness, together.
Love light blessings,
Jagat Joti Kaur
A little about me: If you are touched by any of the words I share, they are from my understanding of the Teachings through sitting in class with my Teacher most weeks each month each year. I am a Sacred Numerology counsellor through the Karam Kriya School, a student of Shiv Charan Singh and a Kundalini Yoga Teacher Trainer. I completed my Level 1 Aquarian Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training in 2005. I hold a 550 hour Ayurveda Lifestyle and Nutrition Practitioner qualification with the European Institute of Vedic Studies. I set up a yoga and healing arts programme across various acute NHS mental hospitals in London in 2008 and have worked with galleries such as Tate Modern, Tate Britain and the National Portrait Gallery exploring the art of yoga and the yoga of art because I love to share what I love for myself, to write, draw, paint, sculpt, sew and cook, a creative, juicy life worth living. My home base is Cape Town, South Africa.
