Workout: Kundalini Yoga and Meditation: Senses of the Soul

Posted: April 8, 2014 at 8:42 pm


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Adi Shakti Kundalini Yoga Center, 6717 Valmont Road, Boulder, 720-252-3962, adishakticenter.com

Instructor: Rachel Zelaya, of Niwot, is a certified Kundalini Yoga teacher and has been teaching since 2011. She taught yoga to refugees in Liberia before opening the Adi Shakti center in Boulder. She has also trained with Guru Meher Singh Khalsa, a yoga teacher and author of the book, "Senses of the Soul," upon which this class is based.

What is the workout? A Kundalini Yoga and meditation series that is designed to help participants work with difficult emotions, such as grief, guilt and shame. My class focused on anger. The classes use meditations and guided visualizations from the "Senses of the Soul" book, incorporated with Kundalini movements which are centered on the breath and doing specific, repetitive motions for one to five minutes.

Adi Shakti's website calls Kundalini a mixture of "P90X and yoga, while being rooted to the creative power" of energy.

What's different? Kundalini Yoga is dramatically different from any other form of yoga I've tried. The only familiar move we did was one short downward dog at the beginning of class.

"It's not your typical idea of what you think of as yoga," Zelaya says. "Everything is dynamic movements to move energy to release blocks, stretch muscles and get the lungs and heart pumping, so when you sit to meditate, you have a better chance to go deeper."

For example, we interlaced our hands behind our neck and twisted from the base of the spine from left to right (inhaling left, exhaling right) for several minutes. Or we laid on our backs with our legs 90 degrees toward the ceiling and pounded on the floor with the palms of our hands. (That one felt like an adult tantrum.)

"When people think of yoga, they think of a posture you hold for a while, or flow yoga with sun salutations over and over," Zelaya says. "With this, you take one movement and do it for one to three minutes, which gives the energy a chance to start moving."

Plus, Zelaya wore head-to-toe white cotton, as did many of the students; some wore turbans on their heads.

We also interspersed meditations throughout the class, not only at the end.

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Workout: Kundalini Yoga and Meditation: Senses of the Soul

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