Erfaringer: Applying the Practice
Something about lineage + a list of a few “culminations of wisdom” that I finally feel like sharing.
I always try to keep this blog personal, and based on my own experiences of Kundalini Yoga and yogic lifestyle. I want to share my point of view. I never really wanted to be the “spokes person” for anything. But when you teach something, you kind of end up being that at times.
One of the things my teacher told me, and that I lean on heavily, is teach what you know. This is such an important principle of how we share Kundalini Yoga in my lineage.
When I say “my lineage”, I’m talking about the Golden Chain of teachers, that run from Yogi Bhajan through my teachers, to me. That can sound self important, but it’s actually just how the system works. Kundalini Yoga (like many other lineage systems, fx Buddhism, Zen etc.) is transmitted from the heart of the teacher to the heart of the student. It’s an unbroken chain of transmission, and is an energetic field.
For this reason I don’t feel like I can’t speak about Kundalini Yoga in general, because I don’t know what they do or what is taught across the board in other Kundalini Yoga communities (I simply haven’t been part of those, so don’t know their approach or what the teachers are sharing there).
At this point I think you can safely argue that there are a lot of Kundalini Yoga “lineages” out there (and many teachers also without a lineage at all), because different students of Yogi Bhajan have branched out and created their own “link” of teachers.
I believe everyone who comes into contact with this yogic system will automatically find where they belong. There’s something for everyone at every entry level and with each level of ambition. A good indicator for where someone belongs is where there’s a lot of energy moving for that person, and you observe changes in yourself. Another good indicator is if you feel challenged—not just physically but also mentally and spiritually.
I’ve been around other Kundalini Yoga teachers (that I don’t consider my spiritual teachers), and while I can see that other people in the room might be having a deep experience, it often feels like looking through a glass window, not being part of what’s going on on the other side. I am not moved in the same way as when I practice with my teachers (or with the recordings of Yogi Bhajan’s lectures). I don’t deny that there’s an effect, or that their students might feel it, I’m just saying that I don’t feel it.
I’ve been fortunate that I very quickly found “my community”, and besides the odd workshops that I’ve taken with other teachers (mostly out of curiosity), I never strayed.
What I share though, is still my own. It is based on my own lived experience with the practice, and what I have learned from my teachers and then applied and extracted the experience of (in danish we have more nuanced words for this, and maybe I am just missing some English vocabulary but there’s a difference between an experience, oplevelse, and then the experience you gain from it which we call erfaring. Perhaps it translates to wisdom in English, but we also have another word for that, visdom?)
I feel very driven by learning through application. I also know that I, like many, can have a tendency to want to “collect” information, and simply share it, without necessarily having put it to the test first, or really integrated it (which of course is a continuous process). That’s why I am so grateful to be learning from teachers, who are so fierce in reminding us that teachings are carried, and becomes part of your being, and that information is plentiful but often hollow and superficially shared, in these times.
This past weeks I did their most recent training, and I started reflecting on what I have actually learned, and what experiences (erfaringer) I have gained in the past years through practicing Kundalini Yoga.
There are of course so many yogic teachings that I have learned and incorporated into my daily life, but I was more thinking about what they have summed up to? Instead of going so specific and thinking about concrete teachings, I was more reflecting on what the over all effect and changes I have seen have been?
What came out of it was this list, which I have decided to go ahead and share, even if it makes me feel a bit vulnerable, and I was actually slightly hesitant at first. I don’t want to seem like I am trying to highlight my own “achievements”, but a voice within kind of told me that that’s the kind thinking that I need to just get over😂 Anyways if you made it this far, I assume you are here because you are actually interested in my voice and opinions on things.
I try to do my best to share what I have learned, to inspire others and to hopefully inspire a deeper commitment and curiosity for what the yogic practices and lifestyle can do, for your quality of life.
So here I go…
Steps on the path—some of the things I have learned in the past years of practicing Kundalini Yoga:
Realizing that I have choice
For most of my life, I thought everything just happened to me, and I did nothing much to initiate change. I didn’t feel powerful or influential. Life just came at me, and I sort of figured out in the moment, how I should react.
When I started practicing Kundalini Yoga, I came into contact with the notion that everything that happens to you, is because you wanted it—whether consciously or not.
This is simply understood through the mechanism of the aura. It is said that the aura is the “physical manifestation of the mind”. Your aura is an electromagnetic field, and magnetic refers to it attracting and repelling. So what you think and believe has a direct effect on what shows up for you in life (and what doesn’t).
When I finally “got that”, I understood that what I believed, repeated for myself (mentally through my thought stream) + the influence that I could create with the mantras and the practice, all impacted what kind of life I was experiencing.
When you understand the power of that, you know that you have a choice.
I am aware that many people don’t feel like they have a choice in life, and so they don’t.
If you don’t have the awareness, well then you don’t actually have a choice, because the mechanism is automatic, and so if you send out your habitual thoughts and patterns, you just live within that status quo.
Of course this gets muddy, when you mix it with grave situations of injustice, where people become victims of horrible circumstances. Eventually many come to the same conclusion though, but it might not be helpful in the moment (for someone going through trauma fx.)
When we blame others or life itself, we are externalizing the influence and our power becomes smaller. Then things are much harder to change. When we know that the power comes from within, we can have direct influence on what we experience in life.
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Learning to trust and follow the signs
How do you become intuitive? I actually believe that trust is what blocks most people from following their intuition. Many of us might hear our intuition, but do we dare to believe it?
For me that was the big challenge to overcome: I just didn’t have enough trust in my own intuition.
How did I learn to trust it? It’s hard to pinpoint. I think it came automatically with the practice. Like so much in this system, it automatically comes when you do the daily practice (sadhana). I also worked with the affirmation “I believe myself”. Not I “believe in myself”, that has a level of faith to it. When you tell someone “I believe in you”, that’s beautiful, but hearing “I believe you” has much more trust and power behind it. So that’s the one I used a lot.
Trust comes when we take away and overcome our fears. Kundalini Yoga is very much designed to do that, and a direct effect of that is that we learn to trust our intuition.
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Emotional maturity
Does emotional maturity come with aging? With having children? With being in a longterm relationship? Not easy to say, and I don’t have an alternative timeline recording that can prove how my life would have played out, had I not started this practice. I can only trust my intuition (hence the previous part) + I can observe others, and what happens with them, when they start to practice.
Was I emotional in my past? You betcha! (Leo moon here + HD emotional authority😅) Emotional manipulation, outburst and “fighting” was very much part of my daily life, until I started practicing Kundalini Yoga. They’re still part of my life to a healthy degree, but not daily, and I don’t feel like a victim of my emotions anymore. I would actually go as far as say that I enjoy them now, whenever they wash in (because they still do, but it’s not dramatic or uncontrollable anymore).
This one was quite noticeable when I started my daily practice. I remember being in situations kind of waiting for the emotional reaction to come, and being astounded when it didn’t.
I believe emotions can be a wonderful way to show us what is meaningful and important for us. I also think it’s healthy to learn to look at emotions as just “waves” in the ocean of life.
Essentially it boils down to: what do you want to have a bigger experience of? A yogi can consciously enhance and also deescalate.
Some people come to me and say they feel suppressed if they don’t express their emotions.
I often see that for people who grew up in homes where they were not allowed to be emotional or loud.
In those cases the “yogic” approach to emotions might lead to enforcing the pattern of suppression and numbness. I think for those who feel that way, it can be helpful to reframe the “observation”, and instead looking at “allowing” the emotions.
All our emotional responses though, are learned from somewhere. We each have to become clear about how we express emotions. What do we believe anger looks like? That’s how we will typically express anger. So I can’t fully get behind the belief that emotions have to be acted out, in order to be processed.
It also kind of loops back to the first point about knowing that we have choice, and we can decide what reality we want to experience.
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Listening and going beyond “dogma” when necessary
I fully believe in going all in, when you want to learn something. How else will you know?
With the yogic path, “going all in” is not so easily defined though.
There are meditators who have practiced for lifetimes (and in caves or monasteries), and others who simply dip their toes in a 40 day meditation practice. Each experience has its beauty and benefits. And can be perceived as an “all in” experience.
I guess the question is a personal one. When do you believe you are “all in”? But also: Do you have to be “all in”?
For me when I started it felt natural, and also very important, to do as much as I could, and I did want to go at a certain speed.
I also believe a lot of this was destiny based.
I was fortunate to get into a position with my first teacher where I could be in an accelerated space with her, and I learned a lot in a short amount of time.
I also had a specific goal in mind, which wasn’t really coming from an intellectual space but more from a soul and heart felt space, that drew me to focus myself in a certain way, and prioritize sadhana, yogic lifestyle, service to the lineage, and studying.
Essentially though, everything you do (or maybe I should say everything I do, however I think there’s some universality to this notion) should serve your frame and what you wish for in life.
The “dosage” and application of practice needed, depends on where an individual is at + where they want to go.
That’s one of the reasons I focus a lot on destiny alignment in my work. If you know the direction or the “frame” for your life, then you can take everything you do and place it in reference to that, and see if what you do is right for you.
With this in mind, I have also loosened up a bit on my view of what it means to be a “good” Kundalini Yoga practitioner.
Of course there is a formula that you can follow, and doing all of it (or as much as a person can) will lead to changes and great acceleration, fast.
But it might not necessarily be what the person wants, needs, or is looking for. And in some cases, some yogic ideas and prescriptions might actually work against a persons desired destination.
So I have become much more flexible in my view of what someone needs, and better at looking at the individual, when it comes to a Kundalini Yoga practice.
I still try to share, as best I can, the traditional approach, because I see how it can easily “slip away” and gets easily blended out in our time, because it isn’t always so palatable for a western or European audience. And it’s not easy to energetically hold.
I think preservation is important. It is important to me. But I also want this lifestyle and these teachings to be available for those who seek it, and to be sustainable in the long run. That has required of me a bit more flexibility (after all isn’t that what yoga is about?🤭)
Thank you for reading along.
If you are interested in learning more about Kundalini Yoga, and experience its power and transformation in a group setting, I am starting a six month course in October called DEEPER STUDIES.
This course is for anyone interested in going deeper into the yogic teachings, and learn how to apply them for themselves or teach them to others.
DEEPER STUDIES begin October 12, 2025
Learn more here.
Don’t hesitate to contact me if you have questions.