Healing Trauma with Kundalini Yoga
"You are so stressed", the lovely Chinese Medicine doctor said to me yesterday.
"I am?"
"Yes. It is the C-sections. There is much trauma in your body. It is creating so much stress in you."
My C-sections were over 30 years ago. Yes, they were very traumatic. Without going into detail, both times, the anesthetic wore off during the surgeries. Many complications followed.
But apparently, the trauma of those events still lived in my body, creating a kind of visceral stress throughout my whole system. In my 55 years, I have found many ways to find peace, breathe through struggles, and walk forward. But little did I know that I was doing all of this with a foundation of stress and trauma.
No wonder I was so tired!
Experiencing Heaven in My Living Room
Maybe this is why I was so enthralled with Kundalini Yoga when I discovered it while doing a DVD by Gurmukh that I bought on Amazon so many years ago.
My children were around 9 and 11 years old. At that time, according to this lovely doctor, I had already been living with this visceral trauma for 11 years and making the best of it!
On this day, there I sat in the middle of my living room with Gurmukh leading me in my first kundalini yoga class. Three dogs and two cats encircled my yoga mat. The men from the barn were walking in and out of the kitchen (we had a dairy farm), and my kids were running around outside.
Yet, there I sat, 45 minutes into the class, and my whole body was buzzing. My spine was so tall. I was breathing so deeply. I felt so fully alive!
This marked the beginning of my kundalini yoga obsession, which led me to purchase every available DVD, eventually travel to attend a teacher training (I lived in a rural area of Ontario), and teach for over 15 years.
What I hadn't considered until today was that perhaps that moment of bliss was the first time I had felt alleviated from the physical trauma that was stored in my body. Maybe this was a taste of what my body could feel like without the trauma.
Healing with Kundalini Yoga
Kundalini yoga is often referred to as the "weird" yoga. You chant, you twist, you do funny things with your face, and do breath of fire. You put your arms in the air (seemingly forever sometimes), shake every part of your body, and dance!
But throughout, we are breathing deeply. Our minds turn off because they are so focused on the weird things we're doing. We are making sound. And we are fully present.
This is how I believe kundalini yoga heals us.
The trauma lives in the corners of our bodies and minds that we don't access in our day-to-day lives. In order to keep going, we push the pain into closets within ourselves. This allows us to go to work, take care of the kids, make love, go camping, and enjoy our friends and family.
But those wounds fester and are always tapping at us from the basement... sometimes in the form of body pain, mental struggles, or fatigue.
Undoing the Paper Cuts
Some traumas are big, but many of the struggles stored in our bodies are like paper cuts. We may not even remember them. But they are still in our bodies.
I believe that kundalini yoga heals us, one paper cut at a time.
No one tells us how to do the yoga - whether to go quickly or slowly, or whether to keep your arms up or let yourself rest. We do the yoga based exactly where we are on that day.
This is what allows the healing to be gentle.
This is why each person does the yoga differently.
This is also why we have to do all of the "weird" things. We have to move our bodies in ways that we don't normally. We have to get outside of our comfort zone in order to mobilize the stuck energy... removing the beaver dams so that our energy can flow naturally to nourish and heal our minds and bodies.
The Journey Through the Years
When I was filling out my intake form before going to the Chinese Medicine Doctor, it was interesting to see how many issues I no longer had. Thirty-five years ago, I had a heart murmur. But no longer. Thirty years ago, I had monthly migraines that put me down for days. This went on for twenty years... but now they seldom happen.
Are there still things to heal and strengthen? Yes, of course. We are always growing and evolving, and releasing our past so that we can step into new experiences!
Can kundalini heal all of our stored trauma? Probably not. This is why we learn what we can do for ourselves, and have other wonderful healers around us.
Can it help heal the paper cuts and strengthen us to the point where we can tackle the big issues?
Yes, I think so.
And besides, it's a lot of fun and you meet wonderful people along the way!
🌼 Katrina Bos has been teaching kundalini yoga for over 15 years. She now teaches weekly online to a wonderful international community! 🌼
If you would like to find out more about kundalini yoga, please visit: https://satyayogaacademy.org/kundalini-yoga
Would you like to join me on a 9-month healing journey through my Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training? Visit: https://satyayogaacademy.org/ytt-200-living-masters
I am teaching again, this post is sooo helpful. Also getting on the mat again. Interesting looking at my grid again and some how saw that This is one of the best ways for me to ground, among that of healing trauma!! ❤️ I thank God every day out paths crossed!!
Yes, Ma'am! I need to go back to my mat. 🥰 I was surprised to see an article on Kundalini... I mean. I should have known it was you! 🤘🏼🙏🏼☀️