By Paola Bassanese
Make your world bigger. With these parting words, Gurmukh closed a weekend of kundalini yoga workshops at triyoga Soho.
Our constant focus on worry and stress makes our world “smaller”: we think that once we get that house we’ll be happy or once we retire we will finally start enjoying life. Unfortunately life does not wait for us so we might as well start living it before we die.
The workshop I attended on Sunday 10th June 2012 focused on abandoning stress and worry and feeling strong and centred within yourself.
Gurmukh as usual blends humour and great inspiring words in her speeches before the action begins and you feel empowered and rejuvenated.
Her kundalini workshops are action packed and not dissimilar to a personal training session: working the entire body, scalp included, we were jumping and crunching and flexing muscles.
My personal highlight was the pituitary gland activation, which also opens the third eye: for an exhausting 5 minutes we all had to raise our eyebrows continuously. Have you ever tried moving the muscles of your forehead without a break for 5 whole minutes? You end up not remembering how to use those muscles anymore. As fatigue sets in, the rational brain leaves space for the reptilian brain and you just exist. At this point, the energy is set free and you start seeing colours.
I saw a pink landscape in front of my closed eyes, it was a peaceful and perfect vision.
With exercises strengthening each and every body part, you are very likely to ban bingo wings for life just doing kundalini yoga. Plus all the jumping and shaking to the Bhangra beats burned enough calories to challenge any aerobics class. That’s another factor that makes Gurmukh unique: she encourages people to be child-like and retrieve their vital energy that is often quashed by stress and worries about the future or responsibilities.
See also: Gurmukh’s 2011 kundalini workshop at triyoga blog