Kundalini yoga
Kundalini yoga is a style of yoga built around breath work, repeated movement, chanting and meditation, named after kundalini, an idea found in medieval tantric and hatha texts. The style most people mean today was taught in the United States from 1969 by Harbhajan Singh Khalsa, known as Yogi Bhajan.
The word
Kundalini comes from the Sanskrit kundala, meaning a coil, a ring or an earring. Kundalini is “the coiled one”. In the texts where the word appears, it names a force imagined as a serpent lying coiled at the base of the spine.
This page describes what those texts and the modern style say. It does not make claims about energy in the body; it sets out the history so you know what the name refers to. Kundalini is also not a style I teach; if a slower, quieter practice is what draws you, a Yin practice at home is closer to what I offer.
Kundalini in the older texts
The idea of kundalini belongs to tantra, a broad family of Hindu and Buddhist traditions whose texts were composed from roughly the middle of the first millennium CE onward. Tantric works describe a subtle body of channels (nadis) and centres (chakras), with kundalini resting at the lowest centre.
Hatha yoga took the idea up. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, written by Svatmarama in the fifteenth century, describes rousing kundalini through breath retention, bandhas (locks) and mudras (seals), and presents this as a step toward meditative absorption. In these texts kundalini is part of a whole practice, not a separate style of yoga.
Kundalini Yoga as a modern style
The style known today as Kundalini Yoga was shaped by Harbhajan Singh Khalsa, called Yogi Bhajan by his students. He moved from India to North America in the late 1960s, began teaching in Los Angeles in 1969, and founded an organisation called 3HO (the Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization) the same year. His teaching drew on Sikh practice as well as yoga, which is why many practitioners wear white clothing and head coverings and chant mantras in Gurmukhi.
A typical class is built around a kriya: a set series of breathing exercises, repeated movements and held postures, followed by relaxation and meditation. Breath of fire, a quick rhythmic breath through the nose, is one of its best known techniques.
How it shows up in a modern practice
Outside dedicated Kundalini classes, you will meet pieces of this history in many places: breathing exercises (pranayama), chanting Om at the start or end of a class, and the language of chakras in studio descriptions. The types of yoga page shows where Kundalini sits among the other styles.
Kundalini and private lessons
Kundalini Yoga is not one of the styles offered here, which include Yin, Vinyasa, Restorative, prenatal and postpartum yoga. If what draws you to Kundalini is a slower practice with room for breath and stillness, that can be part of any lesson.
My training was a 200-hour course at House of Om in Bali; you can read about my training. Many Kundalini meditations rest the gaze at the point between the eyebrows, the centre known as ajna, or the third eye, and the Sanskrit yoga glossary explains the other terms on this page.