Bhajan’s Yoga:

The Roots and Context of Kundalini Yoga As Taught By Yogi Bhajan

by

Rob Zabel
 Bhajan’s Yoga

PREFACE

T
here are few figures in the history of yoga in the United States as controversial as

Yogi Bhajan. His teachings spread like wildfire across the landscape of the 1970s,

endearing him to a vast audience of seekers, many of whom hold his Kundalini Yoga

as the safest and most effective means of spiritual advancement known to humanity. His success

single-handedly did more to spread Sikhism among Western seekers than any other person, while

his yoga practices have wound up in universities, hospitals, and studios internationally. And yet

his private life has gradually invited more scrutiny in the wake of scandals, tell-all books, and

academic deconstructions of his teachings. A man once seen by many as more than human is

being reexamined by a society that has progressed immensely in its values and priorities since

his arrival in the West in 1968. To many this has meant a profound period of soul searching and

reevaluation.

This paper is not intended to explore Yogi Bhajan’s character, to answer questions

regarding abuse within the 3HO1 community, or to lend any subjective evaluation to questions of

the practice’s efficacy. Neither does this paper intend to defend or attack that community which

continues to practice the teachings of this protean Punjabi immigrant turned yoga celebrity.

Instead the teachings themselves, known as Kundalini Yoga As Taught By Yogi Bhajan

(KYATBYB), will be examined as a practice in its political, historical, and religious dimensions,

1 The Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization (3HO) is the organization Yogi Bhajan founded in 1970 to help spread his
teachings, but the moniker has also been adopted emically and etically to describe the collective group of followers
and practitioners of Yogi Bhajan’s teachings.

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as compared with other movements within Modern Postural Yoga and their historical precedents

and as compared with other expressions of Sikh yoga.

It is in this spirit that this paper has been undertaken with the support of the very

organization entrusted with preserving and spreading the teachings of Yogi Bhajan, the Kundalini

Research Institute (KRI), through a research grant to Loyola Marymount University of Los

Angeles, CA. The author has no prior relationship to the 3HO community, KRI, or Yogi Bhajan.

In the following pages, the historical dimensions of Yogi Bhajan’s teachings will be examined,

including certain popular views on the origins and significance of the practices. This includes the

contextualizing of yoga within orthodox and heterodox movements of Sikhism, examining the

historic diffusion of yoga practices in India and the West, and seeing how different teachers have

attempted to make the esoteric palatable to a secular Western audience.

Yogi Bhajan’s influences–both named and unnamed–will be explored, and the work of

other critical authors will be revisited and revised where new information has come to light.2

Yogi Bhajan’s many inspirations will be laid out in detail, including the various political and

interpersonal rivalries that may have shaped his path. Ultimately, the mind of the late Yogi

Bhajan is unknowable, but those indelible fingerprints of the past that can be discerned will serve

as a jumping off point by which the historical dimensions of the practice may be better

understood.

2Many of the relevant works on Yogi Bhajan are over ten years old, and were written without the aid of resources
and revelations that have come to light in the interim.

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INTRODUCTION

In searching out the roots of Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan, many interesting–

though by no means unique–problems arise. The authenticity of his teachings have become

popular objects of debate among yogis, academics, and the armchair scholars of social media.

What he taught under the rubric of kundalini yoga, also known as Kundalini Yoga as Taught by

Yogi Bhajan (KYATBYB), appears at first glance to be an amalgamation of new-age

philosophies, theosophist speculations, and the 1960s counterculture mixed with the practices,

both new and revived, of physical yoga.

Like many modern and new-age expressions of mysticism, Bhajan’s teachings are being

examined and discussed with a critical historical eye. Questions of authenticity have become a

fascination of modern identity politics in the West and East alike, with some activists claiming

yoga as the exclusive heritage of Hinduism and India, and many overzealous practitioners

seeking out the most ancient and pedigreed lineages and practices they can find while shunning

anything less as appropriative and “white-washed.” Those orientalist tropes of the past that once

went unexamined are now understandably being reevaluated even as the yoga industry continues

to deal in rainbow-colored chakra yoga mats and essential oil pyramid schemes. At the same

time, formerly trusted and beloved figures of the yoga world like Swami Vishnudevananda,

Swami Satyananda, Pattabhi Jois, and countless others are having their legacies reevaluated in

the wake of powerful accusations of inappropriate behavior, including Yogi Bhajan. While the

personal behavior and predilections of said teachers are not a focus of the present work, there is

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no denying that these teachers’ legacies are being shaped by larger social questions about power

that also deserve to be examined. The historical picture of this practice becomes easily entangled

with debates about important and emergent issues of appropriation and sexual abuse, making a

proper examination of KYATBYB a challenging and emotionally charged endeavor.

When we delve into a tradition like KYATBYB, words like authenticity and orthodoxy

may be an axe doing the job of a scalpel. Attempts to paint everything connected to Yogi Bhajan

with the same broad brush obliterates the nuance that is essential to this examination. There is no

doubt that his teachings and organizations are novel in their borrowings and inventions, but such

novelty and appropriation is at the same time a consistent mark of nearly every upstart yoga and

spiritual movement in the West, if not historically in India as well. It is simultaneously the

influence of modernity and the construct of lineage that shape this curious amalgamation for

Bhajan, as it has for Vivekananda, Yogananda, Krishnamacharya, Krishnamurti, and countless

other teachers and gurus to reach vast Western audiences. Like his many contemporaries, there is

little reason to believe Bhajan was anything less than genuine in his belief in the teachings and

practices in which he dealt. As other studies have concluded, it seems that simultaneously “Yogi

Bhajan was not only a Sikh and a Yogi but also a charismatic leader of what was with no doubt a

New Religious Movement.”3 The practice itself is ultimately a complex tapestry that even its

weaver likely could not untangle. A tapestry that actually began before Bhajan had even been

born.

3 Lafontaine, Juan Francisco. 3HO in the Light of Experience. p.30

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THE MAN, THE MYTH

By the time Yogi Bhajan passed away from heart failure in 2004 at the age of 75, he had

become an undeniable celebrity of the spiritual world, with followers around the globe. His

obituary in the Indian newspaper The Tribune summarizes his life in glowing terms:

The first to publicly teach Kundalini yoga, when he arrived in the West in 1968, he announced he
had come to the West “to create teachers, not to gain students”.

A devout Sikh, his inspiration and example motivated thousands to embrace the Sikh way of life.
Through his personal efforts, Sikh dharma was legally incorporated and officially recognised as a
religion in the USA in 1971. In 1971, in acknowledgement of his extraordinary impact of
spreading the universal message of Sikhism, the then president of the SGPC, Sant Charan Singh,
called him the Siri Singh Sahib, Chief Religious and Administrative Authority for Western
Hemisphere. He was given the responsibility to create a Sikh ministry in the West by Akal Takht.
He was honored with the title Bhai Sahib by Akal Takht in 1974.

Born Harbhajan Singh Puri on August 26, 1929, in the part of India that became Pakistan in 1948,
he was the son of a doctor. He spent his youth in Dalhousie and attended a Catholic convent
school. When he became a US citizen in 1976, Yogi Bhajan changed his name legally to
Harbhajan Singh Khalsa Yogiji. When he was just eight ,he began his yogic training with an
enlightened teacher, Sant Hazara Singh, who proclaimed him to be a master of kundalini yoga.4

Much of Yogi Bhajan’s life was lived in the public eye. Since his arrival in the United States, the

charismatic yogi attracted throngs of loyal followers who ran his institutions, absorbed his

teachings, and documented nearly every public class and talk that he gave. Yet his existence

before 1968 remains largely nebulous and inaccessible, communicated sparsely with instructive

anecdotes dispersed through his immense catalogue of teachings. A mixture of famous and

mysterious figures make up Yogi Bhajan’s repetoire of quoted sources, from an illustrious Sikh

holyman, to a politically active Hindu guru, to the elusive Hazara Singh whom Yogi Bhajan

ultimately praised above all others. In addition, Yogi Bhajan told stories of many teachers whom

he had known but briefly, and from whom he had learned but a single practice. Besides Hazara

4 Singh, Prabhjot. “Yogi Bhajan – a tireless crusader.” Tribune News Service. October 7, 2004.

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Singh, the most important clues he offered to his past were the names of Sant Virsa Singh,

Dhirendra Brahmachari, Swami Sivananda, and Swami Dev Murti.

It is from these many sources that the phenomenon known as Kundalini Yoga As Taught

By Yogi Bhajan took its unique form. And yet the teachings were never presented as his own

creation, but rather as part of a larger concept of Kundalini Yoga that was ancient and

multifarious. The interactions of these influences on Yogi Bhajan as he attempted to bring his

understanding of yoga to the West formed something simultaneously new and ancient. Like

many modern schools of yoga, Bhajan’s boasted lofty credentials, but unlike any other school at

that time, his so-called “aquarian yoga” negotiated a novel space at the interstices of new-ageism

and Khalsa Sikhism, with yoga as the unlikely bond that held them together.

THE CONSTRUCTION OF LINEAGE

There is a popular misconception that Sikhism is by definition incompatible with yoga,

especially haṭha and any expression of tantra. For many of Bhajan’s critics, it is this

transgression above all else that makes him an apostate and a false Sikh. This alone is commonly

considered grounds to dismiss his authenticity. At the same time, practitioners of tantric yoga

from Hindu and Buddhist traditions often claim an incompatibility between Sikh doctrine and

yoga practice, including Hindu nationalists who lay claim to yoga as Hindu culture, for various

socio-political reasons. Because of this, any claims Bhajan has made to being a lineage holder in

an authentic order of Sikh practitioners of kuṇḍalinī yoga has been questioned and largely

dismissed to date. In reality, there are myriad reasons to investigate the issue further.

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Popular practices like yoga are notoriously prone to diffusion within Indic religions,

drifting across the neatly drawn lines between traditions and finding a home amongst any

audience that considered them efficacious. When one attempts to unearth the hypothetical clean

straight and indelible line called lineage that connects an idealized past to our present moment,

much like examining the structure of a living plant, it yields not a singular root that feeds the

mighty peepal tree, but a complex network that can hardly be fathomed. In fact the growth of a

spiritual movement, much like that of a plant, expands both upward and downward from the true

point of origin (the seed or founder). No matter how novel a tradition, there is always a claimed

connection to an older heritage, often one that has been ‘lost in our present age of ignorance.’5

As a tradition establishes itself, its roots latch to precedents whether they be real or imagined. A

seed will, even after growing into a mighty trunk, continue to branch in new directions just as the

roots dig in deeper below. As branches and roots expand, some are twisted, others truncated, and

many so long decayed that their former presence is no longer detectable. This is surely the case

with Yoga as it is with Sikhism: complex amalgamations of divergent philosophies, practices,

traditions, and reforms. The sources are many, as are their forms in the present.

Who was Yogi Bhajan? Who were his teachers? Did the Kundalini Yoga that he taught

come from an ancient tradition, the new-age, or somewhere else entirely? Is this yoga Hindu? Is

it religious? Similar questions have been asked about every popular yoga and meditation

movement to reach the West, starting with the neo-Vedānta of Vivekananda, the Kriya Yoga of

Paramahansa Yogananda, the Vinyasa Yoga of Krishnamacharya, and Maharshi Mahesh Yogi’s

Transcendental Meditation. Each one of these systems has a mysterious mystic at their roots,

5 A popular catch-all explanation for the world’s problems amongst yogins.

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sometimes mythical like the immortal Babaji of Kriya Yoga, sometimes historical as with

Vivekananda’s teacher Ramakrishna, and often somewhere in between as with

Krishnamacharya’s unknown and unverified Himalayan teacher Rammohan Brahmachari.

All of these yogic systems were likely the products of innovation and simultaneously

attempts to preserve tradition, and even cultural identity.6 These efforts are a commonplace

cultural reaction in the face of an ever encroaching modernity where identity is constantly being

reestablished in new and broader contexts.7 Some innovations are radical departures from

tradition, heterodox approaches developed in a form of self-conscious protestantism (as with the

very origins of Buddhism and Sikhism). Other systems develop their distinguishing traits

gradually over generations, drifting away from orthodoxy over time. Some, like the Udāsīs, who

we will discuss below, may even find the so-called orthodoxy has innovated and reshaped itself

around them. Orthodoxy is, after all, a plastic term shaped by emic conventions. Changes that

drive these movements may come from different sources including:

•Integration - bringing in ideas from disparate systems, sometimes in a mutual

syncretism, and sometimes through appropriation from one group by another.

•Innovation - the inevitable discoveries of experimentation by practitioners, which may

include filling in gaps in older teachings or complete novelties.

6 Yogi Bhajan’s teachings could arguably be construed as an attempt to preserve elements of Punjabi culture by
introducing it to the West, particularly practices that were disappearing among Punjabi Sikhs after partition.
7 A notable goal of many Hindu reformations, such as those that grew out of the Bhadralok community in Bengal,
inspired in part by the critical eye of Victorian-era Europeans, was the modernizing and demystifying of esoteric
traditions in order to preserve and spread them to new followers as missionary movements. Many practices were
‘cleaned-up’ including those that were viewed as corrupted, such as haṭha yoga. These reformations grew into the
Arya and Brahmo Samaj, Ramakrishna Math, and the Self-Realization Fellowship among others, all of which have
made notable efforts to make their teachings more accessible to Judeo-Christian Western audiences by condemning
‘backwards’ Hindus for ‘superstitious beliefs.’ It could be argued that the Singh Sabha movement is an analogue of
this phenomenon within Sikhism.

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•Revelation - many teachers relate having visions of ascended masters or deities from

whom techniques, mantras, insights, and special initiations were received. This often

clears the way for innovations to be viewed as orthodox reforms, issued from the a

foundational figure within a tradition.

The proclivity for invention is so nearly universal that religious scholars James Lewis and Olav

Hammer argue:

In the domain of religion [...] historically verifiable traditions coexist with recent innovations
whose origins are spuriously projected back into time. In fact, the trend of inventing ancient
historical lineages seems particularly prevalent in the world of religion. Observers of the
contemporary New Age scene, for instance, can be struck by the habit of many books and
websites to attribute hundreds if not thousands of years of history to practices and ideas that the
usual standards of secular historiography date no further back than the 1970s and 1980s. [...] the
invention of sacred traditions appears to be a perennial motif in religious history.8

Even as the sprout rises towards the sun, the seed of a tradition must inevitably send its roots

down beyond itself to become firmly established. Perceived historical validity is a source of

succor to young faiths, even when fabricated. So what we can say about tradition and lineage is

that it exists both as an historical concept and a mythological concept, and fully drawing these

aspects apart in many cases is neither tenable or desirable, exacerbated by the mythologizing

practiced amongst the history-keepers, teachers, and authors within these traditions.

Among the living practitioners of different traditions who were interviewed for this paper

there are many who trace their lineage through a few historical individuals back to a prophet-like

figure said to have been in direct communion with a divine or archetypal yogi or siddha. Visions

of the divine are at the root of the vast majority of yogic and religious institutions in India if not

universally. This seems to be a commonality across traditions, adding a divine provenance to

what would otherwise be considered the inventions of fallible human beings. To many

8 James R. Lewis, Olav Hammer. The Invention of Sacred Tradition. p.2

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practitioners it is this perceived infallibility that allows them to shut down natural human doubt

and feel a profound sense of faith and surrender. It is this faith that enables the efficacy of a

practice, according to many traditions, and inspires perseverance when the practice proves

challenging. In this way, mythology serves a practical function to a spiritual tradition beyond

simply projecting authority.

Yogi Bhajan claimed his authority as a teacher came through what he called the “Golden

Chain.” This description of his lineage may be also be seen in the prominent Sufi mystical order

of the Naqshbandi which uses the same term to describe their own line of transmission. The

Naqshbandiyya have their own complex spurious origins in the prophet Muhammed, despite

being too novel a movement by centuries.9 By connecting themselves to these unimpeachable

antecedents, their lineage becomes beyond reproach, as to critique them would be akin to

criticizing God’s own prophet and by extension, God’s word–the highest authority. This also

allows an otherwise heterodox practice of the lineage to become emically orthodox as it was

allegedly introduced by the Prophet Himself.

An intermediary figure who is capable of communion with the Divine is simultaneously

an innovator and a revealer of eternal knowledge, like the archetypal yogis known as the seven

rishis who are credited with channeling the sacred texts of Hinduism. This is why divine

scriptures like the Vedas are classified as śruti, meaning “heard” or essentially “channeled,” and

their composers regarded as conduits of the Divine word. The continued access to emically valid

9 “...legitimization requires that the chain of transmission stretch back from the founder(s) to the model of all correct
Muslim belief and practice, the Prophet Muhammad. In the case of the Khwajagan-Naqshbandiyya, the backward
projection of the chain of transmission was gradual. The initial phase discussed above was the work of Baha’uddin’s
disciples, the actual founders of the Naqshbandiyya brotherhood, who extended their lineage back from their master
to Ghijduwani, the alleged originator of the Khwajagan current. Their successors, whose efforts were consolidated in
the Rashahat, continued the construction from Ghijduwani all the way back to Muhammad.” - Weismann, Itzchak.
The Naqshbandiyya: Orthodoxy and Activism in a Worldwide Sufi Tradition. p.22

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sources of revelation is enshrined in various religions, perhaps most notably in the Tibetan

tradition of the terma, where new scriptures from venerated saints are discovered or channeled

by living practitioners.10 Other traditions are able to consolidate power by limiting access to the

divine and declaring an end to the age of revelation, labelling would-be prophets and prophetic

traditions as heresy, as with the Ahmadiyya movement within Islam, the Messianic movement in

Judaism, and the Church of Latter Day Saints within Christianity.

Yogi Bhajan claimed to have visions of Guru Ram Das, just as one of his teachers, Virsa

Singh, claimed to have visions of Siri Chand, Guru Gobind Singh, and Guru Nanak. Similarly,

Bhajan’s teacher Dhirendra Brahmacari alleged his own guru Maharishi Kartikeya lived over 200

years and was in direct contact with the immortal avatar of Śiva, Gorakhnath.11 The role of

providence in the construct of lineage is therefore an obvious point of dissonance in applying the

lens of historicity to these practices. Very few lineages stand up to a strict Western scientific

filter, which shows that such a filter is of little use in comparative religious or yogic studies.

Objective historical truth affects very little in the day-to-day life of practitioners. In some cases

the misuse of the historicity lens may even suggest a self-serving motivation in its selective

application by critical commentators.

Tantric yoga traditions, medieval and modern iterations alike, have a tendency to read

their practices into older texts that predate their own advent. In fact, this may truly be a definitive

feature of Hindu tradition, where the Bhagavad Gītā, Upaniṣads, and Brahma Sūtras are

reinterpreted by every orthodox philosophical school and reconstrued so as to support divergent

10 Compare with the channeling the Yogarahāsya of Nāthamuni by Krishnamacharya.

11Personal communication with Reinhard Gammenthaler, March 2021. Gorakhnath is often associated with Babaji,
the mythical avatar considered to be the progenitor of kriyā yoga as taught by the Self-Realization Fellowship.

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wolrdviews. While formulating new and heterodox innovations, there is an impulse amongst

even the most inventive teachers to connect their every novelty into the past. This is sometimes

accomplished by finding esoteric hints in older texts that may justify a tenuous connection to the

most ancient and authoritative sources, or even by revelation wherein an ancient or timeless

master is the source of authority. Krishnamacharya’s son TKV Desikachar, in acknowledging his

father’s many anonymous innovations, sees the act of accreditation as a matter of perspective

with room for nuance.12

What a Western critic might see as misrepresenting the antiquity of a teaching, many

yogis see as modestly giving due credit to their inspirations. When James Mallinson asked yogis

where they learned various āsanas during fieldwork in India, many claimed the teachings came

directly from God (i.e. in visions or trance states) even when he suspected they may have simply

been copying pictures they had seen on the internet.13 With the precedent of secretive initiatory

lineages, and the likely development of these techniques in non-academic or even non-literate

milieus, it is true that nearly every tradition has roots that run deeper than their first elaborations

in text or artifact. This simultaneously invites the practitioner to search out their received

tradition in the oldest corners of available history, and becomes a means to view a practice as

“original” or “pure” regardless of its actual antiquity or provenance. What cannot be found on

12 “My father never acknowledged that he discovered anything even when I have seen that it was he who discovered.
He has discovered postures but he would say that it was his teacher who taught him. Rarely has he said that it was
his “original” work. At the same time, I have seen him – because I am his son also – composing some verses and
correcting those verses for the Chandas (Metre) and all that and finally saying –this is what Nathamuni is saying and
this is what my teacher says! I tend to think that the Nathamuni’s Yoga Rahasya that he taught us is quite likely to be
a combination of his own commentary and the lessons he received though he would not accept it.” - Desikachar,
TKV. The Study of Yoga Rahasya. Interview from KYM Darśanam, vol 1, no 1, Feb 1991 (found at url: https://
yogastudies.org/2016/03/nathamunis-yoga-rahasya-is-quite-likely-to-be-a-combination-of/)
13 Mallinson, James. Public lecture at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, Ca. 9/28/2016

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paper, as with the Kriya Yoga of Paramahansa Yogananda, is often seen to be revealed by God

directly through visions and grace.

SIKH YOGA

Whatever the origin of Yogi Bhajan’s claimed lineage, one cannot ignore that his claims

of access to the “Golden Chain” were a source of power. His exclusive authority within 3HO

made him the arbiter of all aspects of the practice and connected lifestyle that his students were

imbibing. Bhajan’s eventual rejection of his only accessible Sikh teacher, Sant Virsa Singh,

certainly helped consolidate that power. Lineage is by its very nature a tool for establishing and

consolidating authority. There were few other Sikh teachers to be found in California at the time,

and likely none that were teaching the unique synthesis of haṭha yoga practices with Sikh

mantras and aniconic devotionalism that defined his teachings. Bhajan’s power was not initially

derived from financial largesse or political clout–though this power came in time–but rather by

his claimed access to an ancient lineage. Moreover, his lineage was one that was exceedingly

rare in the West, with Hindu (or neo-Hindu) yoga and new-age communities abounding but very

little Sikh presence. Much like Swami Prabhupada of ISKCON, Yogi Bhajan arrived in the West

to find a thriving yoga scene dominated by Vedānta and other brahmanically-minded movements

established by the likes of Swami Vivekananda and Paramahansa Yogananda decades before,

systems that were wildly divergent from their own emergent niches. Just as Swami Prabhupada

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boldly declared himself the “founder-acharya” of ISKCON for all eternity,14 Yogi Bhajan

eventually claimed to be the master of “white tantra” with a similarly concocted title of Mahān

Tantric.

Yogi Bhajan’s teachings have attracted derision from non-Sikh practitioners who claim

they are an inauthentic and original synthesis, upholding various classical Hindu formulations of

yoga instead as sole authority. At the same time the ‘Sikh Yoga’ he taught is maligned by certain

orthodox Sikhs who point to the historical rivalries between Nāth jogīs and the early Sikh

community in order to misleadingly present yoga as forbidden by Sikh doctrine. Unfortunately

both of these arguments are mired in anachronistic thinking, assuming distinct lines that have

been drawn to separate Sikhism, Hinduism, and Yoga existed throughout history when in fact,

many of these lines have been drawn in the last 200 years as the result of political maneuvering.

In historical context, just from the sheer number of Sikh saints said to have been drawn from the

ranks of the jogīs,15 it is clear that individual crossovers between yoga and early Sikhism were

abundant. The resulting syncretism is still prevalent in the authentic practices of non-Khalsa

Sikhs, the secretive traditions of some orthodox Sikhs, and a number of affiliated and off-shoot

movements to this day.

Identifying the potential historical presence of yogic practices within Sikhism is

problematized by the historical rivalry between renunciant yogis and the householder tradition of

14“Śrīla Prabhupāda showed great concern that his position as ISKCON Founder-Ācārya always be prominently
recognized. He mandated that in each of his books the title page and cover display his name in full, “His Divine
Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda,” with “Founder-Ācārya of the International Society for Krishna
Consciousness” placed immediately below. Similarly, he ordered that “Founder-Ācārya: His Divine Grace A.C.
Bhaktivedānta Swami Prabhupāda” appear directly beneath “International Society for Krishna Consciousness” on all
ISKCON official documents, letterhead stationery, publications, and signage. In these and other ways Śrīla
Prabhupāda’s special, intimate connection with ISKCON is to be always honored.” Svarūpa Dāsa, Ravīndra. Śrīla
Prabhupāda: The Founder-Ācarya of ISKCON. p.21
15 This can be observed in the many Gurudwaras named for jogīs who were allegedly converted to Sikhism.

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Guru Nanak. The Nāth jogīs were a prevalent and powerful group in the Punjab and beyond

during the time of Guru Nanak, and the two movements contended for followers and influence in

their formative days. Although the Punjabi language is closely associated with Sikhism today,

historians claim its earliest compositions are Nāth poetry, enshrining yogic concepts poetically

into the very roots of the language. Further complication arises in the more recent past, as over a

century of reforms have sought to more strictly define Sikh identity in opposition to what are

seen as the ‘un-Sikh’ practices of idolatry, tantra, and Vedānta, all frequently integral elements of

various approaches to yoga. For their part, many Hindu reformers have also cheerily drawn lines

of their own between traditions, even mocking Sikh reverence for their holy books as crypto-

idolatry.16

As yoga has become more distinctly associated with Hinduism and especially the

antinomianism of the Nāth jogīs of Northern India, Sikhism has made a concerted effort to avoid

yogic technology. And yet Sikh scripture draws heavily on the terminology of yoga, including

frequent evocations of the complimentary energies of Śiva and Śakti and meditation on the

universal vibration known as the nād, familiar to any Hindu practitioner of tantric yoga. Stories

enshrined in Sikh literature tell of debates between Nāth renunciants (Gorakhnāthis) and Guru

Nanak, Kabir, and other important saints.17 Some temples and shrines even have accompanying

16 Hindu reformers of the Arya Samaj, amongst them Dayanand Saraswati, famously attempted to label Sikhism as a
degenerate form of Hinduism and publicly belittled its practices within the Sikh holy city of Amritsar. “They do not
worship idols, but they worship the Grantha Saheb [sic] which is as good as idolatry...Just as the priests of temples
ask their devotees to see the goddess and offer presents to her, similarly the Sikhs worship the book and present gifts
to it.” Jones, Kenneth W. “Ham Hindu Nahin: Arya-Sikh Relations, 1877-1905” The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol.
32, No. 3, p.459
17“Guru Nanak met and encountered all Sidhas [sic] and Yogis and those who claimed to be avatars of spiritual
adepts, and after holding debates and discussions with them made all Yogis and Siddhas catch their ears, meaning
that he made them discard their Yogic cults and submit to his ideology unconditionally.” Singh, Trilochan. Sikhism
and Tantric Yoga, p.30 (emphasis added) This idea that Nanak converted all the yogis comes up frequently amongst
orthodox Sikh critics of Bhajan, leaving one to wonder from where exactly all the yogis of today may have come.

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legends–difficult to confirm–of being converted from yogic ashrams into Gurudwaras after a

visit from a nirguṇi saint. Mention of these conversions in Sikh scripture is part of a larger

pattern among the growing Bhakti movement of the time, where Kabir and Ravidas, like Guru

Nanak, would challenge the perceived hegemonies of Brahmanism, Nāthism, Sufism, and

asceticism that dominated Indian religion. 3HO students explain the appropriation of the

language of yoga as they learned it from Yogi Bhajan, which is in accord with orthodox Sikh

views:

Because the terminology of yogic practice was so widely spread and in such common usage at the
time of Guru Nanak, it was natural for him to speak of these same higher truths, using much of
yogic terminology. It is also true that yogic terminology and the objects of yogic practice were
totally in accord with the realizations which Guru Nanak was sharing during his lifetime.
Therefore, many of Guru Nanak's hymns speak about yoga and about yogis, admonishing against
ritualistic practices which seek enlightenment and union with God through one's efforts alone,
and reminding the yogis and the people of the highest meaning of yoga and of the real object of
self discipline, most of which had become lost in superstition and fear. Guru Nanak exposed the
meaninglessness and contradiction of the life of the recluse and called everyone to the path of
love and righteous action, and he gave a fresh spiritual and ethical orientation to their esoteric
terminology.18

According to this view, the practices and terminology of the yogis were rescued directly from the

hands of superstitious and egotistical renunciants by none other than Guru Nanak. The ‘amoral,’

ego-based approach to yoga was supplanted by an “ethical orientation to their esoteric

terminology.”

Despite this supposed historical rejection of yoga, Sikh scholars generally acknowledge

the influences of Nāthism, at least on specific Sikh groups such as the Udāsīs.19 The Udāsīs are

18 Beads of Truth, No.29, 30, Summer 1976, pp.36-37

19“Nath Influence is plainly evident in some of the Udasi ideas, customs and beliefs. They accorded a particular
loyality [sic] to the doctrines and practices of hatha-yoga, although respect for these doctrines extended beyond the
limited Udasi circle.” -Singh, Dr Sulakhan, Seminar Papers on BABA SRI CHAND JI, “Teachings of Baba Sri
Chand,” pp.79-80.
“Within the community the doctrines and practices of haṭha-yoga were accorded a particular loyalty by the so-called
Udāsī sādhūs, but it is clear that respect for these doctrines extended beyond the limited Udāsī circle.” -Mcleod,
WH. Early Sikh Tradition, p.103.
See also Sandhu, Kiranjeet. Udasis in Colonial Punjab: 1849 A.D.-1947 A.D., pp.131, 229.

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an exception to many of the supposedly definitive features of Sikhism. They are renunciants and

frequent practitioners of haṭha yoga, tantric ritual, and in many cases goddess worship–all

practices discouraged or forbidden within many Khalsa communities today. Established during

the historical lifetime of the founder of Sikhism, the lineage enshrines Guru Nanak’s own son

Siri Chand as the archetypal yogi, crediting him with a superhuman lifespan and depicting him

with identical iconography as the founders of Nāthism, Goraknāth and Matsyendranāth,

including a divine bluish complexion.20 To this day, yogis from this heterodox Sikh lineage

gleefully coexist with Nāth yogis throughout northern India. Both form their encampments and

temples around a ritual hearth known as a dhūni (or dhuan in Punjabi), and in some cases ritually

smear the ash across their bodies in imitation of the deity Bhairava. Yet rather than being rejected

by Sikh communities, they are still celebrated as preservers of the tradition, having protected

Gurudwaras during the exile of militant Sikhs under the Mughal and British Empires. They have

also maintained some of the oldest extant copies of the holy texts. There are many other groups

that skirt the line between Hinduism and Sikhism while sharing in the protestant roots laid down

by Guru Nanak and his contemporaries include the Ravidassia, Nirmala, Gulabdasi, Namdhari,

Nirankari, Sant Mat, and modern Nanakpanthi movements.

Indian tradition often insists on a lineage of high pedigree to establish the credentials of a

movement.21 The attempt to claim ancient heritage is nearly universal in India and indeed

religious organizations worldwide. Sikhism has an unusually strong lineage in the form of ten

historical Gurus that carried the tradition through its most tumultuous and persecuted periods of

20 It is likely, at least for Nāths, that the blue complexion denotes him as an avatar of Śiva.
21The word paramparā denotes lineage and sampradāya tradition, though they are sometimes used interchangeably.
In both cases the terms imply an unbroken chain of succession.

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development and whose writings have been painstakingly preserved. This living tradition was

plasticized largely after the death of the tenth and final Guru at the machinations of the Mughal

Empire, marking the official end of the age of revelation for orthodox Sikhism, and the elevation

of the holy book (Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji) and the community (Khalsa) to the position of Guru.

While many traditions harken back to a possibly mythical founder, as the Nāth Yogis do with

Śiva, Matsyendranāth, and Gorakṣanāth;22 Sikhism has the undeniably historical figure of Guru

Nanak as its rudiment. The stories of his travels (udas), debates, and pluralist pronouncements

paint his teachings as a natural and enlightened culmination to the various philosophies that

existed in the subcontinent at the time. To the Udāsī (meaning ‘travelers’) who have rejected or

at least circumvented the householder aspect of the traditions of Guru Nanak, a parallel lineage,

or throne (gaddi), is maintained starting with Guru Nanak’s son, Siri Chand. While the Udāsī are

praised amongst the orthodox as great historical proselytizers of the Sikh faith, their power and

perceived legitimacy have been significantly curbed by the mainstream, removing them from

control of temples and attempting to deny their notable use of yoga practice.23

What may once have fit under the larger and more inclusive world of early Sikhism that

began with the pluralist anti-establishment teachings of Guru Nanak, has often found the lines

redrawn around it, especially in the last two centuries. The politics of Sikh identity today have

become so contentious and exclusionary in many circles as to inspire animosity and occasional

22Though the figures of Matsyendra and Gorakṣa likely did exist, like the historical Buddha the stories that record
their lives often fall distinctly into the category of mythology.
23“Yogi Bhajan has made his American followers believe that Guru Nanak's eldest son Siri Chand was a Yogi. Siri
Chand was an Udasi and never a Yogi. No Udasi ever practices Yoga.” Singh, Trilochan. Sikhism and Tantric Yoga,
p.89. The consensus among scholars of the Udāsīs, however, do not bear this claim out. Cf Kaur, Madanjit. Seminar
Papers on BABA SRI CHAND JI, “Udasi Matras,” p.40. Singh, Dr Sulakhan, ibid, “Teachings of Baba Sri Chand,”
pp.79-80

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violence between different sects.24 As formerly inclusive movements become more exclusive in

their narrowing identity, inevitable fractures occur and reformers and radicals alike gain

momentum for new offshoot sects.

In the 1855 British census of the Punjab, Sikhs and Hindus were not differentiated, Sikhs

being considered as a subdivision of Hinduism as opposed to a unique faith in its own right.25

Originally, the followers of Guru Nanak’s reforms were known as Nanakpanthis, and included

people who might today still be classified as Hindu or even Sufi, but not as followers of a

distinct Sikh faith. In many cases, such clear cut divisions and definitions of religion do not

apply in the same sense that they are used today. Sikhism undeniably has many of its roots in

Hindu and Sufi religious and social institutions, but its principles and innovations exist to this

day in many forms incorporated by harder to define groups.

A group of self-identified Hindus based in Lucknow but originally from the Sindh region,

many of whom left their homes in Pakistan during India’s partition, were advised by their Sufi

Sant spiritual leader Rochal Das to house the holy scripture of Sikhism–the Sri Guru Granth

Sahib–within their temple. As the Akali Dal reform movement grew in power, many of the

Gurudwaras (temples that house the Guru Granth) throughout India came under the control of the

Punjabi-led Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC), and so the community

debated removing the Guru Granth to avoid any potential of losing control over their own place

of worship. Ultimately they kept the holy text enshrined, while also surrounding it with idols of

24 See the notorious 2009 assassination attempt of the Ravidassia leader in Vienna at the hands of radical Sikhs.
Similar aggression has occurred between mainstream Khalsa Sikhs and the Nirmala, Nirankari, and Namdhari
amongst others, often over accusations of heresy (i.e. violating those tenets upheld by the Khalsa movement,
especially the prohibition on the worship of living Gurus). The Udāsīs were in many instances violently removed
from power in several Gurudwaras during the Akali movement (1919-1925). A particularly bloody example is the
Nankana Massacre of 1921.
25 One can imagine the furor if Islam and Christianity were considered as sub-divisions of Judaism in the US census.

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the Hindu deities and placing a copy of the Bhagavad Gītā next to it. This was seen to delineate

the temple as distinct in form and function from a Sikh house of prayer.26 It is remarkable to see

that modern politics can still have such an outsized influence in the premeditated and self-aware

act of reshaping religious identity.

The British presence in the Punjab also inspired a desire among Sikhs to be recognized as

a more ‘enlightened’ faith in the eyes of their colonial rulers, distinct from the Hindus that caught

so much derision from the British. Just as the British East India Company and later the British

Raj had given disproportionate power to Mughals over Hindus, seeing their Abrahamic tradition

as more closely aligned with their Christian sensibilities, a movement within Sikhism sought

recognition for upholding similar principles: monotheism, the rejection of idolatry, the shunning

of ‘superstitious’ traditions and beliefs, etc. Like any reform movement, the inspirations were

undoubtedly numerous, but the role of colonial politics is inescapable. And the payoff for these

efforts was clear:

As Sikhs sought to protect their identity, the British sought to further drive a wedge between the
two communities in a divide-and-rule strategy. The British promoted Sikh superiority through
employment in government service and leadership positions in the army, rewarding their loyalty
during the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny by Hindu and Muslim soldiers. Sikhs prospered under the British
and enjoyed influence in return for allegiance and tax revenues.27

To be distinct from the ‘backwards ways’ of the Hindus brought with it great social and political

clout for the Punjab and the Sikh community at large. Just as with many Hindu reformers, certain

Sikh leaders set out to distinguish themselves from the armed and naked jogīs–the same jogīs

Hastings and the East India Company had attempted, with limited success, to outlaw in 1773

26Ramey, Steven Wesley. Hindu, Sufi, or Sikh: Contested Practices and Identifications of Sindhi Hindus in India
and Beyond p.2
27 Indla, Aditya. “Bhindranwale: How One Controversial Religious Figure Threatened the Unity of India,” History
in the Making Volume 13, pp. 229-230

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during their military campaign in Bengal.28 And so this period saw the beginning of concerted

efforts to remove those who appeared like the jogīs (Udāsīs), those who appeared militant

(Nihang), those that worship a living Guru (Namdhari, Nirankari) and those who appeared Hindu

or promoted idolatry and caste discrimination (Nirmala), leaving the proposed boundaries of the

Sikh community clearer but narrower than ever before, in many cases for the sake of political

gain.

While the lines between Hinduism and Sikhism have been drawn with even more gusto in

recent history, these divisions have hardly been unanimous. The British completed their

annexation of the Punjab in 1849, ending the Sikh-controlled government Mahārāja Ranjit Singh

had founded fifty years prior. This golden age of the Sikh Empire is often romanticized by the

Khalsa to this day as the ideal past some would have reestablished as ‘Khalistan.’ Like the

Western academic critique, the popular Sikh critique selectively holds up a constructed concept

of orthodoxy as a tool to dismiss rival movements including New Religious Movements.

Scholars like the eminent Trilochan Singh attempt to whitewash the tantric roots visible in

aspects of Sikhism while others seem to ignore these roots entirely, instead upholding an

imagined unified vision of Sikhism that had no tolerance for tantra or kuṇḍalinī from its

inception. These arguments, however, do not seem to have much historical grounding.

28Singleton, Mark. Yoga Body. p.40. This same phenomenon led to the jogī caste, supposedly made up of former
renunciants forced into householder life under colonial rule.

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KRIYĀ IN SIKH TRADITION

If yoga is not explicitly excluded from Sikhism, despite the insistence of certain parties,

then a thorough examination is necessary to reconstruct a traditional Sikh perspective on yoga.

Sikh scripture has been used to make arguments for and against the use of yoga practice. Perhaps

the most famous and explicit example of a possible kriyā (yogic action) in Sikh scripture comes

from page 1106 of the Sri Guru Granth Sahib, where the Bengali Brahmin poet Jaidev is quoted:

I pierced with breath the moon (chand=ida, the left nostril: I performed the puraka movement in
breath-control in yoga), and filled with breath the nada (the susumana, the space between the two
nostrils at the top of the nose: I performed the kumbhaka movement); I gave up the breath by the
sun (sura=pingla, the right nostril: I performed the rechaka movement)–sixteen times (khodsa=in
repeating the pranava [‘seed formula’] of Omkara sixteen times in each of the processes of taking
in, holding and ejecting the breath in performing pranayama or ‘breath-control'). I broke my
strength and have become weak; I fixed and made stable my unstable mind and then I quaffed
nectar.29

This verse is taken to be a description of what Yogi Bhajan calls So Darshan Chakra Kriya,30 a

breath and mantra technique named for the throwing discus of the Hindu deity Viṣṇu, despite the

lack of any explicit mention of sudarshana, cakra, or kriyā. The verse is highly coded with

concepts of left and right mentioned only as sun and moon. Even being an obvious reference to

the yogic practice of prāṇāyāma, the question lingers if Jaidev is describing his own method of

worship, or if he is actually criticizing yoga techniques for ‘breaking one’s strength and causing

one to become weak,’ in contrast to simply fixing one’s mind to taste the nectar of the practice.

Translation by Singh, Pashaura. The Bhagats of the Guru Granth Sahib. p.150
29

“ਚੰਦ ਸਤ ਭੇਿਦਆ ਨਾਦ ਸਤ ਪੂਿਰਆ ਸੂਰ ਸਤ ਖੋੜਸਾ ਦਤੁ ਕੀਆ ॥ ਅਬਲ ਬਲੁ ਤੋਿੜਆ ਅਚਲ ਚਲੁ ਥਿਪਆ ਅਘੜੁ ਘਿੜਆ ਤਹਾ ਅਿਪਉ ਪੀਆ ॥”
SGGS, p. 1106
30“I guarantee you, it is in Siri Guru Granth, it is the Bani of the bhagat Jaidev, his merits are already described by
the bhagat. And in Yoga of the Cherdi Kala or Kundalini Yoga the same thing, it is called Su-Darshan Chakra Kriya.
Sudarshan chakra is one wheel which moves and which is the symbol of life and it's Infinity and it will move faster
than you can imagine and spreads the life it is on the pinky of the Lord Narayan God.” “Khalsa Council - SSS
Address. Fort Lauderdale, Fl. December 28, 1991.” The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings (libraryofteachings.com)

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As we have seen in Kabir and Nanak’s encounters with the jogīs, sometimes poets in the

various Bhakti-infused traditions will use the language of yoga practice polemically, framing

their own attitudes as higher iterations of the same concepts: “Make contentment your ear-rings,

humility your begging bowl, and meditation the ashes you apply to your body,”31 Nanak

declares, superseding every marker of the jogī. But other times Guru Nanak celebrates the

“detached mind” (man bairāgī) that resides above “the six cakras” (khaṭu) even while critiquing

the egoism and hypocrisy of the more exhibitionist yoga practices.32 In places he speaks of

opening the tenth door (dasvā duār) and bringing forth nectar (amrit), but even this is

accomplished through contemplation on the Divine (barahm bīchār).33 While many Sikhs will

argue these lines amount ultimately to a rejection of haṭha yoga, he makes similar statements

about many things not proscribed by Sikh tradition: “Burn emotional attachment, and grind it

into ink. Transform your intelligence into the purest of paper. Make the love of the Lord your

pen, and let your consciousness be the scribe. Then, seek the Guru's Instructions, and record

these deliberations.”34 The Guru here is not rejecting writing or the use of pen and paper,

especially not in a poem he likely composed with the same tools, but merely expressing the

inadequacy of the written word to convey the glory of the Divine, as he does with many practices

of the jogīs. In one place Guru Nanak, like Jaidev, seems to actually instruct the reader to balance

31 ੋ ੁ ਸਰਮੁ ਪਤੁ ਝੋਲੀ ਿਧਆਨ ਕੀ ਕਰਿਹ ਿਬਭੂਿਤ ॥” SGGS, p.6

Translation by Singh Khalsa, Sant. “ਮੁੰਦਾ ਸੰਤਖ

32 “ਖਟੁ ਮਟੁ ਦੇਹੀ ਮਨੁ ਬੈਰਾਗੀ ॥” SGGS, p.903

33 “ਉਲਿਟਓ ਕਮਲੁ ਬCਹਮੁ ਬੀਚਾਿਰ ॥ ਅੰਿਮCਤ ਧਾਰ ਗਗਿਨ ਦਸ ਦੁਆਿਰ ॥” SGGS, p.153

34 Translation by Singh Khalsa, Sant. “ਜਾਿਲ ਮੋਹੁ ਘਿਸ ਮਸੁ ਕਿਰ ਮਿਤ ਕਾਗਦੁ ਕਿਰ ਸਾਰੁ ॥ ਭਾਉ ਕਲਮ ਕਿਰ ਿਚਤੁ ਲੇ ਖਾਰੀ ਗੁਰ ਪੁਿਛ ਿਲਖੁ
ਬੀਚਾਰੁ ॥” SGGS p.16

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the left and right channels, but with a stated goal of mental clarity and longer life rather than

liberation:

Heat up the sun energy of the right nostril, and cool down the moon energy of the left nostril;
practicing this breath-control, bring them into perfect balance. In this way, the fickle fish of the
mind will be held steady; the swan-soul shall not fly away, and the body-wall will not crumble.35

His use of the ‘fickle fish’ analogy for the mind borrows the conventional language of Nāth

poetry in which Matsyendra is known as ‘the killer of fish,’ or Macchaghna, equating to ‘tamer

of the mind.’

Kabir too at times calls yogis insane and tells them to renounce their techniques:

Abandon your Yogic postures and breath control exercises, O madman. Renounce fraud and
deception, and meditate continuously on the Lord, O madman. That which you beg for, has been
enjoyed in the three worlds. Says Kabeer, the Lord is the only Yogi in the world.36

But elsewhere he seems to embrace their practices himself:

I have made the fourteen worlds the furnace, and I have burnt my body with the fire of God. My
mudra - my hand-gesture, is the pipe; tuning into the celestial sound current within, the
Shushmanaa - the central spinal channel, is my cooling pad. Pilgrimages, fasting, vows,
purifications, self-discipline, austerities and breath control through the sun and moon channels -
all these I pledge.37

Kabir’s verses go so far as to make explicit mention of kuṇḍalinī (bhuangā38) piercing the cakras

(chakar) and begetting visions of the Divine everywhere.39

35 Translation by Singh Khalsa, Sant. “ਸੂਰ ਸਰੁ ਸੋਿਸ ਲੈ ਸੋਮ ਸਰੁ ਪੋਿਖ ਲੈ ਜੁਗਿਤ ਕਿਰ ਮਰਤੁ ਸੁ ਸਨਬੰਧੁ ਕੀਜੈ ॥ਮੀਨ ਕੀ ਚਪਲ ਿਸਉ ਜੁਗਿਤ
ਮਨੁ ਰਾਖੀਐ ਉਡੈ ਨਹ ਹੰਸੁ ਨਹ ਕੰਧੁ ਛੀਜੈ ॥” SGGS, p.991

36 Translation by Singh Khalsa, Sant. “ਆਸਨੁ ਪਵਨ ਦੂਿਰ ਕਿਰ ਬਵਰੇ ॥ਛੋਿਡ ਕਪਟੁ ਿਨਤ ਹਿਰ ਭਜੁ ਬਵਰੇ ॥ ਰਹਾਉ ॥ ਿਜਹ ਤੂ ਜਾਚਿਹ ਸੋ
ਿਤC ਭਵਨ ਭੋਗੀ ॥ ਕਿਹ ਕਬੀਰ ਕੇਸੌ ਜਿਗ ਜੋਗੀ ॥” SGGS p.857

37 Translation by Singh Khalsa, Sant. “ਭਵਨ ਚਤੁਰ ਦਸ ਭਾਠੀ ਕੀਨKK ੀ ਬCਹਮ ਅਗਿਨ ਤਿਨ ਜਾਰੀ ਰੇ ॥ ਮੁਦCਾ ਮਦਕ ਸਹਜ ਧੁਿਨ ਲਾਗੀ ਸੁਖਮਨ
ਪੋਚਨਹਾਰੀ ਰੇ ॥ ਤੀਰਥ ਬਰਤ ਨLਮ ਸੁਿਚ ਸੰਜਮ ਰਿਵ ਸਿਸ ਗਹਨM ਦੇਉ ਰੇ ॥” SGGS, p.969

38 This derives from the Sanskrit word for a female serpent, bhujaṅgā, another name of kuṇḍalinī.

39 “ਬੇਧੀਅਲੇ ਚਕC ਭੁ ਅੰਗਾ ॥ ਭੇਟੀਅਲੇ ਰਾਇ ਿਨਸੰਗਾ ॥” SGGS, p.972

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Even if we can assume these verses to be an endorsement of prāṇāyāma and other yogic

practices by Jaidev, Kabir, and others, their inclusion in the Adi Granth does not inherently mean

Guru Arjan and the compilers of the holy books wished to endorse the practice or that it was

considered an effective means to liberation. But Guru Arjan himself declares that “Those, whose

inverted lotus of the crown chakra is illuminated, see the Immaculate Lord everywhere.”40 Like

other references in the SGGS however, Guru Arjan describes the classical outcome of haṭha yoga

(accessing the nectar, affecting the subtle heart center) but without necessarily endorsing the

techniques of the haṭha yogis. Further examination of the textual tradition of the Udāsīs may

reveal other more explicit teachings on yoga practice that directly overlap with those of the

Nāths.

The numerous references to the channels and cakras of the subtle body and the concept

of drinking nectar in meditation show a great familiarity and even comfort with the language of

haṭha yoga that seems incompatible with an outright prohibition on its methods. But where yoga

calls for austerities and bodily disregard it is mocked as ineffectual, hinting at the desire of the

Gurus for their followers to remain engaged in the world and not destroy or weaken the body in

the search for the Divine. Where yoga was in contradiction to the mainstream Sikh emphasis on

bodily cultivation and preservation it was rejected, but many yogic practices were traditionally

believed to imbue the practitioner with greater strength and stamina. Likewise where some yogis

aimed to be as powerful as God through the attainment of siddhis, such egoism was rejected in

favor of egoless union with the Divine. Yet it is often overlooked that many yogis had made

40 Translation by Singh Khalsa, Sant. “ਊ Pਧ ਕਵਲੁ ਿਜਸੁ ਹੋਇ ਪCਗਾਸਾ ਿਤਿਨ ਸਰਬ ਿਨਰੰਜਨੁ ਡੀਠਾ ਜੀਉ ॥” SGGS, p.108 Other
translators interpret this verse to refer to the heart cakra.

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similar rejections from within the fold of orthodox Hindu thought, with even the Yoga Sūtras

explicitly emphasizing union above any worldly power. Despite their plentiful critiques of the

yogis, where practices of haṭha are not in opposition to Sikh ideals of the sacredness of the

human body and the devotion to a higher power, we have no reason to assume the Gurus rejected

them. But even with all of these hints, we have no explicit instructions from the Gurus on paper.

Whatever techniques were popular among the composers of the SGGS, they have only survived

within Sikhism by scattered textual clues, oral transmission, and perhaps the occasional Divine

manifestation. Ultimately, we only have these by which to surmise how the yoga of the Sikh

Gurus may have worked. Because of this, the narratives of living traditions such as the Sher

Yogis is invaluable in reconstructing a historically Sikh yoga.

SANT HAZARA SINGH AND THE LION YOGIS

Only very recently, a group has come to the awareness of Western academics and

Kundalini practitioners known as the Sher (Punjabi: ਸ਼ੇਰ, sher) or Singh Yogi (Punjabi: ਿਸੰਘ ਜੋਗੀ,

singh jogī) lineage, the words Sher and Singh both signifying lion. This particular lineage may

be termed a dera, or the school of a Baba, within the larger Sikh tradition of the Akali (Punjabi:

ਅਕਾਲੀ, akālī). The Akali, meaning the immortals or timeless ones, also known as the Nihang

(Punjabi: ਿਨਹੰਗ, nihang), from the Persian word for crocodile, are an originally martial group

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within orthodox Sikhism that began with the army of the tenth and final Nanak41, Guru Gobind

Singh, though their roots stretch back to the original Sikh armies of the sixth Nanak, Guru

Hargobind Sahib. The orthodox Khalsa identities itself as an iteration of the martially oriented

reformations to Sikh identity that the tenth Guru established, following the same orthodox

injunctions and rituals, with their distinction being a product of various political influences

discussed above.

According to the emic tradition of the Sher Yogi lineage42 their practices were received

directly from Guru Gobind Singh through his war drummer (Punjabi: ਨਗਾਰਚੀ, nagārchī), Akali

Baba Ajapal Singh (ca. 1660-181243 CE). As one of Guru Gobind Singh’s generals, he was

entrusted with the sacred duty of playing a legendary drum known as the ranjīt nagāra, meaning

the ‘drum of the victor.’ This massive drum, stretched with the skin of a bear the Guru had slain

hunting, was considered a symbol of the Khalsa’s dominion. Gobind Singh had it played three

times a day from his fortress in Anandpur–the place where he first established the Khalsa Panth

in 1699–much to the chagrin of the local hill rājās. Ultimately the drum was lost to history when

the Khalsa left the besieged city on December 20th, 1705.

In the ensuing period of itinerancy, the armies of the Khalsa were left to practice their

faith without access to their temples and voluminous holy texts. The added emphasis on

embodied religious praxis employed by the warriors of the Panth is a potent expression of

41 The title Nanak is used interchangeably with Guru for all ten of the Sikh Gurus. The Nāths, are suspected of
carrying on similar practices wherein jogīs would pass down the name of a guru from one teacher to the next,
creating a continuity of leadership and projecting a concept of embodied immortality. It is possibly through this
tradition that Guru Nanak was able to meet various siddhas who had lived centuries before his birth. A similar
tradition exists in Tibetan Buddhism.
42The views and historical details of the Sher Lineage have been related by living member Guvinder Singh Akali
over many hours of correspondence.
43 Some of the longer lifespans listed may be hagiographical exaggerations.

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religion in exile.44 The principles of the Sikh faith were incorporated into special movements,

breath practices, and embodied meditations as part of the daily practice of the Khalsa warrior.

Just as the itinerant yogi’s body took on the role of a temple, with all external rites carried out by

visualization and psychophysical practice, so too did the practices and rites of the Sikh Panth

find embodiment in a yoga of movement, breath, and sound. This concept is enshrined in the

Salok Dumaleh Da prayer Nihangs recite as they tie their distinctive flag-bearing turbans known

as dumāllā.45

Techniques traditionally associated with haṭha or laya yoga known as “meditation on

inner or cosmic sound” (nādānusaṃdhāna in Sanskrit), though notable as part of older pan-

Indian tantric tradition, are connected here to a distinctly Sikh yoga of sound oriented around the

vibration of Guru, or Ek Onkar (Punjabi: ੴ, ਇਕ ਓਅੰਕਾਰ, ik oankār). While the practice of the nād

is upheld in the Sri Guru Granth Sahib and has remained central to even the more orthodox Sikh

interpretations of yoga to this day, its practicality within Guru Gobind Singh’s army after the

seige of Anandpur may have further solidified its centrality.

The antiquity of the practice of nād within Sikhism is understood to herald back to Guru

Nanak himself, who mentions the nād frequently as part of his theology: “By repeating the nām

(the name of God) the unstruck (i.e. beginningless), the vibration of the nād is heard.”46 Overlaps

between the nāda yoga of the haṭhapradīpika and the nād practice described in Sikh scripture are

44This overlap in martial and spiritual practices can be compared with the supposed emphasis on the sūrya
namaskār by the Marathi general Sivaji, and his guru Samarth Ramdass. See: Zabel, Rob. “Martial, Medical,
Mystical: the Triple Braid of a Traditional Yoga.”
45 Khalsa Sundar Gutka p. 339

46 ਨਾਮੁ ਲੈ ਤ ਅਨਹਦ ਪੂਰੇ ਨਾਦ ॥੩॥ SGGS, p.1144

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plentiful, including allusions to the sounds of instruments.47 The mention of anhad (anāhata in

Sanskrit) meaning “unstruck” is a common term for the nād in Hindu and Sikh yogic traditions

and an aspect of the tantric subtle body; but the distinctly devotional aspect of Guru Nanak’s nād

teachings diverge from those of the haṭha corpus.

To this day, initiation as a Nāth entails the guru sounding a small horn or whistle known

as a nād into the right ear of the initiate, then bestowing the yogi with his own nād to be used in

communal rituals.48 In this manner the yogi is rendered fit to carry forth the nād vibration of

God, as first received by Matsyendra from Śiva and maintained by secretive initiations.

Similarly, Sikhs who practice the yoga of nād must also receive initiation into the practice from a

qualified teacher who can impart the nām just as the Gurus imparted it. In both cases, there is a

concept of a continuous chain of vibration connecting the individual practitioner back to the

highest source, whether that source is Śiva as Ādināth, the first yogi, or Oankār as Guru. As we

saw with Virsa Singh and Yogi Bhajan, the importance of receiving the nām from an empowered

source is indispensable. This practice within Sikhism came to be known as Shabad Surat Jog

(shabad or shabd meaning sound), a variation of which (Surat Shabd Yoga) is popularly taught

within the Radhasoami movement (a tradition that incorporates aspects of Sikhism and Sant

Mat), perhaps most famously by Kirpal Singh.

47 A Nāth informant offered his own theory, which would obviously be unacceptable to Sikh tradition, that Guru
Nanak learned the practice of the nād and kuṇḍalinī from the jogīs at the holy site Tilla Jogian in the Pakistani state
of Punjab, formerly inhabited by Nāths prepartition, and still revered by Sikhs. While this claim hints at sectarian
bias, it does illustrate how much of Nāth activity in the Punjab and especially Pakistan is lost to history,
complicating attempts to study Sikh-Nāth cultural exchange. In contrast a Sikh informant related the more prevalent
perspective that Nanak’s practices were revealed to him in direct communion with God rather than being adaptations
of practices received from living practitioners.
48 Bouillier, Véronique. Monastic Wanderers: Nāth Yogī Ascetics in Modern South Asia. p.41

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It was during the itinerancy of the Khalsa that Guru Gobind Singh is said to have taught

kriyā as a preliminary practice for deeper meditative experiences. This would have been part of a

larger Gurmati Jogābhyās, or “Sikh yoga practice” that still centered around the nām and the

nād. Again, the emic understanding within the Sher lineage, among others, is that these practices

were part of Sikh tradition during the time of Guru Gobind Singh, if not all the way back to Guru

Nanak himself.49 It is here that we see sometimes terse descriptions from Sikh scripture upheld

as evidence of the antiquity of certain kriyās. Many of these descriptions are difficult to dismiss,

with distinct prāṇāyāma and visualization practices detailed, though still lacking sufficient

instructions to employ without further guidance or innovation.

Emic tradition tells that Guru Gobind Singh entrusted his general and drummer Ajapal

Singh to carry forth the yoga practices of the Panth. These Gurmat Jog practices, were

secretively brought by Ajapal initially to Rajasthan50 before he eventually settled in Nabha,

Punjab and established a dera to teach yoga, martial arts, scriptural study, and horsemanship.

Baba Ajapal Singh then entrusted the teachings to Baba Dhyana Singh (ca. 1785-1846) whom he

charged with founding the Sher Yogi lineage to preserve a crystalized form of the practice,

known as Shabad Kriyā, and establishing a new dera at Gobindpur. Baba Dhyana Singh humbly

informed Ajapal Singh that this yoga was too vast for him to contain by himself, inspiring Ajapal

Singh to establish a system of five elders to maintain the teachings. As the teachings of Shabad

Kriyā were referred to as the Mahā Tantra, these figures are perhaps the closest equivalent to the

Mahan Tantric title Bhajan later claimed for himself, the same title allegedly held by, Lilanpo,

49 See Guvinder Singh, forthcoming.

50 AjapalSingh’s importance as a hazuri, an associate of the living Guru, is such that the distinctly heterodox
Namdhari Sikhs even consider him to have been Guru Gobind Singh in disguise, and that he secretly continued the
lineage of living Gurus that is carried on today within their group.

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and Hazara Singh in more recent history. Each elder of the Mahā Tantra was then entrusted to

carry on the knowledge of one aspect of the practice until a new generation of elders could be

selected and trained.

In 1846, before he could formally pass on the lineage to his son Himmat Singh

(1820-1850), Dhyana Singh passed away fighting in the Anglo-Sikh wars. Himmat Singh was

then trained to become the new lineage holder under the aegis of the other elders of the lineage,

including an Akali Baba Gurjagat Singh. Tragically, the whole lineage was nearly exterminated

shortly thereafter in 1850 when the British destroyed the Gobindpur dera, martyring Himmat

Singh Shaheed and Gurjagat Singh Shaheed, along with their compatriots Bhupinder, Mohan,

and Dhyana Singh’s adopted son Bhujangi Sahib Singh Shaheed. The shaheedi (martyrdom) of

Bhujangi Singh at the age of ten, and the razing of the dera are poignant memories within the

Sher lineage, and were very nearly the tragic end of the tradition.

At this point, the lineage fell onto the shoulders of the young Gurbaksh Singh

(1845-1925) who was no more than five years old at the time of his father’s demise. Under the

tutelage of the mysterious figure of Baba Sant Singh (ca. 1820-1900), also known as “Shyama,”

Baba Gurbaksh Singh was brought up mastering those techniques formerly distributed among the

five elders. Gurbaksh Singh had a biological son, Baba Teja Singh (1895-2015) who stood to

inherit the lineage holder position after his father. But upon the death of Gurbaksh Singh there

was a divergence of opinions among the elders, some of whom had determined that the lineage

should lose its outward markings of the Nihang and instead embrace the guise of the peaceful

sant tradition, replacing their dark blue clothing with the all white now familiar as the approved

garb of 3HO.

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This dramatic decision may in part have stemmed from a desire to obscure the lineage’s

military associations at a time when the Akalis were being marginalized both by the British and

certain movements within Sikhism. The white-robed Sant identity can be seen elsewhere within

Sikh tradition, including in the Gobind Sadan of Sant Virsa Singh and the heterodox Namdharis

and Nirankaris. Meanwhile Teja Singh remained outwardly Nihang and continued to dress in the

traditional Akali fashion including blue clothing and a distinct style of turban frequently used to

carry a a modest array of weaponry.

The elders chose another student of Gurbaksh Singh’s, one who better fit their vision of

the lineage, Sant Hazara Singh–the same Sant Hazara with whom Yogi Bhajan would publicly

associate himself after 1971. Hazara Singh was the adopted child of one Sohan Singh who had

sent Hazara and his own biological son, Baba Daya Singh, to study Gurmat Yoga with Baba

Gurbhaksh Singh. While it was Daya Singh who was expected to assume leadership, he was

instead obliged to lead his own family lineage of the Bidhi Chand, unlike his adopted brother

Hazara. And so Sant Hazara Singh became the next master of the Mahā Tantra, while Teja Singh

lived in relative obscurity for several decades thereafter.

While on pilgrimage to Lake Rewalsar in Himachel Pradesh, India, Baba Teja Singh

encountered an adept Tibetan Buddhist yogi named Lilanpo, frequently described within the

tradition as being a lama. Lilanpo expressed an interest in joining the lineage of his new

acquaintance, but Teja Singh was bound by oath not to initiate anyone into the Sher Yogi

tradition. And so Lilanpo was brought to study instead with Sant Hazara Singh where he became

an amritdhari (fully baptized) Sikh, took initiation as a Sher Yogi, and became the favored

student within Hazara’s school. When Hazara Singh passed away in 1972, it was his favored

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student Lilanpo who had already been chosen to carry on the lineage, keeping leadership from

the Nihang members, even as Teja Singh outlived his former peers. It seems that Hazara Singh

chose to step down some time before his passing in part to end the rivalries of his most ambitious

students, including the young Yogi Bhajan, then still known as Harbhajan Singh.

After Lilanpo was anointed as successor, Yogi Bhajan was no longer allowed to see

Hazara Singh. It is also likely he was not allowed to mention his teacher until after Hazara’s

passing, if ever. On this it seems he may have jumped the gun, first announcing his own

supposed ascension to heights of Mahantantrika in 1971, before the supposed 1972 death of

Hazara Singh. This does not rule out the possibility that Yogi Bhajan had a vision of Lilanpo

passing him the lineage, but whether or not he experienced it and if the experience was accurate

are two different questions. It is also conceivable that Yogi Bhajan had attempted to see his old

teacher during his 1971 visit and was not allowed, inspiring him once and for all to break away

and form his own vision of the lineage. That being said, a shrewd inventiveness on the part of

Bhajan in presenting these credentials only after his falling out with Virsa Singh cannot be

definitively ruled out.

Like Teja Singh before him, being passed over for the role of lineage holder left Yogi

Bhajan essentially ostracized,51 leading him to search out further teachers from various

traditions, eventually leading him to his encounters with Dhirendra Brahmachari and fellow Sant,

Virsa Singh. The larger question of why Yogi Bhajan would keep Hazara Singh secretive until

this point is difficult to surmise, but it may have simply been a taboo to reveal his existence.

When he had sufficient motivation, that taboo was conveniently broken.

51This tendency against selecting the current leader’s own child is also a theme in the succession of the ten Gurus,
and was a distinct point of conflict between Guru Ram Das and the children of his predecessor, Guru Amar Das.

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It is upon the assumed death of Lilanpo that Yogi Bhajan, legitimately or not, claimed to

have a vision of his late compatriot passing on the lineage to him and ordaining him the new–as

Bhajan terms it–Mahantantrika. Yogi Bhajan, having publicly declared no successor in the West,

was then presumably succeeded into the position of head elder by the once overlooked Teja

Singh, returning the lineage to the same family that first received it from Ajapal Singh centuries

earlier.

THE LION GOES WEST

While the Sher Yogi lineage can attest Yogi Bhajan’s membership and training, its

techniques are guarded closely by its practitioners. What we can say is that Yogi Bhajan’s

massive collection of kriyās undoubtedly has many inspirations in the Shabad Kriyā he learned

from Hazara Singh, even while overwhelming it in terms of sheer volume, clearly amalgamating

his early training with other elements. The teachers he sought out later in life were highly

respected as experts of the nām and kriyā practices he had first known from his time with Sant

Hazara Singh, only in different iterations. The actual Shabad Kriyā, in essence, is five sequential

exercises, some of which closely resemble a few of Yogi Bhajan’s central exercises. Like Yogi

Bhajan’s teachings, the Shabad Kriyā uses the imagery of kuṇḍalinī, though to what degree is

hard to discern from outside of this secretive tradition. He also took inspiration, as we saw, in his

dress and the expression of his Sikh identity that connected strongly to the Sant, Nihang, and

Udāsī traditions of Sikhism. Like Hazara Singh and the elders before him, Yogi Bhajan obscured

the Nihang legacy of his school, opting to follow his teacher in using the more meditative and

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saintly appearance of the Sants and, for some time, the exemplar of Virsa Singh who so

thoroughly embodied the power of the nām over all else.

The Shabad Kriyā system, like other applications of kriyā described above, is considered

merely a preliminary cleansing and balancing of bodily energies that produces a more effective

meditation, specifically the classical nād meditations that Sikhism endorses above all else. This

follows the same classical model of haṭha outlined in the haṭhapradīpika where physical

techniques are indispensable prerequisites for the more powerful techniques of laya or rāja yoga

outlined in the final chapter, including meditation on nāda. Kriyā within the Shabad Kriyā

system serves to open up the body for the more profound technology of laya–often translated as

the yoga of dissolution or absorption. It is possible that Yogi Bhajan was comfortable imparting

the technology of kriyā, but not the particular initiatory system in which he had been trained. If

he ever initiated anyone specifically into this lineage is unknown, though admittedly not

impossible.52

Another possibility is that KYATBYB was how Yogi Bhajan thought the teachings

needed to be reformulated in order to survive and flourish in the West, especially being aware

that the older secretive initiatory system had nearly been snuffed out in 1850. Instead, inspired by

the efforts of fellow proselytizers of yoga including Dhirendra Brahmacari, Paramahansa

Yogananda, and Swami Sivananda–and influential Sikhs like Virsa Singh–Yogi Bhajan remixed

and repackaged his decades of study into a practice that demystified many of the esoteric

dimensions with scientific language, and aligned the goals of the practice with the non-

52Further research may uncover a core group who received initiations, though if this occurred it is likely that these
initiates would have been instructed to keep their affiliations secret as Yogi Bhajan once did. No students of Yogi
Bhajan interviewed for this paper could attest to any secretive teachings.

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denominational needs and desires of many modern seekers. Even the highly esoteric terminology

of nād was presented in anatomical, psychological, and loosely scientific language for 3HO

students:

The problem is that in our brain there’s not a nerve connecting system of sending messages from
one part of the brain to another. It’s a kind of mixture, a solution. It happens very fast, but the fact
is, there’s no wiring there. That’s something you have to understand. And now I understand why
that was to be like that. Because man can improve his whole life by changing that chemical
material which carries the messages. And my personal feeling is that man must have found it out
centuries and centuries ago. Actually that might be tomorrow’s solution to make us healthy, to
make us better and to make us untired. Because, actually your total strength is in that chemical
communicating solution. Rasa actually means solution, rasaa means juice. Naad means
communication. Namoda means addressing. And it is from so many hundreds of thousands of
years ago that this line existed. Naad namod rasaa. It is that chemical solution which is
interconnecting each part of the brain and each part makes a different chemical solution and the
messages are transmitted and the reaction is very fast!53

The mystical language of the nād is not dressed up in the classical imagery of Sikh theology, but

in terms of practical benefits, the nervous system, and chemical changes–the same adaptations

we have seen as ubiquitous among modern yoga schools in the West. For Yogi Bhajan it seems

that imparting the perennial power of the nād was the goal, and whatever approach or

explanations worked were acceptable.

It was, perhaps, Yogi Bhajan’s belief that the mystical experience of the nād that he had

experienced through Shabad Kriyā, and the nām he had profoundly experienced through Virsa

Singh, would be accessible to earnest seekers without the initiatory framework within which he

had been trained. It could even be accessible without being a Sikh by this logic. He likely

believed his Hindu sources had attained this unitive state through their own practices when he

chose to study their works, just as the Sikh scriptures had enshrined the works of non-Sikhs such

as Jaidev, Namdev, Ramananda, Surdas, Ravidas and others. The redactors of the Adi Granth had

53Singh Khalsa, Siri Singh Sahib Bhai Sahib Harbhajan. “Naad Yoga.” Beads of Truth, No.12, Volume II, Winter,
1983. p.34

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framed these poets as champions of a universal nām, which is accessible across traditions. As the

classic haṭha yoga text the Dattātreya Yoga Śāstra states: it is not about religion or background,

it is about doing the practice. Like the authors of the haṭha corpus before him, this meant

removing some alienating aspects of the theology and sectarianship and making the concepts

more accessible.

A 1980 issue of the 3HO newsletter bears a photo of Yogi Bhajan and his students

chanting around a statue of the Buddha in the Ellora Caves of India. The caption notes,

Here the Siri Singh Sahib sits at the base of a huge statue of Buddha set within a Buddhist temple
constructed to achieve a particular acoustical effect which enhances the 'naad', or the sound
current, of the various chants and mantras. Those who accompanied the Siri Singh Sahib tested
out the effects 'Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo.’54

The technology of nām was presented as practical and common to all faiths. Even ancient

Buddhist ruins were seen as an instrument of a perennial knowledge of nād. In essence, Yogi

Bhajan seems to have been attempting to spread a universalist message that he had first known

from the scriptures of Sikhism, simultaneously preserving and forever changing the traditions he

had treasured from his youth. These adaptions were undeniably successful, with his teachings

spreading further than any other Sikh-inspired movement in the Western hemisphere, even

earning him the accolade of Siri Singh Sahib in India. Just as Srila Prabhupada’s extremely

successful restructuring of Gaudiya Vaishnavism in the U.S. made him a hero in his home of

Bengal, Yogi Bhajan’s wildly effective proselytizing attracted the admiration of many in India

who were overjoyed to see their traditions take root abroad.

54 Beads of Truth, No.4, Volume II, Spring 1980, p.1

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VIRSA SINGH AND GOBIND SADAN

While many scholars note the syncretic nature of Yogi Bhajan’s teachings, the political

milieu that influenced this budding yoga movement is generally overlooked both by scholars and

practitioners. These same communal politics may have been another factor that influenced

Bhajan to shift the emphasis in his own credentials. Notably Bhajan switched from crediting his

kuṇḍalinī yoga to his renowned Hindu teacher Dhirendra Brahmachari to a less well documented

yogi initiate of the Nihang and Udāsī traditions, Sant Hazara Singh, shortly after a trip to India in

1971. It has been suggested by scholar Philip Deslippe, that Hazara Singh is part of a carefully

crafted mythology, designed to aid Bhajan’s appropriations of yoga from its supposed true

lineage holders with whom he had parted ways.55 This theory however was developed over a

decade ago, and did not have the benefit of a number of recent revelations about the Sher Yogi

lineage described above.

The teachers whose work Yogi Bhajan is accused of repackaging are Sant Virsa Singh–an

unconventional Sikh mystic and notable pluralist who nonetheless discouraged haṭha yoga, and

Dhirendra Brahmacari–a politically connected Hindu nationalist yogi who taught a blend of

kuṇḍalinī oriented haṭha yoga and fitness oriented Modern Postural Yoga. The first encouraged

open and inclusive spirituality, but condemned tantra; the latter upheld the power of tantra but

was rigid in his Hindu interpretations of yoga praxis, even rejecting non-dualist Hindu teachers

such as Vivekananda and Yogananda. Both men explicitly chastized Yogi Bhajan for what they

55Deslippe, Philip. “From Maharaj to Mahan Tantric: The Construction of Yogi Bhajan's Kundalini Yoga.” Sikh
Formations, Vol. 8, No.3. p.382

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viewed as his misinterpretations of their teachings, with Dhirendra in particular only too happy

to continue publicly belittling Yogi Bhajan for the rest of his life.56

This transition to crediting Hazara Singh is portrayed by some of Bhajan’s biographers as

an act of misdirection, with Hazara Singh’s very existence flatly dismissed as a convenient

invention.57 This argument states in essence that the syncretism of Sikhism and tantra in Bhajan’s

teachings is not actually received but invented by Bhajan himself, based on the teachings and

appearance of Virsa Singh mixed with the pragmatic yoga of Dhirendra Brahmachari and a

handful of other Hindu yogis, including one Swami Dev Murti and the famous Swami

Sivananda. With no other examples of tantricism within Sikhism examined, Bhajan’s syncretism

of Sikhism and Tantra is deconstructed as the financially expedient invention of a cunning

businessman and dismissed as inauthentic.58

While the transition from crediting his more famous influences to Hazara Singh was an

undeniably shrewd choice, there is nothing to suggest it was an act of obfuscation, let alone that

Hazara Singh did not exist.59 In fact, Hazara’s adopted brother Baba Daya Singh was the famous

leader of the Dal Baba Bidhi Chand, a jathebandi order of Nihang still active in the Punjab. Baba

Daya Singh himself was a practitioner of the Sher Yogi lineage but ultimately committed his life

56In personal communication with Dhirendra’s student Reinhard Gammenthaler, Dhirendra’s similar opinions on
everyone from 8th century philosopher Shankara to Vivekananda, Aurobindo, and all “other Vedantins” were made
abundantly clear. It is little surprise that this sectarian animosity would extend to a Sikh interpretation of yoga.
57Deslippe, Philip. “From Maharaj to Mahan Tantric: The Construction of Yogi Bhajan's Kundalini Yoga.” Sikh
Formations, Vol. 8, No.3. p.370
58Deslippe, Philip. “From Maharaj to Mahan Tantric: The Construction of Yogi Bhajan's Kundalini Yoga.” Sikh
Formations, Vol. 8, No.3. p.370
59 Attempts to show evidence of absence as opposed to absence of evidence regarding Sant Hazara Singh’s existence
are logically flawed, especially in their reliance on prepartition records.

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to his natal Bidhi Chand lineage.60 The same Bidhi Chand order is now led by Hazara’s nephew

(by way of adoption) Baba Avtar Singh. Other living descendants of Hazara Singh include his

grandson Karanbir Singh Chhina.61 Yogi Bhajan does not give very many details about his

mysterious teacher, except to describe him as a lineage holder of a secretive tantric tradition who

ran a school of yoga with a substantial number of students. Unlike the preconceived romantic

visions of one-on-one training one might hope for, the classroom setting of Hazara’s school

shows that Bhajan’s studies may have gone beyond what his teacher imparted and included also

the yogic experiments and spiritual wisdom of a diverse collection of students.

An old 3HO newsletter offers an emic description of the lineage and how it is supposedly

passed from each head tantrika to their successor: “Yogiji is the Mahan Tantric of this time. At

any given period of time there is only one living Mahan Tantric on the earth. Yogiji studied

Tantric Yoga under Sant Hazara Singh, the last living master, and when he died, he passed the

light onto Lama Lilanpo, who passed it to Yogiji.”62 Many object immediately to the apparent

absurdity that an obscure lineage might describe its leader as the Mahān Tantric, interpreting the

title to mean the foremost tantric practitioner in the world. The inclusion of a Tibetan in the line

of transmission can be construed as an effort to paint the Mahān Tantric as the master of all

tantric lineages around the world and across faiths, and indeed may have been an intentionally

misleading choice by Yogi Bhajan, but this is ultimately a red herring. For an analogue to the

60 Singh Akali, Guvinder. Personal communication.

61Kaur Khalsa, Shanti. “Sant Hazara Singh – Yogi Bhajan’s First Teacher.” https://www.sikhdharma.org/sant-
hazara-singh-yogi-bhajans-first-teacher/ 9/13/2017.
62Kaur, Sardarni Premka, Beads of Truth No.16, Winter Solstice Edition. “Mission Possible”, p.26. Author’s note:
Pamela Dyson, formerly Premka, mentions the Mahā Tantric title with no allusion to it being a fiction on the part of
Yogi Bhajan in her book Premka:White Bird in a Golden Cage: My Life with Yogi Bhajan (2020). Though she is
perhaps the most noteworthy critic of his personal behavior and treatment of women, she does not seem to comment
on the authenticity or efficacy of the practices.

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sheer grandiosity of the Mahān Tantric title, we need merely look to the analogous title amongst

the Hindu Nāths of the Rāj Yogī who, despite being titled “king of the yogis,” is merely the head

of one important monastery, and only for twelve years.63

The biggest point of dissonance in this story for many, is that the title of Mahān Tantric

was supposedly given to Yogi Bhajan by the specter of Lilanpo upon his death. This moment of

remote viewing is very reminiscent of several episodes in Paramahansa Yogananda’s

autobiography, where clairvoyance and clairaudience are commonplace phenomena, considered

typical siddhis of yoga practitioners, and indeed powers that Virsa Singh himself claimed to

have. While scholars have questioned the historical existence of Hazara Singh, over time a

wealth of sources have materialized showing that he is still a known figure to this day, at least

among a specific Nihang lineage in the Punjab and to his direct descendants.64 According to a

living practitioner of this lineage, the legitimacy of Yogi Bhajan’s claim to the title is debatable,

as is the use of the title itself. While the elders did not bear the explicit title of Mahān Tantric or

any variation thereof, there is a certain logic to calling the masters of a system by that system’s

name. Bhajan taking on and likely even coining the title may have been an act to which he felt

intuitively entitled, which certainly accords with accounts of the brash and ambitious man

Harbhajan Singh was in his youth.

Yogi Bhajan’s encounters with this Nihang lineage started at a young age and likely

planted the seed from which his vision of yoga ultimately emerged. Virsa Singh and Dhirendra

Brahmachari were both men whom he found as an adult attempting to further develop his

63 Bouillier, Véronique. Monastic Wanderers: Nāth Yogī Ascetics in Modern South Asia. p.125
64Singh Akali, Guvinder. Personal communication. Guvinder also claims to have access to several personal
possessions of the late Lilanpo, lending material evidence to this claim.

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understanding of a universal yoga, not entirely bound by Sikhism or Hinduism. But for many

reasons–not least of all the political climate–people were rigid and personalities clashed. The

growing divisions of Sikh and Hindu nationalism undoubtedly made Bhajan’s perennielist vision

of yoga easier to realize in America than in India.

It is also likely that the rejection of Yogi Bhajan’s interpretations of yoga by the figures of

Virsa Singh and Dhirendra inspired him to orient his teachings more explicitly towards his Sikh

background, dropping the pretense of teaching a non-religious kuṇḍalinī and instead leaning

more into his original inspirations.65 While he would continue to boast about the universalism of

yoga, he had no hesitation in encouraging his students to fully embrace the Sikh religion above

all others. His early attempts to find allies in spreading his pluralist vision of kuṇḍalinī had been

met with stubborn men who were unaccepting of Yogi Bhajan’s perspective. Many tantric

initiations, such as the one Bhajan claims to have received from Hazara Singh, are generally kept

secret, which may explain why Hazara Singh was initially not included in the list of Bhajan’s

more famous teachers publicly, why he initially sought to ingratiate himself with notable public

figures with whom he did not closely align philosophically or politically, and why more details

of his lineage were sparse until later years.

Pamela Dyson, author of Premka: White Bird in a Golden Cage describes a complex

falling out at Virsa Singh’s ashram, Gobind Sadan, where “No one bothered to speak any English

in my presence, so I was left to intuit what was transpiring as I witnessed any changes in the

65“Perhaps in the beginning Yogi Bhajan was not so interested in teaching Sikhism, but this changed in the first few
years of the movement. It is important to note that Yogi Bhajan was a Khalsa Sikh, which can surely be considered
the most important order within Sikhism or even the main form of orthodox of Sikhism.” Lafontaine, Juan
Francisco. 3HO in the Light of Experience. p18

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Yogi’s posture, or the intensity and volume of the verbal exchange.”66 What little she was able to

glean from these tense exchanges, and Yogi Bhajan’s terse explanations paint a picture of

political tensions, noting the presence of Indian Army soldiers and a Member of the Indian

Parliament. Bhajan remarked to Pamela, “It seems that he is just ‘in the pocket’ of this Nirlep

Kaur. She is a Member of Parliament and he is too much influenced by her. Something is not

right.”67 The likely final straw was a financial miscommunication over $60,000 USD that Bhajan

had brought to India to give to Virsa Singh in person:

Throughout the prior months of negotiations via long-distance with Virsa Singh and Bibiji, those
funds had been earmarked for construction of lodging facilities for our group. The breakdown in
trust between Virsa Singh and the Yogi had been brewing long before our arrival in India. And
that breakdown is what had resulted in our group living in makeshift tents, as Virsa Singh awaited
physical delivery of the promised dollars.68

According to Yogi Bhajan’s student and prominent teacher of KYATBYB, Guru Singh Khalsa,

the money had been sent ahead, but one of Bhajan’s peers had pocketed it surreptitiously.69

Whatever the source, these tensions ultimately led to Bhajan and his early followers leaving

Virsa’s ashram suddenly, never to return again. Indeed, historian and former KYATBYB teacher

Philip Deslippe argues this falling out would have been easily foreseen if not directly sought by

Bhajan, who may have been eager to detach his fate from that of Virsa Singh.70 It is hard to know

from these accounts the exact calculus running through Yogi Bhajan’s mind when he determined

66 Dyson, Pamela. Premka:White Bird in a Golden Cage: My Life with Yogi Bhajan. p.55
67 ibid. p.56
68 ibid. p.59
69Singh Khalsa, Guru. “The Lost Kriya of Yogi Bhajan.” Sikh Dharma International. https://www.sikhdharma.org/
lost-kriya-yogi-bhajan/
70Deslippe, Philip. “From Maharaj to Mahan Tantric: The Construction of Yogi Bhajan's Kundalini Yoga.” Sikh
Formations, Vol. 8, No.3. p. 377

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to sever his ties with Virsa Singh, but it is likely that all these factors and more informed his

fateful decision.

THE NĀM AND THE SANT

Shortly after leaving Virsa Singh’s ashram, according to Yogi Bhajan, it was at this dark

hour that he had a vision of Guru Ram Das in which a mantra and kriyā were imparted directly to

him.71 Just as Virsa Singh had been attuned to the mantra “ik oankar sat nām siri wahe gurū” in

his visions, Yogi Bhajan was attuned to the mantra “gurū gurū wahe gurū, gurū rām dās gurū,”

and was teaching them both side-by-side as early as January of 1971, before he had returned

from his fateful trip to India. At least once he presented it as an established mantra, though it is

likely it was intuitively channeled.

Today is a Jupiter day it's a day of the Guru. Today is a day to meditate on Guru Gayatri. We have
in our scripture two Guru Gayatris: Gobindey, Mukandey, Udharey, Apaarey, Hariying Karying
Nirnamey, Akamey, Guru Guru Wahe Guru, Guru Ram Das Guru. May this day for the day will
be blessed with the power of the star Jupiter, to relate to the infinite God, the supreme
consciousness.72

The use of unique Guru mantras in the Sikh tradition is not unheard of, and is a typical spiritual

reward for one to receive when they have been granted such a vision. Bhajan reaffirmed his Sikh

spiritual lineage and jumped over his problematic teacher in the singular event of receiving this

so-called Guru Gayatri. Just as the mantras Virsa Singh taught had the emic legitimacy of

coming directly through a vision of the Guru, now mantras were gifted directly to Yogi Bhajan as

71 “Gurdwara - Practical Trust,” April 8, 1990. Los Angeles, CA. The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings
(libraryofteachings.com)
72 “Maha Shakti - Wahe Guru.” January 21, 1971. Location unlisted. The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings
(libraryofteachings.com)

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well. What is more, the mantra he channeled seems to have no history within the Panth, adding

to the suspicion that it may have been his own invention. Understanding the layers of

significance behind this moment–spiritually, emotionally, politically, and psychologically–

requires a nuanced approach.

Sant Virsa Singh’s likelihood of having visions of Siri Chand, Guru Nanak, and Guru

Gobind Singh is not inconceivable nor an uncommon experience for a devoted mystic to have. In

many traditions, such a vision is expected and sought after relentlessly through austerities. Many

movements in the history of Buddhism sought visions of specific Buddhas through their

meditations, even as a prerequisite for monkhood. What induces an experience of this type in

many cases may be long periods of quiet contemplation or mantra repetition. In other cases the

stress from fasting, physical effort (such as manual labor or a taxing kriyā), illness, interpersonal

conflict, the ingestion of entheogens, or any combination thereof induces such visions. These

may happen unexpectedly but are often intentionally induced. William James refers to these

visions in his famous speech The Varieties of Religious Experience as moments of conversion.

In The Varieties of Religious Experience, James relates a typical example of the

conversion experience through the visions of Stephen Bradley. Like Yogi Bhajan and Virsa

Singh, Bradley had an experience of divinity in his youth that stayed with him and shaped his

religious predilections for the rest of his life. With a brief vision of Jesus at the age of fourteen

Stephen Bradley had felt that he was a devout Christian, only to be disheartened nine years later

when he felt a dissonance between himself and a growing religious revival in his neighborhood.

After a fiery sermon failed to rouse his devotional fervor, he was surprised by a second

experience of God that night in bed, this time even more profound than the first. His body was

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seized with involuntary motion and the uttering of unintelligible sounds that he could not

understand (not unlike description of spontaneous yogic movements and kriyās described in

some circles) while he felt the presence of God accompanied by a deep yearning for the divine.

In the throes of his experience, he had a further vision of a biblical verse:

...a thought arose in my mind, what can it mean? And all at once, as if to answer it, my memory
became exceedingly clear, and it appeared to me just as if the New Testament was placed open
before me, eighth chapter of Romans, and as light as if some candle lighted was held for me to
read the 26th and 27th verses of that chapter, and I read these words: ‘The Spirit helpeth our
infirmities with groanings which cannot be uttered.’ And all the time that my heart was a-beating,
it made me groan like a person in distress, which was not very easy to stop, though I was in no
pain at all.73

In the wake of his experience, he excitedly confirmed the Bible verse he had seen was indeed the

same as that written on the page. From that moment on he became more fully devoted to his

Christian faith and simultaneously more confessional of his experience. It is perhaps from these

moments of great self-doubt and introspection that the ineffable is most likely to be felt. It is a

trademark of these experiences for a deep knowledge of the received and often textual tradition

to explode into the experiential consciousness of the convert and for the convert to then become

fully devoted to a mission of proselytizing.

Virsa Singh had notable spiritual experiences in his youth that go beyond the typical

models we see elsewhere and make Yogi Bhajan’s experience seem minute in contrast. One of

the first supernatural experiences Virsa Singh had was spontaneously developing wounds when

he was charged with clearing plants on his family’s farm. He relates how soon afterwards:

...I had a vision of Baba Siri Chand confidentially instructing me in the Nam. After that, I sat in
meditation continuously. Then Baba Siri Chand said, “I want to introduce you to my father.” Even
though something great was happening, I just felt as if an elder in the family–Father–was coming,
I did not stand up, I did not bow, I did not say, “It is good that you have come.” I just continued
sitting there in my own mood with no feeling that anything special was happening.

73 James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience. p.191

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Guru Nanak approached wearing a very long robe, brown like the color of a mouse. He wore
wooden sandals with a raised peg between the big toe and the toes. He had a red cap, his beard
was gray, and he was very tall, above six feet.

Guru Nanak said, “Ik Onkar Sat Nam Siri Wahe Guru.” Baba Siri Chand has given me the same
Nam. Repeat it again and again and give it to others also. Guru Gobind Singh also gave the same
Nam in the same way, removing all doubt.74

Virsa Singh describes the different personalities of the Gurus who would continuously appear in

order to tutor him in the nām. He recalls Baba Siri Chand as a firm disciplinarian who would

beat him until he cried (perhaps this experience is akin to the involuntary movements and

sensations we have seen in other visions), in contrast to Guru Gobind Singh who was very lax

and would heal his wounds.

Through these visions Virsa Singh claimed to have developed the power to heal devotees,

or rather to channel the healing grace of the Guru. He claimed the Gurus would tell him who he

would encounter and how to help them. He describes having the abilities of clairvoyance and

clairaudience, yogic siddhis that Paramahansa Yogananda and others also credited to their gurus.

After spending some time with matted hair, an emaciated body, and dressed in a simple loincloth

and black blanket like a traditional Udāsī renunciant, a vision of Guru Gobind Singh told him

such austerities were of no use and he began wearing clothing: first yellow and eventually the

typical white of the Sant movement.75 He also described the same Gurus appearing to farmers in

visions and dreams telling them to donate horses and cows to Gobind Sadan. All of these saintly

powers and visions imbued him with an exalted reputation and powerful followers, including

Indian parliamentarian Nirlep Kaur. Unlike the classic moment of conversion, Virsa Singh

74 Fisher, Mary Pat. Everyday Miracles in the House of God. p. 170-171

75 Fisher, Mary Pat. Everyday Miracles in the House of God. p.173

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describes a form of continuous contact and guidance from the Gurus that one might compare

with that of a prophet or saint within the Judeo-Christian tradition.

The mantra Virsa Singh received in his visions, like the biblical verse channeled by

Stephen Bradley, existed within his natal tradition and was in no way unique to his conversion

experience. What was unique for Virsa Singh was the vision of a spiritual initiation into the

meaning and use of the divine word, along with the tutelage of three of the most important

figures within Sikh tradition, all of whom represent the energy of the Divine. Within the larger

community these visions seem to have been readily accepted as part and parcel with the tradition.

Within the historical Udāsī tradition with which Virsa Singh was aligned, many other noteworthy

figures had profound visions of the Gurus. It was a common characteristic for the historic authors

of gurbilas texts by the mid-eighteenth century to demonstrate a connection, whether historical

or spiritual, to Guru Gobind Singh. One such author:

the Udasi monk Sukha Singh’s profuse affirmations of love for the Tenth Guru are buttressed by
his claim to have had a visitation by Guru Gobind Singh in a dream leading to a moment of
personal transformation that eventually propels Sukha Singh to refer to Guru Gobind Singh as his
ishta devta or “favored deity,” and also to relocate to Anandpur to experience for himself the sites
associated with the Tenth Guru.”76

Even with the demise of the tenth Guru, Gobind Singh–the last figure to be accepted within the

Sikh Panth as a living embodiment of Guru–revelation continues to be an active force in shaping

Sikh identity, at least for the common practitioner if not the larger institutions.

While many of the mantras that became so indispensable to KYATBYB did not truly

come exclusively from Virsa Singh, a number of them were at one point received and

empowered through him. Before leaving for Canada in 1968, Yogi Bhajan’s contact with his

former teacher Hazara Singh had been cut off, but Virsa Singh offered a lingering connection to

76 Dhavan, Purnima. When Sparrows Become Hawks. p.156

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the Panth that Bhajan in turn could offer to his students. It is perhaps this requisite connection

that propelled Yogi Bhajan to seek out the white-clad Virsa in the first place. Without that

empowerment, the practices Bhajan gave his students would theoretically be of little effect.

While Virsa Singh did not teach kriyā, he had the nām, had the approval of the Panth, and he

accepted students from any religion and race. Had Yogi Bhajan attempted to bring these students

to learn at an average Nihang dera, traditionally very insular and secretive, it would undoubtedly

have gone far worse than his final encounter at Gobind Sadan.

Not only did these revered mantras exist within other Sikh spiritual communities before

Virsa Singh’s time, but Virsa himself does not seem to make any claim to be the original initiate

or teacher of these mantras. What Virsa Singh’s vision of Siri Chand and Guru Nanak established

was not the introduction of new mantras, but the legitimization of Virsa Singh as an adept of the

mantras, even worthy to initiate others into their use. By having his own visions of the Guru,

Yogi Bhajan was also empowered to teach the nām without the approval of a higher authority.

His new connection to the Panth would be through Guru Ram Das himself. But was this genuine

inspiration or, as some claim, shrewd concoction?

The ambitions that Yogi Bhajan clearly harbored may justifiably raise suspicions in the

mind of the critical observer, yet Bhajan’s deep desire to be recognized as an adept would only

have added to the unconscious factors which could induce such visions of the Divine. Within the

Sher Yogi tradition such visions, while not necessarily common, are well attested.77 Even as far

back as the Yoga Sūtras, meditation on the “light in the head” was said to grant visions of the

siddhas. Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi similarly tells of the routine nature of adepts

77 Singh Akali, Guvinder. Personal communication.

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meeting the immortal Babajī. While we may find the timing suspicious, this darkest-hour

revelation that Bhajan experienced does align closely with the circumstances of similar visions

both cross culturally and in his natal tradition. Notable too, Bhajan’s vision was not a mere

imitation of Virsa Singh’s, but of his own favored embodiment of the Guru, Ram Das. Rejecting

the idea that a modern practitioner could, in fact, have such a vision of their most revered

embodiment of Divinity is perhaps overly convenient, especially if Virsa Singh’s more

spectacular experiences are left unquestioned. Yogi Bhajan claimed a brief and dramatic vision,

more in line with other documented modern-day visions of the Divine. Virsa Singh described

both a physical interaction with, and even superhuman empowerment from, three important

Gurus of the Sikh tradition–a familiarity with Divinity that borders on the prophetic.

In Virsa Singh, Bhajan had found a teacher, like Sant Hazara Singh, who could connect

him to the name of God (nām) and to the vibration of God (nād). Yogi Bhajan likely had many

profound experiences through his association with Virsa Singh and the rigorous practice of

mantra repetition through which he put Yogi Bhajan. From this he may have been overcome with

love and loyalty to a living teacher, an infatuation to which many yoga students and spiritual

seekers can easily relate. Without his childhood teacher Hazara Singh, Yogi Bhajan may have

been projecting certain longings onto his new Sant comrade. On the other hand, the relationship

may have simply been one of convenience, with Yogi Bhajan overstating his love for Virsa Singh

as a matter of keeping up appearances. Whether from excitement and attachment, or out of false

enthusiasm, Yogi Bhajan for a considerable time described Virsa Singh as his most important

teacher, a fact that is prima facie incompatible with the emphasis on haṭha practice that Bhajan

taught, but lines up with the commonly held Sikh view of yoga in which the power of the nām is

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more important than the kriyās, postures, and breathing techniques. As long as the nād was the

highest yoga, and Virsa Singh brought empowerment to the nād, then he was Yogi Bhajan’s most

important teacher, at least at that point in time.

What Virsa represented–a fellow seeker, revered among Bhajan’s Sikh peers and still

celebrated by elders in the Punjab today–was an individual who had been rewarded for his

devotion with visions of the divine and direct communion with the saintly teachers of the

lineage. The same legitimizing legends stand behind Dhirendra Brahmachari’s lineage in the

obscure and saintly figure of Maharishi Kartikeya and his visions of the Nāth saints. Nothing

legitimizes a teacher more than this direct connection to Source in these traditions, and nothing

empowers a mantra more than an unbroken chain of transmission from that Source. Ultimately,

Yogi Bhajan claimed to have found that communion for himself, allowing him to act as a direct

conduit of the Guru.

As Yogi Bhajan came to know Virsa Singh, it is possible the initial subservience Bhajan

offered felt less and less like it was in service to God and more like it was in service of a political

agenda, or simply the whims of a temperamental human–a phenomenon with which Bhajan’s

own students may be familiar. Like that common rite of passage in which a child learns their

parents are only human, Bhajan inevitably learned that this saint might not be as perfect as he

had once hoped. In the aftermath of their falling out, Virsa Singh’s antagonistic behavior

undoubtedly confirmed these suspicions.

Trilochan Singh, one of Bhajan’s fiercest critics from within orthodox Sikhism–and

seemingly no fan of Virsa Singh’s–gives a further perspective to this falling out. Though the

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accuracy of this, and many citations drawn from Trilochan Singh’s work may be questionable, he

suggests the bad blood from Virsa and his followers had taken on violent tones:

There is a group which is supported in its campaign by Sant Virsa Singh, Yogi Bhajan's Old
Teacher and the mistress of his ashram, Nirlep Kaur. They have been fighting bitter battles against
Yogi Bhajan since his split with them in 1971 with poster wars and actual guns. Their ugly
methods have so far rebounded on them and they have repeatedly failed to harm him even though
a lot of money flowed from the rich of Delhi and U.S.A. to help them. On the other hand they
have unwittingly strengthened his position. No ideological differences were ever involved in
these clashes. The differences were purely personal and never ideological.78

Virsa Singh’s close associate Nirlep Kaur had herself become entangled in a very unpopular

scheme to undermine the 1925 Gurudwaras Act with the forceful seizure of the Sis Ganj Saheb

shrine, the site of the ninth Guru’s martyrdom, in Delhi in 1971 shortly after Yogi Bhajan’s visit.

Perhaps there is a further story of a young Harbhajan Singh we have not fully seen wherein he

was once enamored of Virsa’s radical-chic associates. Or perhaps, as Premka has suggested,

these same associates are what drove Yogi Bhajan away. Independently run deras, like Gobind

Sadan, continue to play an outsized role in Sikh institutions and Punjabi politics as they have

since Virsa Singh’s time. Either way it seems that by or before 1971, the Gobind Sadan had lost

whatever its initial lustre had been for the charismatic Yogi. How much of this rift was political,

personal, or spiritual is ultimately difficult to say with the narratives that have survived offering

conflicting conclusions.

HEALTHY HAPPY (HOLY) LIVING AND YOGIC SCIENCE

Many of the figures to whom Yogi Bhajan credited his education were, as he claimed,

still big influences on his understanding of yoga, and portals through which many of the growing

78 Singh, Trilochan. Sikhism and Tantric Yoga. pp.19-20.

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concepts of new-age medicine and Modern Postural Yoga would have entered his awareness. As

with Bhajan, the influential Sivananda’s teachings are so mixed in new and old, that untethering

the two proves difficult. The ubiquity of theosophical influences on modern yoga make it

impossible to say for sure what Yogi Bhajan learned from Sivananda, and what he simply had in

common with Sivananda from other sources. Even the likes of Hazara Singh would not have

been immune to outside influence in prepartition Punjab. Kurt Leland notes this difficulty in his

work on the Western cakra system, describing Sivananda as the:

...first in the twentieth century to apply the term kundalini yoga to his reformulation of ancient
and modern teachings (some originating within the Theosophical movement) in a 1935
publication of that name. Further research must be done to determine to what extent such
teachings are genuinely traditional or are relatively recent innovations that have ricocheted
between East and West before being absorbed into contemporary yoga practice and claimed as
traditional.79

This reciprocity between Eastern and Western models was important in helping Eastern and

Western dialogues to integrate ideas that were rapidly diffusing across cultures. But the same

steady back and forth makes it hard to determine the origin of any single idea.

Unable to make many of these connections with any certainty, what we know is that the

figures of Dhirendra Bramachari and Swami Sivananda were useful credentials when Bhajan was

attempting to convince people to try his yoga, even if there is little to indicate he spent very long

learning from either. In fact, any indication that he spent time at or even visited the Sivananda

Ashram in Rishikesh has yet to turn up in researching this paper. What these Hindu teachers’

names did for Yogi Bhajan was give him an air of authority to that large swath of the West which

was familiar with these household names. This was advantageous even if it left him briefly

dependent on the authority of living individuals and organizations with which he did not entirely

79 Leland, Kurt. The Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System. p.61

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align and to whom he likely would not wish to cede any power. This would be especially true

when these other schools emphasized renunciation and the worship of living abstinent teachers,

which his lineage and teachings adamantly reject.80

Even mismatched teachers like Yogi Bhajan and Dhirendra Brahmachari had a

commonality in their health-oriented teachings. Political discord is a more likely point of

contention than which philosophy to attach to the practice of yoga. Like Virsa Singh, Dhirendra

Brahmachari had many fraught political affiliations that threatened his stability as an ally or

resource to the fledgling 3HO movement. When Indira Gandhi sent troops into the Golden

Temple during Operation Blue Star, she and her confidants cemented their long held reputations

as personae non gratae within Sikh popular opinion. This animosity would extend to any

associates of the congress party, even Indira Gandhi’s famous yoga instructor, Dhirendra

Brahmachari. Gandhi’s assassination by her own Sikh bodyguards in October of 1984 was the

fiery culmination of years of tension between Sikhs and Hindus. Dhirendra was not only

Gandhi’s yoga instructor, but was closely connected to Indira’s father, India’s first prime

minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru was himself frequently at odds with the Akali Dal

movement81 during partition negotiations in 1946,82 while his policies are often cited by critics as

80 An example of the practices that Bhajan may have found incompatible, Sivananda ashrams chant oṁ namo
bhagavate śivānandāya and oṁ namo bhagavate viṣṇudevānandaya in their daily services, essentially worshipping
these men as God, a traditional view of guru in Hindu yogas. Ironically, Yogi Bhajan seemed to have no problem
instructing his students to meditate on his own image.
81 Not to be confused with the Akali Nihang (see below).
82 Singh, Pashaura; Fenech, Louis E. The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies. p.341

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a primary source of many of the Punjab’s enduring problems today.83 This was the background to

Yogi Bhajan’s life, having been born into prepartition India and witnessing his Punjabi homeland

torn asunder by the emergence of the Republic of India. This political backdrop would likely

have put Yogi Bhajan and Dhirendra Brahmacari on an ideological collision course that may

have contributed to their publicly falling out, even well before Indira Gandhi’s assassination set

off a powder keg of intercommunal tensions.

In actuality, the association of Yogi Bhajan and Dhirendra Brahmachari may have been

tenuous at best, exaggerated by Bhajan in attempting to paint recognizable credentials for

himself. Dhirendra’s disciple Reinhard Gammenthaler claims that Bhajan only attended classes,

and never taught for Dhirendra as an authorized teacher or apprentice.84 If this is the case, it

would not have been particularly heart-wrenching for Yogi Bhajan to drop his over-hyped claims

of tutelage. Further association with Dhirendra, who was also politically connected to Gandhi

and Nehru’s Congress Party, ultimately would have been untenable and unflattering to an

influential Sikh, whether he were a business man or spiritual figure. Where some well-chosen

names and a diverse CV would open doors among Westerners, they could at the same time close

doors between 3HO and other Sikhs, and even between Bhajan and his own followers.

Both Sivananda, a trained physician, and Dhirendra Brahmachari, despite divergent

philosophical orientations, were notable for their integration of popular new-age medical

83“During Pundit Jawahar Lal Nehru’s regime, the Sikhs continued to hope against hope that this National policy of
Free India will give to the Sikhs and other religious, linguistic and tribal minorities their minimum political and
cultural rights. But National policy of integration and solidarity put into practice by Mrs. Indira Gandhi and Mr
Rajiv Gandhi culminating in Blue Star Operation, Delhi Riots and mass-murders by continuing police and para-
military Raj have completely shattered these hopes. For nearly two decades Punjab and a few other states have not
known what Rule of Law and Justice of Central Govt is...” -Singh, Trilochan. Ernest Trumpp and W.H. McLeod as
Scholars of Sikh History, Religion, and Culture. p.xxvi
84 Gammenthaler, Reinhard. Personal communication.

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concepts into their teachings. Yogananda too, referencing the experiments of JC Bose, argued

that science can be used to prove yogic postulations in his popular autobiography.85 Vivekananda

equated the yogic third eye with the pineal gland in his public lectures,86 where he also

popularized the view that the Yoga Sūtras were the earliest work of psychology. Yogi Bhajan also

made this conception of the pineal gland central to his teachings, where yoga practice is said to

be able to activate this ‘dormant’ organ:

According to Yogi Bhajan, where the scriptures refer to the "turning of the lotus cup of the moon," it means
"the secretion of the posterior pituitary gland has come in balance with the pineal gland and has produced a
clear direct power of thought.”87

Within the highly secretive and insular world of Sikh tantra, this exciting mixing of new-age,

science, and tradition was not yet happening on any notable or public level, even as Hindu yogis

were publicly opining on the physical analogues to the cakras and nāḍīs of yoga in books written

and translated for Western audiences. Bhajan’s attraction to these public figures may have been

connected to these postulations which he made himself throughout his life. In these explorations

we see that modern-day yogis have a particular affinity for the language of psychology and

neurology, using the physical structures of the nervous system as simplified analogues for

aspects of the yogic subtle body. This practice dates back at least to one of the earliest English

language texts on the techniques of yoga, a translation of the Śiva Saṃhitā by Srischandra Basu

from 1887, which may be one of the first places the subtle body of yoga was interpreted through

the medical language of nerves and glands.

85 Yogananda, Paramahansa, Autobiography of a Yogi, ch. 8

Vivekananda, Swami. “The Religion of India,” New Discoveries, Vol.2, p.146 (from the Greenacre, Maine
86
morning lectures of the Summer of 1894)

Singh, Gurucharan. Beads of Truth, No. 29, 30, Summer 1976, Khalsa, “Exploring the Myths and Mysteries of
87
Kundalini.” p.23

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Writing in India for a mixed Indian and foreign audience, we can see Basu’s

interpretation of the cakras not just as a tool by which to teach them to the uninitiated, but also as

a tool to deepen his understanding and that of other esotericists. To many this was the time when

a:

...modern vision of yoga as an empirical science develops not only as an integral part of its
formative rationale but also as its culminating narrative. Modernity transforms yoga, for example,
in the medicalization of its applications, practices, and goals in an attempt to create a new somatic
science.88

The language of health was integral to this vision of spiritual living as well. Famed yoga teacher

BKS Iyengar frequently claimed that āsana practice was necessary to make the body strong

enough before spiritual practice could be performed, having suffered from terrible illness as a

child. Iyengar and his guru’s long lifespans stand as testament to the quantifiable healing power

of physical practice. These theories were developed excitedly by Indian thinkers and Europeans

alike, many of whom were eager to use new interpretive tools to understand and validate

received traditions. Even Galileo, when turning his new-fangled telescope to the sky, still sought

to find God among the heavens he surveyed.

Basu’s writing was influential on the budding Theosophical movement and Indian

teachers alike, no doubt contributing to the milieu in which Sivananda wrote Kundalini Yoga and

postulated that the nāḍīs of yoga were, in fact, the same as the sympathetic and parasympathetic

nerves of Western medicine.89 This practice has become so prevalent that famous scholars still

88 Singleton, Mark; Goldberg, Ellen (eds.) Gurus of Modern Yoga p.3

89 Sivananda, Shri Swami. Kundalini Yoga. p.20

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use the nervous system as the primary explanatory model for the practices of haṭha yoga,90 often

relying on an oversimplified understanding of the vagus nerve.91

An example of the many ways Bhajan and his followers attempted to understand and

validate yoga with science was with aura photography. In a 1976 issue of Beads of Truth

magazine, one devotee describes how there are

...many references in mystical and religious writings to the spiritually evolved people who emanate a glow
from around their head and other body parts. The color most often observed is blue or white. It is possible
that these people are radiating at such a high voltage that they ionize the air around them [...] the Kirlian
discharge as a "cold electron emission" that is indicative of a "bioplasma " that emanates and pervades the
object. He conceives of the bioplasmic body to be similar if not identical to the aura or astral body often
referred to in the yogic literature.92

This practice is notably new-age and technology dependent, ergo not capable of being traditional

in form, even if the aim of the practice–tuning into the body’s energies–was very traditional. But

it was not Bhajan who had first mixed this particular popular pseudoscientific practice in with his

spiritual theories, as the very first Kirlian photographers postulated the concept of a spiritual

bioplasma to explain their new mode of photography. In this example we can see how scientists

sometimes use spiritual models to explain their findings, just as yogis use scientific models to

explain their spiritual discoveries. Even the underlying concept of the aura does not seem to have

any clear precedent in older yoga texts, likely being a new age aspect of the practice, inserted

into common usage in yoga well before Bhajan’s time by theosophist perennialists such as

90“Knowledge of the functioning of the idā and pingalā-nādīs is deemed elementary in Hatha-Yoga. Their activity
governs, on the physical level, the responses of the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems
respectively. Thus, through controlled breathing in which the life force is guided along the pingalā, yogins can speed
up their heart rate and metabolism and improve the functioning of eyes and ears. On the other side, through
controlled breathing in which the life force is conducted along the idā, yogins can greatly slow down their
metabolism.” -Feuerstein, Georg. The Yoga Tradition: Its History, Literature, Philosophy and Practice. p.469

The use of a dual sympathetic-parasympathetic model has generally been replaced in medical science with the
91
more nuanced polyvagal theory.
92 Beads of Truth, No.22, Spring 1974, p.31

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Madame Blavatsky, who were interested in projecting Western esoteric concepts onto the yoga

tradition to validate their own experiences and beliefs.93

Whether Bhajan himself believed in these scientific explanations of yoga or merely found

them expedient is hard to glean, but it seems that he and his followers were true to a much larger

and older trend in the modern transmission of yoga: the superimposition of modern health and

science models over older practices. Other yogis of this time who were eager to show the power

of yoga in this way include Swami Rama, who was so confident in the scientific verifiability of

his techniques that he subjected his body to numerous laboratory tests impressively while, among

other things, controlling his heart rate and brain waves through yoga practice.94 From Bhajan’s

teachers like Dhirendra Brahmachari and Sivananda, it may be argued his most valuable lessons

were in healthy living and clever marketing. All three men were remarkably gifted at making

yoga appear simultaneously ancient and timeless by emphasizing the concept of the yogi as an

early scientist (translating yogavidyā as “the science of yoga”) and presenting the practices as

presciently and scientifically designed for better modern living.

93 In attempting to find any analogue to the aura in Indian literature, Kurt Leland offers the possible example of the
late Maṇḍala-Brāhmaṇa Yoga Upaniṣad (Leland, Kurt. The Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System
p.422) while otherwise noting “I have not seen pre-Theosophical Indian references to these sheaths [the kośas] being
perceptible beyond the confines of the body–as is the aura–or to their colors. Thus it seems that the pairing of
chakras and auras is a uniquely Western contribution to chakra lore.” (ibid. p.115) It is notable that the halo, which is
perhaps first mentioned in India as a result of Abrahamic influence and occurs in the SGGS, is often cited as a
textual precedent for the visible auras of saintly people.
94 Luce, Gay; Peper, Ebik. “Mind Over Body, Mind Over Mind.” The New York Times. 9/12/1971

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THE MEDICAL YOGA OF DHIRENDRA BRAHMACHARI

It is a common practice for yogis both to reinterpret traditional thought with scientific

models, and to couch esoteric teachings in plausible scientific language in order to create a more

palatable practice to Western-educated audiences, both in India and abroad. Most of the

techniques Yogi Bhajan seems to have copied from Dhirendra’s published works appear to be

more medical than spiritual, in some cases actually being practiced on a patient rather than being

solitary endeavors. Philip Deslippe points to where Dhirendra focuses an entire section of Yoga

Sūkṣma Vyāyāma on a form of practice for the navel,95 showing a system of diagnosis and

treatment that is applied by a practitioner (as opposed to the patient) possibly related to

peritoneal hernia. Part of the diagnosis process involves taking the abdominal pulse, which is a

classic āyurvedic practice where each organ has its own analyzable pulse. Hinting at an

āyurvedic inspiration for this practice, Dhirendra then quotes an unnamed medical text: “unclean

bowels are the breeding ground of all diseases.”96 Dhirendra warns the reader engaging in these

interventions, that “This particular job must be done by an expert; there is a danger of the

examiner himself getting his navel dislodged,” perhaps meaning that lifting a patient off the

ground, as the protocol prescribes, can cause the clinician to herniate himself. It also includes a

series of postures for self-treatment, composed of one abdominal exercise and three backbending

95Deslippe, Philip. “From Maharaj to Mahan Tantric: The Construction of Yogi Bhajan's Kundalini Yoga.” Sikh
Formations, Vol. 8, No.3. p.374
96 “The Āyurveda says: Sarve rogā mal-āśrayāḥ.” Brahmachari, Dhirendra. Yoga Sūkṣma Vyāyāma. p.161

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postures: uttānapādāsana,97 uṣṭrāsana, cakrāsana, and matsyāsana. None of these āsanas are

linked to any particular breath or visualization and cannot be considered a kriyā in the sense

Bhajan uses the term98 in how they are presented by Dhirendra.

3HO, clearly taking inspiration from this book, includes Bhajan’s own version with the

addition of specific breath practices incorporated into Dhirendra’s four pose self-treatment

protocol in a 1975 K.R.I. Journal of Science & Consciousness summer solstice edition, and then

later in a manual titled Kundalini Yoga for Intermediate Practitioners. The practice is used, as

Dhirendra teaches it, to balance the navel point, but Bhajan takes the concept of navel imbalance

much further, using a variety of additional treatments for this effect. Even giving āyurvedic

remedies of his own, Bhajan tells students to:

...take grounded black pepper one quarter of a spoon, take about eight to nine ounces of water and
boil it for twenty minutes. This very, very bitter drink we call it bitter drink, this bitter drink
maybe mixed with as much honey as possible that this will remain bitter, there is no problem,
maybe taken, right swallowed under the throat and then a big warm blanket with which you cover
the whole body you will sweat a lot...99

Like other works attributed to Bhajan, these were actually composed by his students based

primarily off public classes and not written by Yogi Bhajan himself. While Deslippe points to

these as evidence of Bhajan borrowing Dhirendra’s system wholesale, there is nothing inherently

suspicious in a teacher adapting a medical practice into his own teachings, nor is the apparent

97 Uttānapādasana also appears among the postures named in the yoga section of the nineteenth-century
Śrītattvanidhi as āsana number seventy-four (Sjoman, Norman. The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace. p.80).
Though the illustration from this text does not match with Dhirendra Brahmachari and Yogi Bhajan’s interpretation
of it, the description is still compatible as it was likely lifted from an older source, while the illustration is merely the
interpretation of the Śrītattvanidhi’s author or illustrator. The version in Dhirendra’s book may be his own
interpretation from an older unillustrated text. The pose also closely aligns with the description of naukāsana offered
in the Haṭhābhyāsapaddhati: “Lying supinely and having supported [himself] with both elbows on the ground and
the hands on the buttocks, [the yogi] should hold his head, thighs, shanks and feet [straight] like a stick. [This] is the
boat pose.” Birch, Jason. “The Proliferation of Asanas in Late-Medieval Yoga Texts.” Yoga in Transformation. p.150
98 For 3HO’s definition of a kriyā, see below.
99 “Lecture.” October 27, 1969. Location unlisted. The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings (libraryofteachings.com)

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source amnesia anything less than expected in modern or classical yoga. There is even a distinct

possibility that it was Bhajan’s students who adapted this kriyā from Dhirendra’s book, knowing

him to be one of the ‘approved’ sources Bhajan once endorsed.

Regardless, it is natural if not inevitable to find that almost any yogi amalgamates

different lessons from different teachers into a new synthesis, whether done by Bhajan or his

students in this example. The heavily adapted use of this series of four poses certainly shows

influence, but not the primacy of this influence over any other, especially with the relative rarity

with which this kriyā occurs among the hundreds recorded in 3HO publications. It is difficult to

surmise how commonly this adapted navel kriyā was actually taught as it has seemingly few

mentions in the public archive of Bhajan’s recorded lectures and classes. A notable example

comes from a class recording known as the “Tom Law Tapes #11” from April 25-26, 1969 in

Claremont, CA, but the poses that follow the long breath of fire practice in uttānapādāsana are

different (including a traditional variation on vīrāsana100 he calls “celibacy pose” where the yogi

sits on his heel).

This hints that much of Dhirendra’s influence on Bhajan had less to do with kuṇḍalinī

yoga, and more to do with maintaining good health through “traditional wisdom” that Westerners

gobbled up as the perceived perennial knowledge of the ‘mystical orient.’101 Bhajan followed in

the footsteps of many famous Hindu yogis in turning his received esoteric tradition into a

popular and exoteric product, filled with easily packaged gems on better living through yoga.

100Modern Punjabi teachers of physical āsanas are plentiful online today, many clad in white. A prominent practice
that is mentioned and upheld as central is that of birāsana (ਬੀਰ ਆਸਣ), a pose that is also explicitly mentioned in
various Sikh scriptures and used during Sikh baptisms.

Deslippe, Philip. “From Maharaj to Mahan Tantric: The Construction of Yogi Bhajan's Kundalini Yoga.” Sikh
101
Formations, Vol. 8, No.3. p.374

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Dhirendra, like Sivananda, was an expert at incorporating āyurvedic concepts into his teachings

and this may have been his biggest influence on KYATBYB. Bhajan, like his contemporaries,

would have learned many techniques like this from different teachers and eventually lost track of

what practices came from which teachers, leading to the ubiquitous source amnesia of which

most yoga manuals are guilty. In other words, Bhajan himself likely would not have been able to

recall the source of every technique he had incorporated into his practice over the years,

especially those which were taught by more than one teacher. In some regards Bhajan seems to

have emulated Dhirendra’s decadent lifestyle more than his teachings, both showing a propensity

for collecting luxury cars, powerful students, and costly real estate off of superficially stoic

reputations.102

What these ‘healthy living’ practices did for teachers at this time was make their yogas

appear more utilitarian and less religious, and by extension much more attractive to hesitant

Westerners and Indian intelligentsia, yet more exotic than contemporaneous Western health

trends.103 Once he was established and his followers had started to experience the health and

spiritual benefits of the practice, these Hindu organizations would have been of little use in

building up the credentials of his lineage of Sikh Tantra and would in fact threaten to pull

students from his orbit or even off of the spiritual path he prescribed.104 Running health food

102 Dhirendra’s untimely death resulted from the crash of one of his private airplanes.
103This modern and hyper-rational healthy living angle may have been how Dhirendra Brahmachari ingratiated
himself to the Gandhi political dynasty, as politicians sought to uphold indigenous physical culture as superior to
imported fitness trends, while also distancing themselves from the unpopular ‘backwards and unruly sadhus’ behind
such incidents as the infamous 1954 Prayag Kumbh Mela stampede. Similarly, not through mystical teachings and
meditation, but in curing his phlebitis, Bikram Choudury claims to have won the admiration of Richard Nixon and
earned his own, now-revoked, U.S. citizenship.

Indeed, in response to the disparaging words of Virsa Singh, some of Bhajan’s early disillusioned followers left
104
3HO for Singh’s Gobind Sadan Ashram.

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stores, selling herbal teas, and other new-age longevity trends however, were still very

compatible with the 3HO mission and even possible tools to draw in new members.

THE PRACTICE

With regards to the actual practice, its techniques and its varied origins, much is difficult

to pull apart. Defining the origins of these practices–some of which have been in continuous

usage for centuries with little documentation, and others which may have been borrowed from as

far afield as qigong and Swedish gymnastics–is often a mix of educated guesswork and limited

textual references. Relying on those occasional instances where these practices and their

antecedents appear in dateable works begins to paint a picture of the evolution of what is known

as Modern Postural Yoga (MPY). But to this day, the field of yoga studies continues to rapidly

evolve as texts and artifacts are uncovered and deciphered.

While many teachers claim to lead a traditional and even ancient form of yoga practice,

there is often sparse evidence with which to justify these assertions. The gradual contributions of

modernity and new-age belief to many schools of yoga has gone unnoticed by all but the most

critical of practitioners. Meanwhile, what little we do know about how yoga was taught and

practiced is extremely limited in terms of physical evidence. Many practices existed only as

secretive oral instructions, never recorded in scriptures. Discerning ancient secrets from modern

inventions is not easily done, and often the absence of evidence is conflated with the evidence of

absence. Furthermore, in those sporadic places where these practices are described, their authors

are generally constrained to Sanskrit verses, often repurposed from text to text without

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citation,105 that give such minimal details in the minutiae of orthopraxis that we can only guess at

how they may have been employed.106 While we may identify the oldest extant manuscripts to

mention haṭha yoga, or certain mudrās, āsanas, and kriyās, it can generally be assumed that

these practices predate their textual references by decades if not centuries, and do not always

come from the milieu in which we find them. With such a patchwork textual history, much of

what we know about yoga comes through the living lineages that preserve these texts and

practices according to their own dynamic identities.

Even those practices that do have clear textual references have jumped from tradition to

tradition, just as the popular movements of tantra and haṭha yoga have been incorporated and

reworked into Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, and Sikh milieus and reformulated to appeal to renunciants

and house-holders alike. The earliest extant source text for three of the oldest mudrās in haṭha

yoga–the Amṛtasiddhi107–comes from a tradition mixed in Buddhist and Hindu concepts so

thoroughly that it has proven difficult to determine the sectarian allegiance of its author.108

Furthermore, the works of the haṭha corpus generally include a minimal amount of

philosophy, theology, mantras, or other sectarian features prevalent in older tantric works. The

105Undoubtedly the most popular text written on the subject of haṭha yoga, the Haṭhapradīpika has been shown to
borrow its verses from dozens of different source texts, often from drastically different schools of practice. Cf.
Mallinson, James. ”Haṭhayoga’s Philosophy: A Fortuitous Union of Non-Dualities” p.10
106Until recently, many academics insisted that yoga postures were not historically linked into series and involved
few if any non-seated poses (cf. Mark Singleton, Yoga Body). Newer publications have reevaluated this assertion. As
Jason Birch explains: “Though moving āsana-s and sequences are described in the Haṭhābhyāsapaddhati, this text
does not provide general guidelines on how the postures were practised. In fact, Sanskrit yoga texts do not stipulate
whether a specific āsana was held for a long or short period of time or whether manipulating the breath was
important.” (emphasis added) Birch, Jason. “The Proliferation of Asanas in Late-Medieval Yoga Texts” Yoga in
Transformation. pp.138-9
107 Ca 1160 CE. Szántó, Péter-Dániel. A Brief Introduction to the Amṛtasiddhi, p.3
108 Often considered a tantric Buddhist work of Virūpakṣa, there is reason to suspect it came from a mixed milieu or
involved inter-sectarian borrowings. The text was later reworked into a more distinctly Hindu iteration known as the
Amaraughaprabodha of Gorakṣanāth. Verses from both works were reused by Svātmarāma in composing the much
later Haṭhapradīpika where their techniques were applied to the raising of kuṇḍalinī, which was not present in the
originals.

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absence of these markers are part of what allowed haṭha yoga’s texts and techniques to

proliferate so widely while simultaneously confounding our attempts to conclusively assign them

to one group or another. Arguably, these choices were made in order to aid the diffusion of the

practices across sectarian boundaries. The twelfth century Dattātreya Yoga Śāstra says that its

teachings on haṭha are open to all regardless of religion or lack thereof:

Whether brahmin, ascetic, Buddhist, Jain, Skullbearer (kāpālika) or materialist (cārvāka), the
wise man endowed with faith and who is constantly devoted to his practice obtains complete
success.109

This matches a common modern contention, shared by Yogi Bhajan, that yoga is not inherently

religious, but rather it is a practice that expedites the goals of all religions.110 We have every

reason to believe these techniques diffused through many groups, especially as yoga became

fashionable and gained wealthy patrons. The attempts by some scholars to distinguish haṭha

yoga as uniquely Hindu or even as non-Sikh, consequentially, do not hold much water.

The central practices of haṭha yoga–mudrā, bandha, āsana–are all technical terminology

that can be found in much older schools. The original urtexts of haṭha yoga, many of which are

Buddhist tantras, focus primarily on the use of mudrā to manipulate the vital wind (prāṇa),

sexual essence (bindu), or primordial sound (nāda) and open the central channel (suṣumnā) by

force (haṭhena). Before the mudrās associated with haṭha yoga practice appear in the literature,

109 Mallinson, James. “Dattātreya’s Discourse on Yoga” p.3

110 As mentioned above, this contention made KYATBYB more appealing to secular Western audiences, and perhaps
less alarming to a broader demographic.

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mudrā primarily referred to ritualistic gestures of the hands and facial expressions or attitudes

that would be used in the performance of rituals or to invite spirits to inhabit the body.111

An early Hindu text in this genre, the Dattātreya Yoga Śāstra, teaches two systems of

haṭha, one consisting of eight mudrās and one of eight limbs or auxiliaries (aṅgas) identical to

the much older aṣṭāṅga yoga of Patañjali. The third limb of the latter system, āsana, is first

mentioned as an aspect of haṭha yoga here, but its techniques are not fully elaborated on until the

much later Haṭhapradīpika which presents about fifteen āsanas including non-seated postures.

The plethora of āsanas described in later medieval texts bare little resemblance to the term as a

description of seated meditation, a royal throne, or the ceremonial placement of an icon.112 Yet

pandits of the haṭha school would often draw their āsanas from as many sources as they could

find, seemingly in competition to compose the most extensive treatise on the subject. Many of

these texts were likely the work of scholars rather than practitioners.

The Haṭhapradīpika, which attributes its teachings to Śiva and the Nāth lineage, is likely

to be the first text to overlay the older concept of kuṇḍalinī onto the mudrās of haṭha yoga.

Whereas mudrā was primarily a means to manipulate prāṇa or consciousness in earlier texts, the

force that ascends the spine came to be associated with the goddess Kuṇḍalā or Kuṇḍalinī (she

who is coiled) in the Haṭhapradīpika and the majority of haṭha texts thereafter. While this

concept of the indwelling goddess has her origins in older Śaiva tantric texts, particularly in the

111“Prior to the Amṛtasiddhi and Dattātreyayogaśāstra, from at least the sixth century CE onwards, mudrās of an
altogether different sort were taught extensively in tantric texts. With a small number of important exceptions, tantric
mudrās are not methods of manipulating vital energies; they are physical attitudes and gestures adopted in ritual in
order to bring about certain supernatural effects or, in fewer cases, possession by the deities with which they are
associated. The deities’ mudrās are also said to manifest spontaneously in the practitioner when possession occurs
through other means.” Mallinson, James. Roots of Yoga, p.229
112 Compare this to the sparse description of āsana in the Yoga Sūtras: “II.46 That which is steady and comfortable
is called āsana.”

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Kubjikā school, textual sources suggest that Her awakening was a practice of visualization

performed in meditation and not through physical techniques. Her appearance in haṭha practice

denotes a fusion between older Hindu contemplative practices and an ever expanding repertoire

of psychophysical techniques. These fusions are typical of the spread of haṭha. While some

preservers of tradition in India have attempted to maintain a static praxis, the experiential nature

of haṭha seemingly fueled endless innovation and appropriation.

One of the oldest mudrās of haṭha yoga–mahāvedha–literally meaning “the great

piercing,” in which the practitioner sits in lotus pose and bounces (or “taps”) the buttocks against

the floor, borrows its name from a distinct practice of piercing the ears of novice yogis used in

some tantric śaiva initiations.113 The concept of piercing (bhed) in connection to kuṇḍalinī is

even explicit in a number of verses on yoga in the SGGS. This may be one inspiration for

techniques common to Yogi Bhajan and Dhirendra Brahmachari where the rear end is forcefully

kicked. It almost certainly influenced the Tibetan practice of the bep (discussed below).

Mahāmudrā,114 also first introduced as a haṭha practice in the same text, has an entirely distinct

identity in tantric Buddhism as a state of mind to cultivate, not a technique for manipulating

prāṇa or awakening kuṇḍalinī. The physical practice of mahāmudrā is still commonly taught to

this day within SRF, 3HO, Namkhai Norbu’s Yantra Yoga, and other systems but with

considerable variation between schools.

113Jogīs of the Nāth order often wear visible piercings as a sectarian marker. These piercings are then filled with a
large ring known either as mudrā, kuṇḍala, or darṣana. The Udāsī lineage are sometimes described as wearing these
piercings in just one ear.
114In Tibetan: phyag rgya chen po (pronounced chagya chenpo). Buswell, Robert E. Encyclopedia of Buddhism,
p.488

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Other famous mudrās of haṭha yoga, such as vajrolī, sahajolī, and amarolī are named

after the supposed originators of the techniques (the Vajrayāna, Sahaja, and Amara schools

respectively) and are relics of older tantric practices, rarely taught in modern yoga outside of

new-age ‘sex magic.’ Haṭha’s form is an amalgamation of techniques absorbed from other

traditions mixed with innovations and interpretations that would change drastically from text to

text to suit its audience. These teachings even crossed into Islam and Jainism.115 The historical

role of these practices within schools under the rubric of Sikhism is tragically understudied, and

often erroneously assumed to be non-existent. These techniques, even those that came from a

celibate orientation, were all eventually reimagined as techniques of householders as well. With

this unrestricted diffusion it becomes clear that many of the practices are effective in spite of

their rigid traditional contexts, and not because of them.

KRIYĀ YOGA

One of the central concepts in KYATBYB is the use of kriyā, a very ancient term

amongst yoga practitioners, but one with an ever evolving meaning. The central exercises of

several other modern schools of yoga are also referred to as kriyā, namely the Bihar School of

Yoga (BSY) of Swami Satyananda, the Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) of Paramahansa

Yogananda, and a number of offshoot groups many of whom claim the same divine guru as

Yogananda and his teacher, Mahāvatār Babajī.

115“...haṭhayoga’s lack of sectarianism and metaphysical dogma was such that its practice was readily adopted by
Muslims in India in the 15th to 17th centuries and many of its tenets, if not its grosser practices, were espoused and
recycled by Hindi nirguṇī poets such as Kabīr.” Mallinson, James. “Haṭhayoga’s Philosophy: A Fortuitous Union of
Non-Dualities,” p.10

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In theory and practice the kriyās of BSY and SRF are very similar, though the traditions

claim no direct connection to each other. Yogananda and Satyananda were both Daśnāmi monks,

but of different orders (Giri and Saraswati respectively). SRF maintains their lineage through

initiation, carefully guarding their core teachings from curious amateurs. Satyananda released

many of his teachings in public writings, but among BSY practitioners it is generally accepted

that initiation makes the practice more potent, or even that success is not possible without the

initiation of a qualified guru. Traditionally his Saraswati lineage can only be imparted to other

brahmins, but like his guru Sivananda, his organization ignores this injunction. With the

exception of KYATBYB, practitioners of these systems are referred to as kriyābans.

Perhaps the most famous teacher of kriyā yoga in the West, Paramahansa Yogananda, and

his organization, the Self-Realization Fellowship, grounded the legitimacy of their teachings in

the immortal avatār of Babajī, a mythical figure who incarnates throughout history to

reintroduce the central kriyā techniques of the organization. Likely drawing on the description of

Īśwara in the Yoga Sūtras, SRF members believe that Mahāvatār Babajī was the teacher of all the

great yogis of the past (including Jesus and St. John the Baptist). But to a historian, this tradition

is often considered to start only two teachers before Yogananda, with the factual figure of Lahiri

Mahasaya. On occasion, practitioners will profess to have visions of their legendary founder,

essentially claiming initiation directly from God. Various offshoot schools exist, almost always

led by individuals that also claim to have experienced this direct vision of Babajī.

In contrast to the initiatory practices of these schools–often seen as a way to prevent the

corruption of the teachings among ill-informed practitioners–during the early days of 3HO

students were encouraged to develop their own kriyā exercises based on their understanding of

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certain principles of yoga physiology. But eventually these innovations from students were

discouraged and the bulk of KYATBYB practices were standardized and published openly in

books and articles composed by Yogi Bhajan’s followers. As in other schools, there is a notion

that a poorly designed practice can lead to an unsafe arousal of kuṇḍalinī, even inducing

psychosis, and hence unqualified teachers should be discouraged from experimentation. While it

has been argued that Yogi Bhajan borrowed some terminology from these other kriyā teachers,

both of whom established noteworthy followings in the US before Bhajan,116 the term kriyā

seems to have become ubiquitous among living yoga traditions long before this time, and

KYATBYB is prima facie dissimilar to these schools in a variety of ways.

In the Bhagavad Gītā (ca 200 BCE) the word kriyā, while not mentioned in conjunction

with yoga, refers in multiple places to the rites performed as part of traditional Vedic ceremony.

Paramahansa Yogananda and his followers describe verse V.27 as a sparse description of their

kriyā practice,117 while Swami Satyananda generally dismissed the notion.118 The excerpt in

question describes seated meditation in which the vital energies of prāṇa and apāna are brought

into equilibrium, “prāṇāpanau samau.” Yogananda does not claim the practice was derived from

116Swami Satyananda famously and controversially revealed many techniques to the public, without initiation, with
his 1969 book Asana, Pranayama, Mudra, Bandha, and more explicitly in 1981’s A Systematic Course in the
Ancient Tantric Techniques of Yoga and Kriya.
117 “Kriya is an ancient science. Lahiri Mahasaya received it from his guru, Babaji, who rediscovered and clarified
the technique after it had been lost in the Dark Ages. "The Kriya Yoga which I am giving to the world through you
in this nineteenth century," Babaji told Lahiri Mahasaya, "is a revival of the same science which Krishna gave,
millenniums ago, to Arjuna, and which was later known to Patanjali, and to Christ, St. John, St. Paul, and other
disciples." Kriya Yoga is referred to by Krishna, India's greatest prophet, in a stanza of the Bhagavad Gita: "Offering
inhaling breath into the outgoing breath, and offering the outgoing breath into the inhaling breath, the yogi
neutralizes both these breaths; he thus releases the life force from the heart and brings it under his control."”
Yogananda, Paramahansa. Autobiography of a Yogi. p.232
118“There is no history of kriya yoga to tell. Its beginnings and development lie lost in the ancient past. It is a system
that has remained so secret that there is not even a myth to explain its origin. Actually we are happy that there is no
history of kriya yoga to relate. This prevents the system becoming corrupted and twisted by irrelevant details.”
Satyananda, Swami. A Systematic Course in the Ancient Tantric Techniques of Yoga and Kriya. p.699

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the Gītā directly, but rather that this verse is a terse allusion to the techniques which must be

imparted in person, with Kṛṣṇa being understood as a previous incarnation of his teacher’s

teacher, the legendary Babajī, who returns to restore the teachings whenever they become lost to

history.119 Patañjali is included amongst the prior births of this archetypal yogi, who has also

been linked to Gorakṣanāth by other kriyā gurus.120

In Patañjali’s formulation of kriyā yoga in the Yoga Sūtras (ca 350 CE), we can see kriyā

is possibly used to signify that which relates to the “organs of action” (karmendriyas or

kriyendriyas121) meaning a yoga that acts on the powers of speaking, grasping, moving,

eliminating, and reproducing. Some interpretations of the Sūtras view kriyā to be the yoga of the

householder, the word action implying worldly activity (as with the karma yoga of the Bhagavad

Gītā) and notably excluding the vows (mahāvrātas) of non-violence and celibacy that are laid

out in the eight limbs of aṣṭāṅga yoga. The Sūtras, like the Gītā, are also seen as proof of the

antiquity of kriyā among SRF practitioners and even within 3HO and other groups, though once

again Satyananda seems less convinced. As with Kṛṣṇa, Patañjali is seen as a traditional avatar of

Viṣṇu (or his serpent Anānta) and hence is seen within SRF as a prior incarnation of the mythical

founder of their lineage.

One thing Patañjali makes explicit is that kriyā yoga serves the very specific purpose of

weakening the kleśas, a list of five afflictions that is seen throughout Indian philosophy in

119The concept of the immortal Babaji bringing the teachings to the world whenever they are forgotten is one SRF
also notes in the Gītā in verse IV.7:
yadā yadā hi dharmasya glānir bhavati bhārata| abhyutthānam adharmasya tadā’tmānaṁ sṛjāmyaham.
“Whenever the dharma is diminished, Arjuna, and there is an upswelling of adharma, then I manifest myself in this
world.”
120 A belief also shared among this author’s Nāth informants.

121“तैजसानीिन्द्रयाण्येव िक्रयाज्ञानिवभागश: । प्राणस्य िह िक्रयाशिक्तबुद्ध

र् ेिवर् ज्ञानशिक्तता” ŚBh III.26.31 an example of the
karmendriyas being described as “kriyā.”

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different iterations. In the Sūtras these are the innate tendencies toward avidyā (ignorance),

asmitā (egoism), rāga (passion/attachment), dveṣa (aversion), and abhiniveśa (fear of death). In

that regard it is preliminary for allowing the deeper mystical experiences of the text, samādhi.

Tantric practitioners are known to light a ring of four fires underneath the flames of the summer

sun and sit in meditation in the middle, known as the pañcāgni kriyā (the performance of the five

fires ritual) in order to ‘burn off’ the powers of these afflictions. That externalized penance

prevalent in older tapasic traditions is largely internalized in the systems we are examining, even

if the imagery and significance remains essentially the same. The external sacrifice is frequently

a poetic inspiration for descriptions of prāṇāyāma within the haṭha tradition, and the nectar

accessed in haṭha practice (especially in khecarī mudrā) described with the terminology of

abhiṣek, the ritual bathing of an idol (another practice ubiquitous across Indian devotional

religions).

In tantric yoga, at least since the time of Abhinavagupta (ca 950 CE) the term kriyā is

noteworthy as one of the five śaktis (powers) of God, especially important in the triad of icchā,

jñāna, and kriyā (desire, knowledge, and action).122 It is through these three qualities that the

divine is said to bring into existence the lower aspects of creation (the aśuddha and

śuddhāśuddha, or “impure” and “pure-impure,” tattvas of tantric Śaivism). By virtue of desire

(icchā) appropriate knowledge (jñāna) is attained, and through right knowledge the appropriate

action (kriyā) is revealed. To the modern Nāth practitioner of yoga, this sense of kriyā is present

even when describing the tantric exercises known by the same name. Hence the desire of

122 The first two parts of this pentad being cit (consciousness) and ānanda (bliss) corresponding to Śiva and Śakti.

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devotion brings knowledge of God who reveals correct action, the process by which an exercise

may be ‘received’ directly by divine grace.123

Within tantric Buddhist traditions of yoga, kriyā is often viewed as a lower or preliminary

form of yoga practice124 defined by its reliance on superfluous rites of purification and an

externalized relationship to deity.125 This may be a loose elaboration on the older understanding

of kriyā yoga within Pātañjala yoga, composed of three niyamas: tapas (purifying austerity, from

a root meaning ‘to burn’) svādhyāya (scriptural recitation)126 and īśvara pranidhāṇa (submission

to God), which is often understood as an alternative or even simplified version of the more

involved and more famous path of ‘eight auxiliaries,’ or aṣṭāṅga yoga, forever associated with

the Yoga Sūtras. Similarly the Dattātreya Yoga Śāstra presents the eight aspects of Pātañjala

Yoga alongside eight mudrās central to haṭha yoga as the paths of the sages Yajñavalkya and

Kapila respectively, but only after glossing simpler paths and methods of mantra yoga, laya

yoga, and tattva śuddhi (purification of the five elements) as effective yet, in sage Dattātreya’s

opinion, inferior methods of practice.

123 Personal communication with Nāth yogis.

124The four classes of tantra in tantric Buddhism are kriyā, caryā, yoga, and anuttarayoga. Within some schools,
anuttarayoga is further broken down into mahāyoga, anuyoga and atiyoga. This is sometimes simplified as external
(kriyānaya tantra) and internal (yoganaya tantra). The highest class of these tantras are known for their embrace of
antinomian practices, descriptions of feminine supreme deities, and use of highly esoteric vocabularies
(sandhyabāṣā) to protect their contents from uninitiated readers. cf. Buswell, Robert E. Encyclopedia of Buddhism,
pp.747, 821
125In the Hevajra Tantra, an early Buddhist anuttarayoga tantra and one of the earliest source texts on the cakras,
“mudrābandhākriyā” only refers to the ritualistic use of hand gestures (kriyā=performance). Farrow, GW. Menon, I.
The Concealed Essence of the Hevajra Tantra, p.276. Yet within a haṭha milieu, this vocabulary would likely be
read anachronistically as an esoteric description of the mudrās and bandhas introduced in later texts.
126The common modern translation here of ‘self-study’ is often reinterpreted as ‘knowing one’s self’ instead of
individual textual study.

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In the early medieval texts of haṭha yoga, kriyā is often synonymous with preliminary

cleansing techniques to balance the three humors of āyurvedic medicine.127 In Dhirendra

Brahmachari’s writings, as well as those of Swami Sivananda, this would appear to be the

primary use of the word kriyā. While kriyā has an older meaning of ritualistic action as we saw

in the Gītā, the Dattātreya Yoga Śāstra uses kriyā to mean the performance of haṭha practice:

...the faithful and wise who are eternally devoted to the practice succeed. It can be accomplished
only by one who does the practices (kriyā). How could one who does not undertake the practices
(akriyā) succeed?128

What the older yogas accomplished through particular external actions (kriyā) the haṭha yogi

accomplishes through the subtle internal work of mudrā. Hence those internalized ritualistic

actions that rely on mudrā are also labeled kriyā, in effect being an equivalent action.

In later medieval yoga texts, specific practices are also occasionally referenced as

kriyā.129 The preservation of sexual essence through haṭha mudrās, often the very technique that

modern teachers and orthodox thinkers shun and censor from their teachings,130 is referred to as

ūrdhvagamana kriyā131 or “the going upwards action.” Other examples, such as nirañjana kriyā,

mentioned in a manuscript of the Yogacintāmaṇi, involve the use of the popular haṃsa or so’ham

127More commonly known as karma (pl. karmāṇi), also meaning “action.” These are a notable feature of the
classical haṭha yoga corpus.
128“brāhmaṇaḥ śramaṇo vāpi bauddho vāpy ārhato ’thavā | kāpāliko vā cārvākaḥ śraddhayā sahitaḥ sudhīḥ ||41||
kriyāyuktasya siddhiḥ syād akriyasya kathaṃ bhavet ||42||” Mallinson, James. “Dattātreya’s Discourse on Yoga” p.3.
Emphasis added.
129Cf. Birch, Jason Yoga in Transformation, “The Proliferation of āsanas in Late-Medieval Yoga Texts” p.123-4
footnote 62: “Elsewhere [...] in the Hathasaṅketacandrikā, other practices are called kriyā (e.g., pūrakakriyā).” and
p. 127: “These kriyā-s, which combine elaborate prāṇāyāma techniques with complex āsana-s, demonstrate the
growing sophistication of Haṭha Yoga techniques after the sixteenth century.”
130 Mohan, AG. Hatha Yoga Pradipika: Translation with Notes from Krishnamacharya. p.97
131Mallinson, James. Yoga in Transformation, “Yoga and Sex: What is the Purpose of Vajrolīmudrā?” p.199,
footnote 59

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mantra132 in specific postures, a method that is still prevalent in the practices of modern schools

of kriyā yoga including 3HO and SRF.

The Mantra Yoga Saṃhitā, likely composed in the 17th or 18th century, lists prāṇa-kriyā

as the eighth of sixteen limbs of mantra yoga practice:

"Breath ritual" (prāna-kriyā), which is said to be singular but accompanied by a variety of

practices, such as the various types of placing (nyāsa) the lifeforce into different parts of the

body.133

This shows us the common interiorized practice of nyāsa–a form of somatic visualization with

the installation of images or sounds in the body–linked to the psychospiritual energy of prāṇa as

an aspect of mantra practice. This combination of complex visualization, somatic experience, and

manipulation of prāṇa is referred to as a kriyā or ‘ritual’ of the breath energy. While prāṇa-kriyā

is upheld as an important step in the orthopraxis of mantra yoga here, no clear details are offered,

only sparse allusion. As is so often the case in the history of modern yoga practice, we know this

author was familiar with a concept of kriyā that at least sounds compatible with that of Yogi

Bhajan,134 but there is a plethora of vague suggestions and a dearth of explicit instructional

material, especially on those subtle or complex practices that were presumably imparted most

effectively in person.

Yogi Bhajan’s yoga featured an integration of the mantras of his lineage into the kriyās he

taught, leading many to believe he was merely teaching Hindu tantra with Sikh mantras and

132 “The garbhāsana: Just as the shape of a foetus, so is [the shape of garbhāsana]. In it, one ought to do
nirañjanakriyā and repetition [of a mantra] such as so’ham and the like.” Birch, Jason. “The Proliferation of Asanas
in Late-Medieval Yoga Texts.” Yoga in Transformation. p.122. Birch writes that these practices can be safely dated
at least to the seventeenth century.
133 Feuerstein, Georg. The Yoga Tradition: Its History, Literature, Philosophy and Practice. p.70
134 See the description of “trea kriya” below.

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tying it together with a new-age “aquarian” philosophy. But it is noteworthy that kriyā, and tantra

in general, historically spread across traditions, taking on different iterations to fit new

audiences. In the Sikh lineage that preserves the Mahā Tantra teachings and which claims

Bhajan and his teacher Hazara Singh as members, kriyā is combined with the orthodox Sikh

practice of shabad yoga, literally “the yoga of sound,” and has allegedly since its inception.135

But ultimately, Bhajan’s yoga was destined to evolve as it was received and filtered through an

audience unlike any it had known in India. The issue that is harder to discern, though arguably

less important, is which changes happened in India under Bhajan’s preceptors, and which

happened in the West.

KRIYĀS, BY THE BOOK

In many ways, KYATBYB follows many of the broader trends of Modern Postural Yoga:

mixing the new-age with Indian religious practices and explaining yoga practice through its

physical and mental health benefits. Another trend now ubiquitous in modern yoga is the use of

the classroom. Although the traditional methods of instruction are essentially unknown from

textual tradition, scholars generally theorize that the large group class setting for yoga instruction

likely started in modern India with teachers like Krishnamacharya and his young students at the

Mysore Palace. Mark Singleton’s famous work Yoga Body offers the possibility that this was in

imitation of European group fitness classes and the influence of European military training on

sepoy soldiers serving in the British and East India Company armies.

135 Singh Akali, Guvinder. Personal communication.

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The shift to classroom yoga may also be the influence of indigenous martial arts akhāṛās

and military drills, or even popular sports such as Persian wrestling and Mallakhamb.136 It would

have been a natural evolution of the effort to teach yoga and other practices to youth en masse–

part of Krishnamacharya’s mission in Mysore–which would naturally necessitate a classroom

setting. By all available accounts, this may have been the manner in which the mysterious

Hazara Singh–allegedly a master of the gatkā martial art of the Punjab–ran his school, in which

case Yogi Bhajan could have received this tradition in childhood. Bhajan himself later served in

the military where he could have further absorbed this group drill method of instruction. Unlike

other kriyā traditions where individual study and one-on-one lessons from a guru are often

necessary to advance, KYATBYB did not have secret initiations or guarded practices and

everything was taught in large group classes, often in public parks in front of curious onlookers.

These practices were taught to an audience of Westerners and presented in terms that

were more easily relatable, stripped of their most esoteric and culturally bound ideas. What

might have once been presented exclusively in cryptic and mystical language was instead related

in terms of anatomy and psychology. In adopting medical language to interpret the techniques

and goals of kuṇḍalinī practice in modern yoga, the movement of psychospiritual energy, known

as prāṇa, is compared to the electrical currents of the nervous system. As mentioned above, this

practice started before Bhajan’s birth with Basu’s translation of the Śiva Saṃhitā, if not well

before, and continues to this day. Hence many of the kriyās taught by Yogi Bhajan are dressed up

in scientific explanations, even when their supposed spiritual aim is unquantifiable:

136 See: Zabel, Rob. “Martial, Medical, Mystical: the Triple Braid of a Traditional Yoga.”

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strengthening, toning, or balancing the nervous system in order to create a safe vessel for the

awakening of kuṇḍalinī. Within 3HO it is understood that:

...traumatic, spontaneous Kundalini arousals occur among the practitioners of ‘TM’ and other
disciplines that raise psychic energy without first preparing the physical body for the high voltage
psychic energy. This never happens to those who practice Kundalini yoga as taught by Yogi
Bhajan, because the body and nervous system are prepared for this potent energy. Regular
practice not only raises Kundalini energy safely, it keeps it up for living on a higher plane.137

Hence many kriyās, in alignment with a much older understanding of the term, are taught to be

preliminary practices to cleanse and prepare for a deeper spiritual experience, with other benefits

to health and concentration being desirable side-effects. Like the siddhis, or supernatural powers,

presented in older yoga traditions, increased vigor, stamina, and even emotional control are all

presented as signposts of one’s progress towards a higher, ineffable goal. Simultaneously, the

dangers of improper practice are made clear, with the imbalance of the nervous system equated

to psychosis. By extension, drugs are thought to disrupt the balance of the nervous system and

make the practices more dangerous.138 Hence even drug-induced psychosis is seen as an

imbalance of the very same forces that yoga practice intends to balance.

A set of exercises within 3HO, often but not always termed as a kriyā, may involve

multiple smaller practices performed in order to create a specific effect as with “kriya for

generating navel tapa” or “kriya for physical and mental vitality.” Other times a series termed a

“set” will contain individual aspects referred to as kriyā. For example, the “opportunity & green

energy set” contains a “trea kriya” (possibly meaning triangle) consisting of a very traditional

Khalsa, Gururattan Kaur. Introduction to Kundalini Yoga: With the Kundalini Yoga Sets and Meditations of Yogi
137
Bhajan. p.13
138Contrast with Yoga Sūtra IV.1 where ośadhi (herbs, ie entheogens) are listed as a means to attain samādhi. The
habitual use of cannabis is commonplace among yogis of various sects, including the Udāsī and the Nihang warriors,
but along with alcohol, are proscribed in orthodox Sikhism.

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stationary seated haṭha posture139 combined with chanting “Ong So Hung” and visualizing the

sound at the heart.140 Sometimes a kriyā may be only a mantra, with no further visualization or

movement as in “kauri kriya.” Satyananda’s teachings, first published in 1969, list many

practices that 3HO describes as kriyās under the description of kāya mudrās (bodily seals) and

bandhās, adding elaborate breath visualization and mantra instructions to sparsely described

practices of the haṭha canon. Some of Bhajan’s practices are not titled as kriyās but then are still

referred to as kriyās in their description such as the set “sexual nerve strength”:

This Kriya lets the sexual energy circulate freely. Remember that 90% of the sexual energy is
utilized for creative and regenerative functions throughout the body. Without a good supply
of sexual force the nerves will be shaky and insensitive, and aging will occur more rapidly.141

This fascinating set seems to inherit several concepts from older haṭha practices, especially using

an inverted posture to redirect the natural downward flow of ‘sexual energy.’ Not only was the

inverted pose viparīta karaṇi utilized by celibate yogis in the sublimation of sexual desire, but

the very concept of preserved sexual energy equating to strength is commonly taught in Indian

medicine and martial arts where the rarified śukra (sexual essence) slowly transmutes into ojas

(bodily energy).

In early haṭha texts, sexual essence was equated to a masculine lunar energy (bindu) in

the head that would slowly drip into the feminine solar fire in the belly. When an individual

would deplete their supply of this essence, symbolized by the new moon, it would equate to the

139Described as svastikāsana or possibly vajrāsana in the Śrītattvanidhi. Sjoman, Norman. The Yoga Tradition of
the Mysore Palace. pp.78-79. The name and arrangement of the legs is also redolent of triyang mukha eka pāda
paścimottānāsana in the aṣṭāṅga primary series where triyang means “three limbs.” Sitting on the heel during yoga
practice is mentioned at least as early as the Bhagavatam Purāṇa 2.2.19.

Khalsa, Gururattan Kaur. Introduction to Kundalini Yoga: With the Kundalini Yoga Sets and Meditations of Yogi
140
Bhajan. p.44
141 Bhajan, Yogi. Kundalini Yoga Manual (1980 edition). p.19

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end of their natural lifespan. The act of preservation in this practice is described as a mudrā

rather than an āsana in the late medieval Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā:

The sun dwells at the root of the navel, and the moon at the root of the palate. The sun consumes
the nectar of immortality and thus man is held in the sway of death. Put the sun up and bring the
moon down. This Viparitakarani mudra is concealed in all the tantras. Carefully place the head
and both hands on the ground, raise the feet, and remain steady. This is considered to be
Viparitakarani. He who regularly practices this mudra destroys decrepitude and death, is an adept
in all the worlds, and does not perish even at the great dissolution.142

Techniques that preserved this fluid were a means to extend the life of the yogi, even possibly

inducing an immortal body. Yogi Bhajan or his teachers seem to have taken this practice,

wherever they may have learned it, and presented it in more relatable terms for modern Western

and Indian audiences of the time, replacing incredible concepts about immortality with the

promise of longer life. According to Iyengar, “Continued practice of this āsana eradicates

common colds and other nasal disturbances.”143 Satyananda concurs: “It balances hypoactive

thyroid and acts as a preventative for cough, cold, sore throat, and bronchial disorders.”144 All of

these teachers were no doubt aware of the celibate orientation of the original sources, but

seemingly believed this practice could be taught to Western house-holders. Satyananda mentions

vaguely that the practice “is used to reverse the downward and outward movement of energy and

redirect it back to the brain,”145 but otherwise the elaborate explanations of sexual essence here

are mostly untouched by teachers other than Bhajan. Dhirendra suggests a prārthanā (prayer)

142Gheranda Samhita III.29-32, as translated by James Mallinson. This imagery of the sun and moon within the
body as fluid substances dates back at least to the urtexts of the haṭha tradition, the Amṛtasiddhi and
Amaraughaprabodha.
143 Iyengar, BKS. Light on Yoga. p.213
144 Saraswati, Swami Satyananda. Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha. p.455
145 Saraswati, Swami Satyananda. Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha. p.457

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practice for the sublimation of sexual energy, but it is a standing posture with the hands and

elbows connected to the throat and chest.146

Like other teachers of postural yoga, Yogi Bhajan taught the ubiquitous cobra pose. The

name and exact performance varies from teacher to teacher, be it bhujaṅgāsana, urdhva mukha

śvānāsana, or sarpāsana. Sivananda, Krishnamacharya, and their students have coupled this

posture with measured breathing, possibly inspired by the simple description in the Gheraṇḍa

Saṃhitā:

Place the lower body, from the toes to the navel, on the ground. Support yourself with both palms
on the ground and lift up the head like a snake. Through practice of Bhujangasana, the physical
fire increases steadily, all diseases are destroyed, and the Serpent Goddess awakens.147

Perhaps less true to the Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā, this pose is usually held for a single inhale in vinyāsa

yoga systems. One of Yogi Bhajan’s interpretations of this posture adds further snake-like

qualities with the instructions “...stick the tongue all the way out, with the chin held up. Breathe

long and deep through the mouth. Continue for 2 minutes,” followed immediately with a seated

version of śītalī prāṇāyāma where the yogi is to “Inhale through the rolled tongue and exhale

through the nose,” for three and one half minutes.148 The name of this breath practice has a dual

meaning in Sanskrit as both cooling–śītala–and śīt, “A sound made by drawing in the breath (to

express any sudden thrill of pleasure or pain and especially pleasurable sensations during sexual

enjoyment).”149 In other words, “whistling breath.” In audio recordings of his early classes the

146Brahmachari, Dhirendra. Yoga Sūkṣma Vyāyāma. p.2. This is similar to the starting position in the Bikram Yoga
opening breath practice, supposedly learned from Paramahansa Yogananda’s brother, famed physical culturalist
Bishnu Ghosh (1903-1970).
147 Gheranda Samhita II.42-43, as translated by James Mallinson
148 Bhajan, Yogi. Kundalini Yoga Manual (1980). p.21
149 Monier-Williams p.1077

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exercise varies, sometimes combined with whistling150 or followed by extending the tongue for

śītalī.151 Elsewhere, making no mention of the protruded tongue, he instead instructs students to

straighten the arms completely, breathe deeply, then apply rounds of antara kumbhaka (holding

the breath in), bahya kumbhaka (suspending the breath after exhalation) and mūla bandha

(perineal lock) in the pose.152 The combination of cooling breath practices in particular around

what Bhajan merely terms “cobra pose” aligns more closely with a text that he would likely have

had no familiarity with, the Śrītattvanidhi, either composed by or commissioned by Mummadi

Krishnaraja Wodeyar (1794-1868). The text tells the yogi to “Lie on the stomach keeping the

navel on the ground. Support the body with the two hands like posts and then whistle. This is

sarpāsana, the serpent.”153

The Śrītattvanidhi is a late addition to the āsana compendiums of the time. This partially

unfinished manuscript is cited by Krishnamacharya in his early books, but was buried deep in the

Mysore Royal Library, and like many texts from the palace collection, for decades it was thought

to have been lost in a fire. Its rediscovery and subsequent publishing occurred long after 3HO

had published the bulk of its manuals and standardized its teachings. Many of its poses use ropes

and are reminiscent of wrestling exercises which were also taught at the Mysore palace. Given its

complicated history and geographical location, Yogi Bhajan would likely never have encountered

the Śrītattvanidhi. But whatever adaptations existed within the text were unlikely to be

150 “Los Angeles Lecture.” April 6, 1973. Los Angeles, CA. The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings
(libraryofteachings.com). The posture is described but not named. He does refer to whistling in cobra as “seethali
pranayam” explicitly.
151“UCLA Beginners Winter - Exercise, Meditation, Yoga Changes You.” February 17, 1972. Los Angeles, CA. The
Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings (libraryofteachings.com)
152 “Lecture.” February 24, 1970. Location unlisted. The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings (libraryofteachings.com)
153 Sjoman, Norman. The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace. p.71. Emphasis added.

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completely unique, and both its myriad sources and imitations are likely to be spread throughout

the subcontinent. Hence there are other seemingly characteristic practices of KYATBYB that are

actually quite similar to those in the Śrītattvanidhi such as Yogi Bhajan’s frog pose154 and

utthānotthānāsana.

Again, without directly influencing Bhajan, utthānotthānāsana consists of repeatedly

squatting and standing as in frog pose. Similar poses include śaśāsana (the horn),155 which is

essentially the same squat performed from a downward dog-like posture. In both cases this may

simply be imitating knee bending exercises from Indian wrestling,156 sharing a common

inspiration with Bhajan without coming through a shared lineage. The use of repetitive simple

movements with breath was integral to Bhajan’s style, as it was for Dhirendra Brahmachari and

another influence of Bhajan, Swami Dev Murti. But these repetitive practices seem to predate all

of them. In fact, they may have simply been a ubiquitous part of Indian physical culture during

Yogi Bhajan’s youth, integrating some concepts of Western calisthenics with yoga,157 or even the

repetitive exercises of Indian wrestlers and soldiers.158 The extensive room for martial arts to

influence MPY remains woefully understudied, despite their historical entanglements. The Nāth

jogīs, like certain Sikh groups, have long organized into military factions (Hindu Nagas and Sikh

Nihang) and served as soldiers or mercenaries in colonial India. To this day, it is easy to find

154 Bhajan, Yogi. Kundalini Yoga Manual (1980).

155 Sjoman, Norman. The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace. p.73
156 Sjoman, Norman. The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace. p.83
157One may compare this with some of the fast-paced and repetitive displays of European gymnasts at the Paris
1924 Olympics. https://youtu.be/D6RK0M6-GUg
158It is important to note the two-way influence of physical culture, with the traditional military strength-training
sport of “Indian clubs” being an event at the 1904 and 1932 Olympic games.

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examples of hardline swamis posing for photo-ops with guns,159 showing off their wrestling

skills,160 and vociferously supporting the military. Dhirendra Brahmachari notably owned the

Shiva Gun Factory in Jammu and Kashmir, which was raided for illegally importing Spanish

rifle parts.161

Where Dhirendra teaches these military-style calisthenics most noticeably are in his

series of vikāsakas (literally meaning “to open, expand, or develop”), exercises to strengthen

specific body parts, such as maṇi-bandha-śakti-vikāsaka (developing the wrists) and vakṣa-

sthala-śakti-vikāsaka (developing the chest). The descriptions abound with instructions to ‘jerk’

the body in various directions to develop certain body parts. Mixed in among these practices is at

least one older kriyā from the haṭha version of ṣaṭkarma (cleansing practices for physical

health). Elsewhere known as agnisāra kriyā (the flowing fire action) this practice involves

rapidly sucking in and releasing the abdomen and appears in Dhirendra’s book as udara-śakti-

vikāsaka (developing the abdominal muscles).162 While the heavy use of “bellows breath” and

“breath of fire” is seen as another influence of Dhirendra’s on KYATBYB, it was by no means

unique to his teachings. According to a living practitioner of the Sikh kriyā yoga lineage to

which Hazara Singh and Yogi Bhajan belong, bellows breath is common in their traditional

practices.163 Correspondence with Nāth initiates confirms the same is true at least in select circles

“Gun-loving India 'god-woman' who shot wedding guests.” BBC News. November 18, 2016. https://
159
www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-38013000

Baba Ramdev seems particularly proud of his wrestling skills, displaying them on national television in India on
160
multiple occasions.
161Mitra, Sumit. “Dhirendra Brahmachari calls crackdown on gun factory in Jammu 'political vendetta’.” India
Today. December 15, 1983. Updated July 2, 2014. https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/indiascope/story/19831215-
dhirendra-brahmachari-calls-crackdown-on-gun-factory-in-jammu-political-vendetta-804492-2014-02-03
162 Brahmachari, Dhirendra. Yoga Sūkṣma Vyāyāma. p.59
163 Singh Akali, Guvinder. Personal communication.

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of modern jogīs.164 In some cases, the intense abdominal churning associated with these

breathing practices is equated to the classical haṭha mudrā of śakticālana, “the churning of the

Goddess.”

Krishnamacharya’s yoga has its own martial imprints, including the vigorous style of his

sun salutations. While Krishnamacharya definitely was aware of the Śrītattvanidhi and may have

extracted some of his fast-paced movements from it, he taught his preferred analogue of cobra

pose, urdhva mukha śvanāsana, with a gentle rhythmic breathing pattern known as ujjāyī,165

specifically entering the posture with an inhale, and leaving it with an exhale. This, of course, is

part of the famous Vinyasa Yoga Krishnamacharya claimed to inherit from the mysterious

Rammohan Brahmacari, supposedly detailed in a lost text, the Yoga Korunta.166 Scholars point to

the similarity between these vinyāsas and the daṇḍa (pushup) exercises employed in Indian

wrestling. One possible conclusion is that Yogi Bhajan learned his particular āsana-prāṇāyāma

combination for cobra from Dhirendra Brahmachari. But no hint of this is offered in Dhirendra’s

writings:

Lying on the abdomen, the lower limbs should be joined together and kept close to the ground.
While the body from the toes to the navel touches the ground, the hands should be kept under the
shoulders and, resting on them, the body above the navel should be lifted above the ground, as
high as possible, so that it resembles the hood of a cobra.167

164 Nāth yogi. Personal communication.

165Notably, Krishnamacharya’s instructions on ujjāyī vary from that in the Haṭha Pradīpikā (II.51, 52) where the
exhale is through the left nostril.
166 Reminiscent of criticism against KYATBYB, the lack of historical proof around this text and Rammohan
Brahmacari have led some to theorize that Krishnamacharya invented vinyāsa yoga himself, and that the Koranta is
a fiction.
167 Brahmachari, Dhirendra. Yogāsana Vijñāna: the Science of Yoga. p.95

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Showing beyond a doubt that his primary source was the Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā,168 Dhirendra does

not even alter the order of the postures in his book, preceding cobra pose with locust, makara,

and camel (all traditionally backbends) and immediately following it with yogāsana, a seated

pose.

Notably, this version lacks any breath instructions, and is not taught explicitly as part of a

series, presenting the postures in the same piecemeal fashion as the medieval text from which

they were borrowed, making it doubtful as a source for KYATBYB. Elsewhere, Dhirendra

Brahmachari teaches a similar cobra pose as part of a complicated ṣaṭkarma (cleansing practice)

variation involving multiple āsanas to be performed in succession. This same practice, known as

‘the cleaning of the conch (saṅkha praksālana or vārisāra) is included in Satyananda as well.

After consuming several glasses of saltwater, one should “...repeat the serpent-pose four times to

the right and as many times to the left,”169 accompanied by a photograph of Dhirendra craning

his neck to the side. Again, no linking of the posture to breath or sticking out the tongue, no hints

that this inspired Bhajan’s choice to link cobra pose with the extended tongue and śītalī

breathwork, and no overlap in the series of poses employed.170

Unlike the Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā, neither Bhajan nor Dhirendra claim that this posture

“awakens the serpent goddess” (jagarti bhujagī devī), but rather that it would, according to

Bhajan, “work on breaking the deposits and tension of poor digestion and high toxicity,”171 more

in line with Dhirendra’s medical explanation that it “relieves constipation, indigestion, and

168 Elsewhere Dhirendra quotes the Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā directly: Yogic Sūkṣma Vyāyām. p.209
169 Brahmachari, Dhirendra. Yoga Sūkṣma Vyāyāma. p.208
170See Birch, Jason. “The Haṭhasaṅketacandrikā and Śaṅkhaprakṣālana (Yogic Cleaning of the Conch)” for a
fascinating comparison of this passage from Yoga Sūkṣma Vyāyāma with the teachings of Satyananda.
171 Bhajan, Yogi. Kundalini Yoga Manual (1980). p.23

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flatulence. It is very useful for patients with chronic constipation,”172 in turn possibly derived

from the Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā’s suggestion that it increases the bodily fire. Instead, Bhajan and

Dhirendra may take inspiration from the Haṭhasaṅketacandrikā, an 18th-century yoga text

composed by a āyurvedic physician with an extensive ṣaṭkarma section and medically oriented

explanations for many of its āsanas.173 Iyengar, in his 1966 Light on Yoga, also explains

bhujaṅgāsana and urdhva mukha śvānāsana in terms strictly of physical benefits, but for the

spine rather than the belly.174 Satyananda, who teaches cobra in his sun salutations175 where

Krishnamacharya employs upward dog, explains bhujāngāsana in his 1969 book Asana

Pranayama Mudra Bandha as both keeping “the spine supple, improving circulation in the back

region and toning the spinal nerves,” in addition to stimulating digestion and relieving

constipation.176 In the same book, Satyananda offers a twisting cobra variation, “tiryaka

bhujangasana,”177 which is reminiscent of Dhirendra Brahmachari’s instructions to turn the head

side-to-side in cobra, but he adds the instructions to “Inhale while raising. Retain the breath

inside while twisting to both sides. Exhale while lowering to the floor,” which is most similar to

the vinyāsa version Krishnamacharya teaches.

172 Brahmachari, Dhirendra. Yogāsana Vijñāna: the Science of Yoga. p.95.

It is noteworthy that the following pose in this book, Yogāsana, is said to be the only āsana “in which Prāṇāyāma is
essential. Kumbhaka or breath suspension has to be practised during the course of the performance of this āsana; this
awakens Kuṇḍalinī.” -ibid, p.95.
173 Birch, Jason. “The Haṭhasaṅketacandrikā and Śaṅkhaprakṣālana (Yogic Cleaning of the Conch).” p.1
174 Iyengar, BKS. Light on Yoga. pp. 110-111
175The pose is performed on an inhale, sometimes accompanied by a ‘solar’ mantra: “Om Hiranya Garbhaya
Namaha, salutations to the golden, cosmic self.” Saraswati, Swami Satyananda. Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha.
p.168
176 Saraswati, Swami Satyananda. Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha. p168
177 Saraswati, Swami Satyananda. Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha. p.199

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So at least in this example we see that there may be more in common among Dhirendra

and his Hindu contemporaries than there is between Dhirendra and Yogi Bhajan. All of these

individuals teach elaborations and variations on practices that are mentioned in the haṭha corpus.

In places their elaborations overlap, but it is often unclear how old various innovations are. This

is exacerbated by the massive collections of practices these teachers compiled, generally without

citing specific sources. While Bhajan does appear to follow Dhirendra in the medical

applications of cobra pose, as do many others, the mention of increasing bodily fire (ie digestion)

is first mentioned in the Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā if not earlier. He does not seem to imitate

Dhirendra’s performance of the pose, but overlaps in his interpretations of its use. This leaves

two other options: Yogi Bhajan learned this particular practice from someone else, maybe even a

Sikh yogi or martial artist, or Bhajan “made up” his variation, which is perhaps a pessimistic way

to describe what might otherwise be considered revelation or innovation. In an example of

divergent evolution, Yogi Bhajan may have simply come to the same conclusions that Wodeyar

had one hundred years before in Mysore, experiencing the same successful experiments in his

practice and recording them for posterity, without a living source to credit.

While Bhajan and Dhirendra both employed a fast-paced jerking of the spine and limbs,

Bhajan’s exercises eclipse those of Dhirendra in their complexity and diversity suggesting he

was only one of many influences, a jumping off point he had long since departed on his journey.

While he may have been a conceptual inspiration, ultimately Bhajan’s practice is too dissimilar

to be dismissed as a simple derivative of Dhirendra’s combined with Sikh mantras. It does seem

likely that there was an older pan-Indian movement to incorporate these various jerking motions

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and repetitive jumping as part of a growing fascination with physical culture178 that

simultaneously saw these practices as connected to various indigenous roots in wrestling and

yoga. Dhirendra was a particularly notable example of a very popular larger movement of which

he and Bhajan were both a part. This influence can be seen well beyond these two figures.

Ultimately, larger questions about Modern Postural Yoga will need to be answered before we will

fully understand the place of KYATBYB. But we do know that Dhirendra was only one of many

passing imprints on Yogi Bhajan.

Scholar Philip Deslippe points to the striking of the posterior with the heel as another

practice he suspects Bhajan borrowed directly from Dhirendra,179 but this is also a technique in

the Śrītattvanidhi, known as śaṅkvāsana.180 Though no benefits are listed in the text, Bhajan

taught that these heel strikes primarily for health and not explicitly to awaken the dormant

kuṇḍalinī. The oldest technique of striking the posterior, mahāvedhā, is said to force the energy

out of the secondary channels and into the central channel of the subtle body, clearing the way

for kuṇḍalinī’s ascent. Either health or spiritual awakening can be explained with the same subtle

body concept of opening the central channel and balancing energy. Both outcomes also closely

align with the Tibetan understanding of the perineum strike.

Tibetan Yantra Yoga teachings from Tibet, including more recent iterations from

Namkhai Norbu, are remarkably similar in many places, employing repetitive movements,

178 For more on this subject, see Singleton, Mark. Yoga Body.

Deslippe, Philip. “From Maharaj to Mahan Tantric: The Construction of Yogi Bhajan's Kundalini Yoga.” Sikh
179
Formations, Vol. 8, No.3. p.373
180“While standing, touch each buttock by lifting the heel to that repeatedly. This is saṅkvāsana, the arrow.”
Sjoman, Norman. The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace. p.73 This practice is also described by the same name in
the Haṭhābhyāsapaddhati. Birch, Jason. “The Proliferation of Asanas in Late-Medieval Yoga Texts.” Yoga in
Transformation. p.163

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repeatedly striking the hips against the floor (known as a bep in Tibetan, bindu in Sanskrit), and

ending sets with a sustained breath retention, all for the stated dual purpose of physical health

and psychospiritual effect. Yogi Bhajan taught a technique called “Ashtang Agni Kriya,”

possibly only in later years, where the practitioner is to “Clap the elbows down onto the ribcage

with a great force as if you are playing your rib cage like a drum.”181 This is seemingly identical

to a common Dzogchen Buddhist practice “hooking like a hook,” which “...involves stretching

the arms and snapping the elbows against the rib cage to drive the lateral ‘winds’ into the central

channel.”182 This practice dates back to at least the twelfth century where it is one of six trulkhor

exercises, only taught to initiates, strikingly similar to the Sher Yogi lineage’s collection of

kriyās. Some of the methods of trulkhor may hearken back to the root text of haṭha yoga, the

Amṛtasiddhi, which seems to have inspired both Indian and Tibetan traditions. Ian A. Baker

describes this practice:

All traditions of Tsalung Trulkhor extol their remedial healing benefits while emphasizing their
more profound transformative effects on the body and mind, including the reputed attainment of
supranormal powers (siddhi) [...] its emphasis on sequentially performed movements with the
breath held in a “vase” below the navel (bum pa can, Skt. kumbhaka) while visualizing oneself in
the form of one or another non-material tantric deity, in accordance with the practice’s line of
transmission. As a method of self-consecration combining the Development Phase (utpattikrama,
Tib. skye rim) and Completion Phase (saṃpannakrama, Tib. rdzogs rim) of Vajrayāna practice,
Trulkhor is traditionally undertaken in strict secrecy with prescribed garments that symbolise
interconnected psychophysical energies. Vigorous and, at times, acrobatic movements combined
with expanded breath and associated visualisations direct neurobiological energies into the body’s
central channel (suṣumnā, Tib. rtsa dbu ma), quelling obscuring mental activity and arousing the
blissful “fierce heat” of Tumo (gtum mo, Skt. caṇḍālī) that facilitates yogic attainment during
recurring cycles of wakefulness, sleep, sexual activity, and dream.183

181Kaur Khalsa, Harijot. Praana Praanee Praanayam: Exploring the Breath Technology of Kundalini Yoga as
Taught by Yogi Bhajan. p.30
182Baker, Ian A. “Tibetan Yoga: Somatic Practice in Vajrayāna Buddhism and Dzogchen.” Yoga in Transformation.
p.352
183Baker, Ian A. “Tibetan Yoga: Somatic Practice in Vajrayāna Buddhism and Dzogchen.” Yoga in Transformation.
p.347

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If this practice was in any way an influence or divergent evolution of the haṭha practices that

Yogi Bhajan learned cannot be said with certainty. The similarities are obvious, from the

combination of medical and spiritual applications, use of sequences of movements combined

with breath and visualization, the strict secrecy and prescribed clothing, acrobatic activities, and

more, all with the designed purpose of sending a Buddhist equivalent of kuṇḍalinī, known as

caṇḍālī, through the body’s central channel.

Until very recently, the actual performance of trulkhor was kept a closely guarded secret

among Dzogchen practitioners, but it is entirely possible that Yogi Bhajan or Sant Hazara Singh

learned this technique from Lilanpo, the Tibetan who once studied with Singh and whom Bhajan

claimed briefly held the title of Mahān Tantric. Lilanpo is said to have first encountered Yogi

Bhajan’s lineage at Lake Rewalsar, a mountain pilgrimage site in Himachel Pradesh–a place

revered among Tibetan yogis and Sikhs and one of many locales where practitioners of Sikhism

and Vajrayāna would have interacted. If Bhajan and Hazara Singh were exchanging techniques

with Lilanpo, beyond those contained in the kriyās of their shared lineage, it is certainly possible

that Hazara’s school was itself a place where such interchange and experimentation was common

or even encouraged. It is perhaps just as likely that Bhajan simply saw the practice somewhere,

experimented with it independently, and taught his own version. The Himalayas and their people

have long been romanticized in India, and many yogis have made pilgrimages into the mountains

to seek siddhas, immortal practitioners, including the sojourn that supposedly brought

Krishnamacharya to his master Brahmmohan Brahmachari in Tibet. Likewise, Dhirendra’s

teacher Maharishi Kartikeya is said to have learned directly from the immortal siddha Goraknāth

while wandering the Himalayas. What came to these individuals in trances and visions was never

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regarded as outside of the traditions of the masters. Receiving visions from siddhas IS the

tradition.

THE GOLDEN CHAIN

If Yogi Bhajan did pull together as many sources as it might seem, the question arises of

how does this align with the emic description of an unaltered and ancient lineage, one which

many 3HO members espouse even today. Openly attributed techniques like the “sufi grind”

suggest Bhajan was not above taking a practice from outside of his tradition and sharing its

source, at least when he knew it or was at liberty to discuss it. Unlike the Ashtanga Yoga of

Pattabhi Jois, Bhajan did not generally present his yoga as a practice trapped in amber, at least

not in the early days. He knew he was mixing diverse sources together, but in service of a

singular pan-Indian concept of kuṇḍalinī that was likely always integral to his yoga, long before

his encounters with Virsa Singh and Dhirendra Brahmachari. A concept of the “golden chain” of

past masters was utilized to explain how all the practices he had gathered could fit together into a

coherent or even perfect system. At times it seemed to even obscure the piecemeal origins of

KYATBYB, used to indirectly present the practice as primordial and divine.

In his lectures, most frequently in the ‘90s and beyond, Yogi Bhajan would emphasize

how important it was to leave the practices unaltered, hyping the perfection of the supposedly

received tradition:

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Everybody can participate, add their experience but the original teachings will not change and
they shall not be personalized [...] We are teaching the teachings of the golden link. We are not
teaching our teachings. So why should we have a conflict?184

And elsewhere,

Your practices are pure, unaltered. One thing, I did for you, I brought you exactly, what I was
taught and trained in and what I experienced.185

The Library of Teachings website that catalogues Yogi Bhajan’s many lectures and classes

glosses the “golden link” or “chain” rather loosely:

Historically it is the long line of spiritual masters who have preceded us. Practically it is the
subtle link between the consciousness of a student and the master, which has the power to guide
and protect the energy of a teaching and its techniques. This link requires the student to put aside
the ego and limitations and act in complete synchrony or devotion to the highest consciousness of
the master and teachings.186

While the “golden chain” concept was a powerful tool by which to consolidate authority and

discourage departures from his method, it also aligns closely with the broader concept of ājñā

(command) in other systems of yoga and tantra, wherein the realized yogi is psychically

connected to past or living masters in such a way that their every action intuitively aligns with

tradition, essentially living as a conduit of divine will.187 In this way, the link is a means of

confining all authority over the practice only to select ‘realized’ masters. To one who is an elder

of the Mahā Tantra, every moment of realization or innovation may be seen as a product of

direct transmission, and one’s every action an expression of divine will. One who allows the

individual ego to distort the teachings or who would use the teachings for their own ends would

184 “Teacher’s Meeting.” September 9, 1995. Berlin, Germany. The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings
(libraryofteachings.com)
185“Gurudwara - What Guru Nanak Did For Us.” October 6, 1991. Española, NM. The Yogi Bhajan Library of
Teachings (libraryofteachings.com)
186 The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings (libraryofteachings.com)
187For more on the role of ājñā in classical Śaiva tantra, see Manthānabhairavatantra in which the Goddess
Kuṇḍalinī is initiated by Bhairava through various transmissions described with the terms such as siddhājñā,
ājñābhiṣeka, and ājñāpiṭha.

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not be considered a worthy link in the chain. This is perhaps the very reason why Lilanpo was

chosen over the audacious young Yogi Bhajan all those years before.

In many of his oldest lectures, however, the golden chain seems more like an explanation

of karma and causality:

I am following the time, you are following the time, we are in equally in yoga one law you must
remember, they call it law of golden chain. In this nobody is high and nobody is low. Whatever
you shall do to me, I shall guarantee those who follow shall do it to you. One is going, other is
following, one is going, other is following, it is a constant link. The law of golden link is, if ye
shall do to me, it will be done to thee.188

Here he equates it to what Westerners may know as the ‘golden rule.’ Elsewhere he explains,

...kindness can heal everything, kindness can mend everything, kindness can create everything,
kindness can produce everything, kindness is the law of love in action. Love is the truth in action
and truth is God in action, and we call it law of golden chain.189

In these early iterations, Bhajan’s use of the “golden chain” was very similar to, and perhaps

even inspired by the old hermetic treatise of the same name, Aurea Catena Homeri or the

“Golden Chain of Homer,” which describes the interconnectivity of all phenomena from a

Western esoteric perspective. But as it became a tool of authority more distinctly, this similarity

faded and the chain evolved into a description of the transmission of the teachings. But it is not

in the mundane sense of a lineage preserved and transmitted teacher-to-student through the ages,

but rather as a divine principal of authority by which only an accomplished master who can shut

off the ego is capable of receiving the pure message of the Gurus–a connection that Yogi

Bhajan’s teacher Sant Virsa Singh had through his visions, and one Bhajan attained through

visions of his own.

188 “Winter Solstice - Sides 1+2.” December 28, 1972. Location Unlisted. The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings
(libraryofteachings.com)
189 “Lecture (1), (2).” November 15, 1975. Vancouver, BC, Canada. The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings
(libraryofteachings.com)

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YOGI BHAJAN’S MANY SOURCES

It would be misguided to reconstruct a vision of a singular source from which Yogi

Bhajan may have learnt the techniques of his Kundalini Yoga. Even the effort to draw one-to-one

connections for specific techniques may be myopic. Though the techniques of the Sher Yogi

lineage are not all publicly known, we do know it is a streamlined system with a set number of

practices, not numerous enough to fill the many volumes that have been published on

KYATBYB. Yogi Bhajan had no qualms about borrowing, mixing, and even obscuring as he built

his sprawling collection of techniques. In looking at the history of these techniques, we have

seen that they spread and evolved at incredible speed, leaving only a negligible textual trail by

which to trace them. Opportunities for source amnesia abound from generation to generation, as

if it were a long game of spiritual telephone. We do not know how far back all of these variations

and amalgamations go, even what blending may have happened just under Hazara Singh, who

had his own background in at least one other Sikh lineage (Bidhi Chand). In examining the

evolution of the contemporaneous spread of Ashtanga Vinyasa as taught by Krishnamacharya

and his main disciple Pattabhi Jois, we can see immense diversity just between a teacher and his

protégé, and even in how each individual taught at different points throughout their lifetimes.

There is a mixture of adherence to lineage with a ubiquitous tendency towards experimentation,

and the confounding habit of teachers to obscure their own contributions to a living tradition.

What Yogi Bhajan learned from the myriad teachers he had known–whether in visions, in

person, or simply on the printed page–became amalgamated, went through the filter of his own

experience and experimentation, and ultimately emerged as something unique, as arguably may

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be the case with all teachers. Despite claims to the contrary, the Golden Chain of Kundalini’s

lineage might be better understood as a net wherein the links move in many directions, crossing

the sometimes murky borders between traditions, religions, and sects. When one link is severed,

the net still holds, anchored by innumerable connections. Like the image of Indra’s net (Indra-

jāla) frequently used in Hindu and Buddhist philosophy, each knot in the net bears a unique gem,

but in each gem is the reflection of all the other gems at all the other knots. Bhajan’s teachings

and those of his many inspirations are profoundly interconnected. So much so, that the isolation

of any node in the tapestry of Modern Postural Yoga renders an incomplete image. Whatever

techniques he learned from, for example, Hindu yogi Dhirendra Brahmacari, Dhirendra himself

may in turn have learned from a classical yoga text, a book on physical culture,190 Dhirendra’s

own guru Maharshi Kartikeya, a new-age theosophist publication,191 personal experimentation,

revelatory visions, or even from a sect or religion of which he himself was not a member.

The attempt to construct an historical through line from Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga to

the hoary past by means of a direct historical lineage also obscures the important concept of

spiritual lineage. Both Yogi Bhajan and one of his most influential Sikh teachers, Virsa Singh,

claimed to learn techniques and mantras through direct visions of saints including the Sikh Gurus

and Udāsī founder Siri Chand. Bhajan even claimed to receive the title of Mahān Tantrika in the

form of a vision which may leave readers at a loss of interpretive tools by which to dismiss or

embrace such phantasmal sources. While this may offer a spiritual connection to a desirable

lineage, it does not shed much light on the historicity of said lineage. Despite this, the mythic

190 See Singleton, Mark. Yoga Body. p.81

191On the fluid incorporation of new-age movements into MPY see DeMichelis, Elizabeth. A History of Modern
Yoga. p.112

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aspect of a lineage is an important feature of the emic history of any group, though they often fail

to convince etic observers and ‘non-believers.’ This can famously be seen in modern attitudes

towards Joseph Smith and the revelatory founding of the LDS movement, or L Ron Hubbard’s

channeling of the Scientologist doctrines in his writings; both men are revered as prophets by

their members and frequently mocked by outsiders as fraudsters and charlatans. Neither

perspective says much of interest when studying the practices of a living community.

Just as reconstructing or creating a pedigreed lineage can create an air of legitimacy for a

new group, outsiders frequently will construct their own invented histories in order to

delegitimize a movement. This very well may be the case with some of Yogi Bhajan’s most

dogged critics who uphold the stories and images of Bhajan’s teachers unquestioningly while

blithely dismissing the same elements within Yogi Bhajan’s own narrative. It is a worthwhile

question to ask if historicity is the only marker of legitimacy a movement can hope to find, or if

legitimacy is even an appropriate word to use here. When observers attack the legendary as

ahistorical, they lose sight of the fact that the legendary is very much at the root of even the most

revered and ancient of spiritual traditions. As a matter of perspective, what one might see here as

megalomaniacal (i.e. presenting new ideas as authoritative), another could argue is merely due

modesty. We can only surmise as to Yogi Bhajan’s deeper motives, even when looking at their

varied outcomes.

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CONCLUSIONS

Yogi Bhajan’s teachings were many things at once, combining the nearly forgotten

principles of an esoteric Sikh lineage with the bodily cultivation techniques of a late colonial

India that mixed martial arts and gymnastics with traditional haṭha yoga practices. While he

claimed in some places to have learned many techniques from many places, openly crediting a

variety of sources and once encouraged students to experiment and develop their own exercises,

elsewhere he claimed to be the torchbearer of a tradition that was received unaltered through a

“golden chain” of transmission involving visions of past masters. Even his self-assigned title of

Mahān Tantric exists somewhere between historical reality and bombast, based on real

precedents but overstated to project a very well-curated image of mastery and authority. There is

little to be gained from questioning the reality of his visions, whether they were convenient

inventions, ego-driven delusions, or genuine transmissions within the emically accepted

parameters of Sikh mystical revelation. Even the notion of invention versus revelation may be

too precise a line to enforce in the wider context of yoga and religion where innovation may be

indiscernible from divine inspiration.

It goes without saying that Yogi Bhajan’s teachings are distinct in appearance and

orientation from many of his biggest claimed and unclaimed influences such as Sant Virsa Singh,

Dhirendra Brahmachari, Swami Sivananda, Parmahansa Yogananda, and Swami Dev Murti. But

at the same time we know little about what Bhajan learned in his youth from the mysterious but

nonetheless historical figure of Sant Hazara Singh or how much experimentation was allowed or

even encouraged. As KYATBYB evolved into an organized system and a registered trademark,

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Yogi Bhajan still insisted on its antiquity. On one hand that insistence may echo a sincere belief

that the innermost essence of the practice remained the same even as aspects of the outer form

changed, or even that these practices were coming directly from the pages of the Sri Guru Granth

Sahib and the explicit instructions of Guru Ram Das. On the other hand, Yogi Bhajan did not

even teach his students the core system of the Sher Yogi lineage in which he had been initiated,

but instead offered a wide array of modular and overlapping exercises that undeniably contain

methods hard to find among any of his contemporaries or inspirations. But even the ‘traditional’

teachings of all of Yogi Bhajan’s known influences indicate great departures from their

respective teachers. Many of these lineages like KYATBYB also bear distinct marks of

theosophy, new-ageism, and modernity but still hold their crystallized visions of the practice as

the epitome of authority.

Perhaps the greatest parallels with Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga can be seen in the history of

Vinyasa Yoga. Like Yogi Bhajan’s experience with the mysterious Sant Hazara Singh, Vinyasa’s

true founder in many ways–Tirumalai Krishnamacharya–claimed to study for seven years with a

virtually unattested and possibly invented Himalayan master Rammohan Brahmachari where he

learned a system of physical practice allegedly recorded in an ancient but now lost scripture.

Even after supposedly receiving this fully realized system unaltered from his guru,

Krishnamacharya’s teaching evolved visibly across his many decades as a teacher, at times

through mystical visions such as channeling a lost scripture from of an elder of his own lineage.

Krishnamacharya’s various students from different periods each carry on the different styles

from these stages of the practice’s evolution. The chosen torchbearer of the Vinyasa style,

Pattabhi Jois, then presented what he had learned as an ancient and unaltered practice as found in

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ancient scripture. But the ‘perfectly arranged’ received order of postures was eventually altered

several times in order to be more easily taught, all while remaining ‘ancient’ and ‘perfect.’192

Eventually Jois’s own students in the West decided to ditch the prearranged sequences entirely

and invented “power yoga” in which the myriad sequences of the Vinyasa system could be

rearranged into infinite combinations. Yogi Bhajan’s yoga has gone through many of the same

twists and turns, from the nebulous picture we have of its early form, to the layers of translation

and evolution that happened within the life of a single practitioner, to the myriad ways esoteric

Indian traditions inevitably are altered by their contact with the West. It is hard to find a form of

yoga in the studios and centers of North America or Europe that does not simultaneously bear the

indelible stamp of modernity over the much-coveted label of tradition.193

While many may read this paper hoping to find some final word on the authenticity of

KYATBYB, ‘authentic’–as we have seen–is far too indelicate a word for the complexity of a

yogic lineage. To label Yogi Bhajan’s teachings, or anyone else’s, as inauthentic is to question the

very legitimacy of Modern Postural Yoga in its innumerable forms, to undermine the foundation

of countless spiritual and religious traditions, and even to ignore the purpose of studying yoga in

a lineage. And yet to ignore the human whims and temptations that may have informed Yogi

Bhajan’s path is equally problematic, especially if the motives of future teachers are not carefully

scrutinized and unscrupulous individuals are allowed to exist in a place beyond reproach. While

many of Bhajan’s alleged failings paint a very human picture, it is by flawed human beings that

192 For more details on the reconstruction of Krishnamacharya and Jois’ yoga teachings, see Birch, Jason; Singleton,
Mark. “The Yoga of the Haṭhābhyāsapaddhati: Haṭhayoga on the Cusp of Modernity” Journal of Yoga Studies, vol
II, 2019.
193The obvious exceptions being those so-called yogas which have self-consciously demystified and reoriented
towards simple fitness practices, many of which arguably have departed the traditional parameters of yoga in
everything but name.

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every tradition is carried into the present. All those systems that aim to reach and describe the

ineffable are invariably tainted by human frailty and reshaped by worldly whims, consciously or

unknowingly.

For many spiritual movements, the memory of a charismatic founder is forever imbedded

in how their practices are taught and received. The community of practitioners left in Yogi

Bhajan’s wake may never be able to fully separate the man from the teachings he revealed. They

may never be able reconstruct the same vision of yoga that Yogi Bhajan preached, even utilizing

as many of the same source materials as they can find. In many ways it may be liberating for

some to know that the tradition they have joined will continue to evolve along with the humans

who practice it, while for others the loss of perfect faith in an ancient and immaculate lineage

may render the entire practice useless. This recalls the classic Buddhist parable on upāya, or

expedient means, from the Lotus Sūtra in which a father attempts to save his children from a fire

that is engulfing their home. First the father tells his children of the danger, that the flames are

growing nearer and that their lives are in mortal peril, only for the children to ignore him. But

when the father instead tempts the children outside with fanciful stories about treats and toys

awaiting them outside, the children are overcome with desire and race out the door just in time.

Even a lie, if told correctly, may be seen as skillful means. If we leave aside the natural desire to

judge Yogi Bhajan as enlightened or sinister, human or larger than life, and we simply examine

the practice he created, it is clear that it has helped many people even as others have been hurt by

him, or the people and organizations connected to him.

In many ways, yoga traditions are not absolute visions of truth but rather they are

conceived as an efficient and replicable means by which to arrive at truth while shedding the

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misconceptions that leave one mired in illusion. Again paraphrasing the Buddha from the

Alagaddupama Sutta: “Once the raft of one’s practice has reached the other shore, what need is

there to tow the raft behind you ever after?” If a yogi finds themself further along the path by

means of this or any other practice, it hardly matters how flimsy its composition. As long as it

has safely brought you to the other shore you are free to leave the raft behind, its purpose served.

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