Today we will talk a lot about Kundalini yoga and a little about the teachings of the Sikhs . My interlocutor is Alexey Vladovsky , one of the most famous and extraordinary teachers of Kundalini yoga, head of the Yoginroll.com project.
We recorded this conversation immediately after a practical seminar on Kundalini yoga, about the impressions of which I have already told.
The essence of Kundalini yoga
What is the essence of Kundalini yoga for you personally?
Firstly, this is the aspect of victory over oneself. It shows up anyway.
Secondly, Kundalini yoga is a fair philosophy of life, a fair worldview. This is a teaching about man, about life, about how we communicate with each other and about the laws by which everything is organized.
And thirdly, this is also a certain type of self-discipline, even asceticism. Kundalini yoga gathers you, your mind, your plans, your movements. Provides skill and experience in structuring. Through practice you get used to the fact that you are very “structured”, precise, understandable, clear.
The name of the system contains the word “kundalini”. Tell us about it, please.
Here we must clearly understand that there is an ancient concept of “kundalini”, which denotes a certain energy that is concentrated in the lower chakras and can be raised upward through special practices.
There is also a system - Kunadalini Yoga, which was presented to the world by Yogi Bhajan and which I follow. This system is associated with the Sikh tradition and not with Hinduism.
What I saw at the Kundalini Yoga seminar turned out to be quite a surprise for me. The stereotype has come into play that Yoga is always something very soft and blissful. Here we plunged into training, some elements of which would be the envy of special forces soldiers. It was more like martial arts training. Why is this so? Why such a sharp difference from the Yoga we are used to?
I think that each level of human internal evolution has its own effective methods. What you are talking about - relaxation, goodness, mantras - is also found in Kundalini yoga. But you and I met at my seminar. And my current level of consciousness suggests that Kundalini yoga should be exactly like this - strong-willed, structured, clear, including many “inconvenient” physical practices. It should support a person in pursuing his goals and help him be effective in society. Perhaps in old age we will achieve goodness in the exaggerated form that you described. Not yet. What we need now is will, discipline and clarity.
Your Yoga is very... masculine in nature.
Yes, although, as you can see, there are significantly more girls in the class. In this form, Kundalini yoga is very masculine, active in its manifestation.
You are clearly no stranger to everything modern and relevant... Why is this important to you? What brands do you prefer?
There is no importance, there is simply a sense of taste and the resulting love for good music, good cinema, literature. Well, accordingly, I prefer good quality things. And here we can talk about some gadgets, clothes, shoes, etc.
I wouldn’t single out individual brands, but, for example, what am I wearing at the moment? American “native” New Balance sneakers. I'm very pleased with them. All Saints shirt. They have only one store in Moscow. I recently bought some gorgeous headphones - Sennheiser Momentum wireless, large ones. I'm enjoying it.
Alexey Vladovsky: “Yoga is not entertainment”
Alexey Vladovsky told our portal about how to understand that it’s time to change something in life, how not to be afraid to be left alone with yourself and the imperfections of the world, and what kundalini yoga is in the format of the “Free spirit” festival.
Alexey, tell us what kundalini yoga is?
Kundalini yoga is, first of all, a system of techniques aimed at increasing human sensitivity in the deepest sense of the word. In terms of form, techniques include working with the body and mind. The global goal of this system is to teach a person to feel in such a way that the ability to be highly sensitive will help him adapt to fundamentally new conditions of our life. This is important because now the era has changed, and all energy processes proceed differently. To fit into this system, to be effective, to be relevant, to not experience discomfort, you need to be very sensitive. All kundalini yoga is aimed at this.
That is, you think you need to be sensitive and receptive, and not defend yourself from the abundance of information and other people's emotions?
No, the sensitivity you are talking about means reactivity. Reactivity is when we feel acutely and suffer from it. For example, when sounds are too loud, or people are annoying, or when something wrong happens. This is sensitivity, equal to irritability, when the reaction occurs unconsciously, spontaneously and constantly. When reaction goes ahead of thought.
The sensitivity I'm talking about is seeing God's purpose in everything. The ability to feel a situation in the widest range of its manifestations, not in your own little world, not in relation to your limited emotions, but in the infinity of variations, in relation to cosmic truth.
How can a person understand that he is ready to give up his “little world” and learn something more about himself and the world?
It's simple. Now is the era of Aquarius*, and information conditions have changed. They affect everyone, even those who do not think or know about it. If life around you is characterized by failure, dissatisfaction, inefficiency, lack of meaning and joy (when “everything will happen only tomorrow, and today there will be nothing good”) - this is clearly a signal that a person does not fit into his life, and this is an alarming sign. This means it must be fundamentally different.
What to do in such a situation? Do we need to take some measures, or should we first stop and understand what exactly is wrong?
If you do not have a clear understanding of what YOU NEED to do and WHAT you need to do, then life will bring you to the most unpleasant state. If you don't like it, start doing something and looking for something.
Is practice the same search?
Yes. Practice is for those who began to search, who realized that without discipline, without a regular act of self-knowledge, deepening one’s feelings, there will be degradation.
Does kundalini yoga require some basic level of training, experience, familiarity with other practices?
No, this practice works immediately and with everyone. It works in the first 11 minutes - you can come “from scratch” and in 11 minutes feel the taste of inner awakening, clarity - no matter how pretentious it may sound. Therefore, this direction is becoming more and more popular every day.
Doesn’t this clarity and sharpness of perception cause inconvenience to those who daily, outside the classroom or at home, are faced with the imperfections of the world?
Yes, you will be more aware of imperfections and inconsistencies. But this will only become a reason to become stronger in your inner truth. In contrast, discovering what you are not, what is sharply out of tune, out of harmony, will force you to strive to be within yourself, and in contrast to the disorder you will again and again tune in to inner peace and clarity. It’s like cleaning your apartment: the more often and longer you clean up, the more clearly you notice dust particles, even the smallest ones. You may notice things about yourself that you would not have noticed before. But in this new purity you already see the smallest things, notice the subtleties and perceive the whole.
How did you yourself come to this direction?
I didn’t come to kundalini yoga, everything happened on its own. It all started with my deplorable internal emotional state, which I led myself to for many years, being a small-town rock star. And when this state became completely unbearable, circumstances arose that led me to kundalini yoga. I, relatively speaking, pushed off from my very bottom, and then went up.
First, I started practicing hatha yoga - I met my first master, and for 2 years I studied only this direction closely. Then I found out what kundalini yoga is and began to combine it. At some point, I began to realize that kundalini yoga gives me absolutely everything - even what I tried to catch in hatha yoga.
The truth is that all these different directions are a single whole. Hatha yoga is the same as kundalini yoga and vice versa... it's all about the essential approach. It is important that a person has a hunger for truth, a thirst for knowledge and truth.
People are afraid of change. Do your students tell you that when they begin to engage in spiritual practices, they realize how much they need to change in life, and this makes them scared?
Such thoughts can arise at the stage of not very high-quality practice. Because not only my experience shows: at the level of immersion in the discipline of yoga, unnecessary things go away on their own. There is no need to give up anything, it itself refuses you. There is no need to give up strange connections, relationships - strange connections go away on their own. There is no need to give up junk food - junk food goes away on its own. There is no need to give up some kind of falsehood - the falsehood goes away on its own.
You just need to understand that yoga, like any practice, is not entertainment, but a path of self-knowledge.
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*The values that were characteristic of the previous era - the era of Pisces (the last moment of which was recorded in 2012), in the era of Aquarius ceased to be of significant importance.
Previously, information was valuable to a person, but now state has become important. For example, those generations that have just been born or will be born are already being formed differently. Changes will become noticeable in a few years, a couple of decades. There will be many specialists on Earth under the age of 20 - these will be very young guys who, from an early age, will know exactly what they are doing, how and why they are doing it. They will not have a need to obtain new information. Children of the Aquarian era understand that the most important thing is already happening - here and now. What you do just needs to be done in full right away. This is the era of feeling your own Self, this is the time of individuality.
Everyone matters. And this era is not for those who “work in a job they don’t like.” Doing an unloved activity for the sake of an abstract “day after tomorrow” is the consciousness of the Pisces era. And people who are used to living like this, if they don’t transform themselves, their approaches, their attitude towards themselves, then it will simply be very difficult and uncomfortable for them. (approx. Alexey Vladovsky)
Interviewed by Valentina Filippenko
About victory over yourself
You used the expression “victory over yourself.” What does it mean?
I can, for example, quote Yogi Bhajan: “No power in the world can limit you, but you can limit yourself.” This is the problem. We limit ourselves.
For me, conquering myself is expanding my own boundaries. Everything that I don’t have in life, I don’t have for my own internal reasons. I limited myself in this. How to be? I need to conquer myself, my own prejudices, my own limitations. They are either moral, physical, etc. Kundalini yoga provides specific technologies for this.
Is Kundalini yoga more of a philosophy, a worldview, or more of a technology?
It's both, inevitable. This is a complete and complete teaching of wholeness. I understand that this sounds like “butter oil”. Kundalini yoga includes philosophy, practice, and all ideological postulates.
The founder of the system, Yogi Bhajan, was a Sikh. And he honestly said that he does not give anything new within the framework of Kundalini yoga. This is a teaching that was created by the Sikh Gurus and preserved by the Khalsa (brotherhood).
Strike a pose
Unlike traditional European physical education, the main thing in yoga is not movements, but the so-called “asanas” - exercises, or rather, poses, by taking which a person, by redistributing tensions, compressions and stresses in the body, controls energy and physiological processes in the body. As for the direct direction of kundalini yoga, it is based on kriyas - various asanas repeated in a certain sequence. There are many such complexes, and each serves a specific purpose.
There are kriyas for rejuvenation, weight control, weight loss, cleansing of toxins, etc. The effect is achieved due to the fact that during kundalini yoga classes the activity of the endocrine glands that produce hormones is activated. For example, kriya for rejuvenation stimulates the function of the pituitary gland, which decreases with age, which is why our faces become wrinkled and our skin becomes sagging. The rest of the kriyas operate in the same way.
The benefits of kundalini yoga for your body do not end there: each asana, by the way, affects a huge number of muscles, which cannot but have a positive effect on your figure. Remember, have you ever seen a fat yogi? And regular performance of these exercises will teach you endurance and straighten your recently hunched shoulders.
During kundalini yoga classes you will be taught not only asanas, but also pranayama (translated from Sanskrit, “prana” means “breath”, “vital energy”, and “yama” means “control”, “stopping”, “management”) - special breathing techniques that promote proper exercise performance.
About the teachings of the Sikhs
Do you have to become a Sikh to practice Kundalini yoga?
The word "Sikh" is translated as "disciple" or "follower". It is not at all necessary to obtain this title through a formal initiation procedure. My teacher said: “We are all already students, already Sikhs.”
What does it mean to be a modern Sikh?
To be a Sikh—both modern and non-modern—means to be a student of life. What qualities does the student exhibit? Humility, discipline, “naturalness,” the desire to follow one’s inner nature. “Sins” in the Sikh concept are a deviation from our nature, according to which we are highly spiritual, pure beings.
Sikhs do not ask God for anything. They only express their gratitude to him for the daily gift of life. Yogi Bhajan said this very interestingly: “If you don’t have the best, make the best what you have today.”
And we again returned to the concept of a strong-willed, creative, active principle.
Yes. Sikhs don't ask. Sikhs do. This can be seen throughout their history. One of the Sikh gurus said: “I need two swords: one to punish tyrants, and the other to destroy ignorance.” Pay attention - this was said by a holy man!
About happiness and discipline
Is there any outcome to practicing Kundalini yoga? Perhaps some higher goal of practice?
Yes, it is expressed by the formula: a happy, healthy, blessed person. This should be today and always. But calling this a result is wrong. This is the result we strive for.
We talked a lot about discipline. Are discipline and happiness mutually exclusive concepts?
Vice versa. I will quote Yogi Bhajan again: “Man does not understand that he has only two friends: God and discipline.” Happiness is almost equal to discipline. You can check this. Let’s say a person periodically becomes depressed or anxious about something. Give him discipline in the form of responsibilities. For example, start every early morning with an ice-cold shower. You will see that after a few days of living this way, depression and anxiety will disappear. What if you add regular Yoga practice to an ice-cold shower? All! Discipline is the path to happiness.
What is the most basic meaning of your activity?
It lies in wishing happiness, health, blessings to us, our loved ones and all people on Earth!
Sing mantras
If we compare Kundalini yoga with other schools, we discover another very pleasant difference - classes are always held to the sounds of beautiful Indian music. Not only does the melody help you relax, it also puts you in the right positive mood. The fact is that the music playing is accompanied by mantras - various words in Sanskrit. You will listen to them or even repeat them: the combination of sounds, frequency and rhythm of the mantra changes consciousness, allows you to abstract from reality, and concentrate on performing asanas. Naturally, your teacher will translate the meanings of the words from Sanskrit so that you don’t feel like you’re singing some kind of gobbledygook.
Not only mantras, but also mudras - combinations of crossed, extended, bent fingers - help to achieve the right attitude. Yogis are sure that each of them corresponds to a specific planet and, by combining them with each other, we can influence the distribution of energy in the body.
