Last night, I had my first experience with Kundalini Yoga. After driving on long and winding roads, I finally met up with two of my fellow yoga trainees, Amy and Tina, outside a big beautiful blue house on a hill. It was very dark outside (we couldn’t see the full moon with all the clouds in the sky) and as we approached the front door of this private home, we all looked at each other skeptically. Who’s house was this? Wasn’t the full moon healing circle going to be held outside? Apparently not.
As we walked into the kitchen, the smell of white sage, cinnamon, and cloves calmed our nerves. We took off our shoes, wrote our intentions for 2010 on pieces of paper, wandered in to the living room, and slowly took our places on the living room floor…right near the gong. Yes, that’s right. There was a gong. A huge, suspended Paiste symphonic gong. Amy, Tina and I all looked at each other, excited. This was going to be an interesting night.
After a brief presentation from an herbalist from Vermont, we began some Kundalini meditations and chants. One of my favorites was the healing mantra, Ra Ma Da Sa, Sa Say So Hung, which is intended to activate each of the seven chakras within the body as it is chanted. While it was hard to remember all of the chants (we were there for 3 hours!), every single one felt transformational. We, a bunch of strangers with a common interest, crowded together on the instructor’s living room floor. The energy in the room was so palpable, we could feel it in our fingertips.
Oh…and the gong. The sound that the gong produced was amazing. Our instructor used two mallets to gently tap the gong repeatedly and the reverberations filled us with an indescribable warmth.
To learn more about Kundalini Yoga, visit the IKYTA website.
Meditate with Maeve 
I love how you write, Maeve.