Thank You For Your Support of The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings® in 2018!
Welcome to the Year End Fund Drive for the Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings®! This year, we will be diving deep into the relationship between Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan® and sports athletics of all types. The practice of Kundalini Yoga benefits athletes, potentially boosting physical, mental, and competitive faculties. As Guru Charan Singh wrote, “Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan … produces body muscle balance, flexibility, quickness, and the ability to concentrate. It is the ultimate sport, or at least the ultimate base for all sports endeavors. It is an ‘ultimate’ because it starts by increasing the individual’s potentials that are the key factors in success, as reported by great athletes. Once these qualities are developed, they apply to every sport.”
Dr. Sat Bir Singh Khalsa, Director of Research for KRI, reports, “Specific studies have been supportive of the benefits of yoga for athletes since the 1990s. An early study correlated the benefits of Transcendental Meditation with the improved pistol shooting performance of 30 undergraduate students. Similar improvements were observed in 25 elite shooters by a team of researchers at the Ullevål University Hospital in Oslo, Norway. The researchers observed a greater improvement in competition results among the group that received meditation training when compared to a control group. Another early study from the University of Nevada, observed significant improvements in the running performance of high school long-distance runners after yoga exercises when compared to a control group of a “motivational shouting” exercise intervention.”
Yogi Bhajan consistently taught the value of physical exercise and athletics to keep the body healthy. By staying physically active, you can maintain your yoga practice and mental balance at any age. He explained in July 1984,
“Exercising is essential for the body, to keep it in tune, just as it is essential to tune-up a car. If you don't exercise, then you become afraid that it will hurt you. You don’t take the trouble [to keep fit] because you have meals on your table, you are fed. If this skeleton of yours does not have any bolts and nuts, certain muscles will not develop. [Parts of your body] will go wrong, and in the end, what you are going to find out is that you are wrong. Move, move, move, just like the whole cycle! The only way to fight aging is to keep yourself in tune with your exercises.”
Click on the links below, register your email to access kriyas (yogic exercise sets) and meditations and practice directly from the Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings. And as always, it’s free to use!
Meditation for Spiritual, Mental and Physical Balance – March 20, 1979
Experience the Relationship of the Pranic Body and the Physical Body - March 7, 1984
The Library of Teachings’ Year End Fund Drive
During our annual year end fund drive, KRI raises money to support the Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings throughout the year. Your donation to the Library of Teachings is essential to our continued ability to expand the database, document new kriyas from Yogi Bhajan’s lectures, and update the Library with developing technology. Please give generously this yearend join in the mission of maintaining free access to the Library of Teachings for people around the world.
Dr. Sat Bir Singh Khalsa, Director of Research for KRI, reports, “Specific studies have been supportive of the benefits of yoga for athletes since the 1990s. An early study correlated the benefits of Transcendental Meditation with the improved pistol shooting performance of 30 undergraduate students. Similar improvements were observed in 25 elite shooters by a team of researchers at the Ullevål University Hospital in Oslo, Norway. The researchers observed a greater improvement in competition results among the group that received meditation training when compared to a control group. Another early study from the University of Nevada, observed significant improvements in the running performance of high school long-distance runners after yoga exercises when compared to a control group of a “motivational shouting” exercise intervention.”
Yogi Bhajan consistently taught the value of physical exercise and athletics to keep the body healthy. By staying physically active, you can maintain your yoga practice and mental balance at any age. He explained in July 1984,
“Exercising is essential for the body, to keep it in tune, just as it is essential to tune-up a car. If you don't exercise, then you become afraid that it will hurt you. You don’t take the trouble [to keep fit] because you have meals on your table, you are fed. If this skeleton of yours does not have any bolts and nuts, certain muscles will not develop. [Parts of your body] will go wrong, and in the end, what you are going to find out is that you are wrong. Move, move, move, just like the whole cycle! The only way to fight aging is to keep yourself in tune with your exercises.”
Click on the links below, register your email to access kriyas (yogic exercise sets) and meditations and practice directly from the Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings. And as always, it’s free to use!
Meditation for Spiritual, Mental and Physical Balance – March 20, 1979
Experience the Relationship of the Pranic Body and the Physical Body - March 7, 1984
During our annual year end fund drive, KRI raises money to support the Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings throughout the year. Your donation to the Library of Teachings is essential to our continued ability to expand the database, document new kriyas from Yogi Bhajan’s lectures, and update the Library with developing technology. Please give generously this yearend join in the mission of maintaining free access to the Library of Teachings for people around the world.
Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan® is a powerful technology that enables the practitioner to control the muscles of the body and regulate the breath. It trains you to focus the mind with clarity and frees the consciousness from the hindrances of self-doubt and insecurity. What a fantastic formula for success in all types of athletics! Whether battling for a competitive win or striving for a personal-best, success in sports depends upon such elements as flexibility, strength, endurance, and single-minded concentration. These attributes are the natural results of a regular Kundalini Yoga practice, making yoga and sports an ideal match! As explained by Guru Charan Singh, “Using [the techniques of Kundalini Yoga] in conjunction with Western sports only means that we are beginning to be universal enough to draw on the experiences and capacity of mankind, beyond [our] cultural limitations. We are becoming athletes of consciousness.”
Blending yoga and sports does not necessarily mean you stop in the middle of a game to do a quick yoga set. The flexibility, balance, and breath control that you practice in your morning sadhana (daily discipline) will produce positive results in your game, whatever sport you pursue. Kundalini Yoga heals the whole being, allowing you to develop as athletes. “We want to heal you while you are exercising,” explained Yogi Bhajan. “Exercise for exercise’s sake is not exercise. Exercise must have a purpose, it must have a projection, and it must have a science to it.”
Just as importantly, the mental skills of focus, fortitude, and tenacity that you build in the practice of Kundalini Yoga will allow you to bear-down in sports when you need it the most. Time and again, we see an athlete choke at a critical competitive moment, sometimes without obvious explanation. This can be the result of stress, fear of failure, or deep-seated feelings of inadequacy. However, if you consistently do the personal work of deep meditation, you start the process of clearing subconscious fear and blocks in order to unleash your inner force. You can cultivate a will-to-win attitude, giving you a powerful advantage in competitive or stressful situations.
“What you have been taught so far is that if your physical scene is together, you are together. No, [this is not true]. If your physical scene is together and your mental scene is not together, you are not only not together, but you are a prisoner of that togetherness! That togetherness will turn into a prison.” Yogi Bhajan, July 1, 1993
Click on the links below, register your email to access kriyas (yogic exercise sets) and meditations and practice directly from The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings®. And as always, it’s free to use!
Stimulation and Adjustment of the Body Systems and Mental Clarity – July 1, 1977
Pranayam for Perspective and Emotional balance - 1969
With your ongoing support, the Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings will continue to inspire others to write, teach, study, and develop the tools of higher consciousness for many years to come. Our work here continues every day with:
· Transcribing, verifying, and adding more lectures,
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· Continued administration of this valuable archive.
Thank you for your support in keeping the Library of Teachings free and open to everyone! The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings is a non-profit organization, and all donations are tax deductible under IRS code 501(c)(3).
Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan® builds physical and mental endurance - a real asset for any sport. Whether you are out on a solo run or sharing in the effort of a team sport, you need to tap into your ability to endure. You have to keep up, you can’t quit, or the game is over - literally!
To enhance physical endurance, muscles need to be strong, flexible, and responsive. To create these qualities in your body, it is not enough to just lift weights. Instead of focusing on developing specific muscle groups, you want your entire muscular system to be in balance. Underlying muscle balance and strength is the yogic system of energy meridians or “nadis”. A person may have large muscles but if the energy meridian that serves that muscle area is blocked, then the athlete may not be able to access the full potential of their muscular energy. Kundalini Yoga affects the entire body as a synchronized system, opening the meridians and moving energy to eliminate imbalances and blocks.
But, as we know, endurance is not only just physical. Athletic endurance is directly linked to our mental state, which is connected to how we breathe. The breath influences physical performance, and physical activity modifies the breath. When you are experiencing fatigue, your breath will become shallow and rapid. This type of labored breathing stimulates the sympathetic nervous system to engage the stress-filled “fight or flight” response. Dealing with this effect is a waste of physical and mental energy that could be directed into the sport!
Controlled and deep breathing, on the other hand, engages the parasympathetic nervous system, which keeps you calm and focused. The ability to control and stabilize the breath, even when fatigued, can improve endurance and enhance sports performance. Kundalini Yoga increases the vital breath capacity. Properly breathing long and deep, full breaths can ultimately benefit all physical activity. It gives the athlete extra endurance and a greater supply of oxygen to all the tissues of the body. Photo courtesy by the Yogi Bhajan Photo Archive - 1969 Yogi Bhajan tuning-in before teaching a class, circa 1969
“When you manifest a powerful limit to yourself and you feel you have reached an end, that is where endurance starts. If you can dare your courage to go beyond that end, that is endurance. Although God is endless, unlimited, and infinite, the power of life is love. It defines itself when it comes through feelings. When it appears, things happen and we call it ‘a miracle’, we call it ‘luck’, we call so many things, and there is no end to endlessness. But one thing brings all that into [focus], into existence, into experience - it's called endurance. Do you understand what endurance is? The anhaad means that which [is beyond] haad . No haad means ‘no limit’. Anhaad means that which has no limit.” Yogi Bhajan July 3, 1990
Click on the links below, register your email to access kriyas (yogic exercise sets) and meditations and practice directly from The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings®. And as always, it’s free to use!
Automatic Endurance in the Body - October 12, 1988
Tattva Balance beyond Stress and Duality - March, 1979
One Minute Breath
The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings has been developing the searchable database of Yogi Bhajan lectures since the early 1990's, beginning with transcribing and verifying the thousands of audio and video files in the archives. We have made great progress, and more than 3100 lectures and 450 Kriyas & Meditations are now available in an accessible and searchable database.
Teachers, students, and researchers are already making incredible use of this valuable resource. Last year, more than 600 people a day logged-in to the Library of Teachings to enhance their teaching and personal knowledge. Countless others have received the indirect benefit of this knowledge in yoga classes, seminars, and new books that have been developed from this expanded source material.
The work is not done, yet! The focus of The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings continues to center on archiving, digitizing, transcribing, and editing thousands of lectures, kriyas, and yoga sets. The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings is funded by donations from the global community of students, teachers, and practitioners. We rely on your donations to make possible our ongoing programs and to undertake important new initiatives. Donors like you have built this database resource over the past 25 years, and we sincerely hope you will be able to donate again this year.
Stay tuned to your inbox or our Facebook page for our next post on December 17th. Athletes are always looking for ways to increase their performance, in both their personal efforts and in team sports. Our next email will explore how to sharpen your competitive edge in sports with a meditative mind developed by your Kundalini Yoga practice.
The most successful athletes are the ones who reject the limitations of their mind and unleash the physical potential that lies dormant within their being. This can manifest as the uncanny ability to out-maneuver any opponent or rally at a crucial moment instead of falling into exhaustion. In yogic terminology, we know this to be the seamless integration of the ten bodies with physical activity.
Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan® teaches us that the human being is made up of ten bodies: three mental bodies and six energy bodies. When all ten bodies are under your direction this can bring strength and coordination, and this integration is achieved by developing the meditative mind.
The meditative mind is a great support to the athlete. A meditative mind is one that is clear and unimpeded, free to perceive and reflect before acting. Yogi Bhajan expressed it as “No thoughts. You see nothing, you hear nothing, you say nothing. Shuniya. Partaahaar. Withdraw from every thought that is in you. No participation.”
Dr. Sat Bir Singh Khalsa, Director of Research for KRI, tells us, “The meditative/mindfulness aspects of yoga provide substantive psychological benefits that include improved stress and emotion regulation, improved mindful awareness, enhanced cognition and concentration, and the ability to achieve a flow state. ‘Flow’ refers to an optimal psychological state involving a complete absorption in the task or activity at hand, a state generally covered by athletes because it is associated with strong positive emotions, including a deep experience of peace, harmony, and unity.”
With this quality of mind, you can be quick and intuitive, rather than emotional or reactive. This type of mind has the capacity to sense the entire scope of what is happening, not only from exterior indicators but also from subtle energetic signals, and then can respond effectively. It is this mind that creates the brilliant strategies or surprising original plays that can turn the flow of a game.
As Guru Charan Singh describes it, “Yoga and meditation tune the [athlete] into the field of energy in which they live. A football player once commented to me that, after doing a meditation, he could ‘feel’ whether the opposing lineman would move left or to the right. He then adjusted his effort, accordingly. There are a wealth of meditations and games in Kundalini Yoga that develop the energy body, or aura, and you can apply that sensitivity to a new level of participation in sports.”
“If you can develop your mind to be a meditative mind, then you can walk through all time and space as you are. Then, in logic and psychology, in reason and in argument, in past, present, and future, you determine the time and space. Time and space does not determine you. That is the beginning of you [as you].” Yogi Bhajan, April 2, 1979
Click on the links below, register your email to access kriyas (yogic exercise sets) and meditations and practice directly from The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings®. And as always, it’s free to use!
Total Balance Kriya – July 12, 1975
Meditation to Fight Brain Fatigue and Live your Excellence – March 27, 1995
Our monthly donors are the heartbeat of the Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings - their consistency is what sustains the database and keeps this project moving forward. For those of you who are currently a Monthly Donor, we thank you with our whole heart!!! We humbly request that you look at what you are giving now and consider increasing that monthly amount. And if you are not yet a Monthly Donor, please consider a recurring monthly donation of $11 or more. No amount is too small, because it is the sum of all of your efforts that support this wonderful resource.
Look for the next email on the 19th where we will explore the role of Kundalini Yoga in developing flexibility, which can improve your athletic performance. If you have missed any of our previous emails, you may access them on our Facebook page .
Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan® builds body flexibility, a positive feature for any athlete. Flexible joints and muscles allow for easier and more efficient movement with improved balance and a greater range of motion. By increasing your flexibility with Kundalini Yoga, you can help prevent injuries, back pain, and balance problems. Use Kundalini Yoga as a warm-up before practicing sports activities.
By focusing on increasing muscle mass through repetitive weight lifting, many athletes become inflexible. Although they may appear to be fit and healthy, they are only developing selected muscles, sometimes over developing them, resulting in stiffness. The body-mind system has subtle and sophisticated interactions and, in training, the whole body and nervous system must be engaged. Inflexibility of the body or mind causes muscle tension that affects other areas of the body. Those areas become less functional, resulting in an uneven energy flow that ultimately lowers the endurance and peak performance of the developed muscles.
Kundalini Yoga does not increase flexibility by stretching muscles and joints under great force. Rather, it is a subtle use of breath and concentration in each movement that allows greater blood circulation and energy flow. Doing a yoga set before sports will wake up your muscles and a regular practice of Kundalini Yoga will bring an enhanced sense of balance and body awareness, which can help prevent injuries or accidents in sports.
Click on the links below, register your email to access kriyas (yogic exercise sets) and meditations and practice directly from The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings®. And as always, it’s free to use!
Sun salutation: Surya Namaskara
Meditation for Strong Nerves – Sep 29, 1975
One way to celebrate your birthday, anniversary, or other special day is to make it a day of giving to the Library of Teachings. What better way to celebrate than to donate to something you love! Some have shared the blessing of giving by asking friends and family to donate to the Library of Teachings in lieu of presents. What a gift! Your birthday can become a mini-fundraiser to sponsor a lecture (or a portion of a lecture) in your name or to honor someone you cherish. Let us know if we can help you in finding the perfect lecture to commemorate a special day.
The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings is funded by donations from the global community of students, teachers, and Kundalini Yoga practitioners. Donors like you have built this database resource years, and we sincerely hope you will be able to donate again as 2018 comes to a close. If you haven’t had a chance to make your donation today, please do so now. Your support is the fuel that keeps this work going!
Watch for our final email on December 21st about avoiding sports-related injuries with the help of Kundalini Yoga. If you have missed any of our previous emails, you may access them on our Facebook page .
Injury is devastating for an athlete and can result in lengthy gaps in training and sometimes even permanent disability. Sports injuries can be caused by muscular imbalance and misalignment that result in overuse or direct impact. Common injuries in sports include muscular bruising, tendon strain, and ligament injury.
A regular practice of Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan® develops the entire muscular and skeletal system in balance, reducing the risk of injury in sports. If the muscles of the athlete are not in balance, it increases the chance of injury. Many injuries occur because the weaker of two muscles put a strain on the compensating muscle. Then movement is carried out clumsily, or not at all, leading to accident and injury.
In addition to creating muscle balance, Kundalini Yoga develops another aspect for preventing sport injury - increased body awareness. Many athletic injuries in team sports occur in the last portion of the game as fatigue and emotions set in. By concentrating on the breath, the yogi can bring focused awareness to the functioning of the body and become much more aware of pain or discomfort that may signal the beginning of an injury. Greater body awareness increases the athlete’s ability to prevent injury.
“Your physical energy accounts for, it actually depends on, your mental energy. And mental energy creates behavior. That is why, when you are not in a proper form physically, you create a trauma or you create a drama and then you are caught. Then, you are abused, and then you are punished, and then you fight! This constant energy problem is the energy problem of life.” July 1, 1993
Click on the links below, register your email to access kriyas (yogic exercise sets) and meditations and practice directly from The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings®. And as always, it’s free to use!
Kriya: Control of the Muscular System
Meditation for Mental Control – Brahm Kalaa Kriya
For some, giving a large gift once a year is not practical. For those donors, an ongoing monthly gift to the Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings is a better fit. Help continue the work of transcribing, verifying, and creating more Kriya write-ups in the Library with a monthly donation. There are now more than 3100 lectures and 450 Kriyas verified, illustrated, and cataloged in the database. Monthly Donors give $11 to $1,008 each month to continue expanding the database. Your monthly gift is essential to bringing these dreams to life, so please commit to a recurring monthly donation.
As an example of how we are expanding the database, there are now 222 lectures with Historical Notes attached to them. These are either notes taken by students that attended a class or printed materials that were originally distributed in the class. The notes tell us more about the lecture or provide us with additional kriya instructions. If you haven’t had a chance to explore these wonderful additions to the Library, be sure to do so. Visit this sample lecture by clicking on this link, then select the notes icon.
Kundalini Yoga impacts and improves the lives of people around the planet, and The Kundalini Research Institute is committed to continuing this work. KRI invites you to participate by helping fund the Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings today on this Winter Solstice. Be a part of this great work and legacy!
Over these past ten days, we explored the connection between Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan® and sports. We looked at the beneficial effects of yoga on specific components of athletic performance, including both physical and cognitive characteristics. Kundalini Yoga helps one develop a balanced body, controlled breathing techniques, and body awareness, which benefit all athletic activities. Through a regular yoga practice, the athlete accesses the infinite power that is inherent in all humans. Most importantly, Kundalini Yoga harnesses your mental capacity as an athlete, using your mind to increase your endurance and the will to win.
“You know, the only thing man knows is to stimulate the glandular system, the guardian of health, and the muscular system to build strength and keep on being strong. But that's not the answer. There is another thing in the body, which is called mind. The mind can take you through such a hell that you can never know. The mind is very powerful. The mind does not measure time. The mind is given to the soul to connect the Infinity to the finite. The mind is a swing. It can take you anywhere you want to go. That's why your fantasies sometimes are stronger than your life. The mind affects your life and can take you either way.” -Yogi Bhajan, July 27, 1994
Click on the links below, register your email to access kriyas (yogic exercise sets) and meditations and practice directly from The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings®. And as always, it’s free to use!
Praanayam to Balance Mental Energy I – Sep 20, 1971
Find the Infinite Power Within – July 23, 1996
Thank you!
On behalf of everyone at The Yogi Bhajan Library of Teachings, we thank you for your generosity and for making our Year End Fund Drive a success. We have seen a real increase in our number of Monthly Donors, and that is an important part of our funding. Our work continues every day to evolve our technology so that we are on the forefront of video and audio archive preservation, and you are the one making that possible.
We hope you enjoyed this deep dive into the Library of Teachings to discover the connection between Kundalini Yoga and sports. If you have not had a chance to donate, it is not too late! All your gifts, no matter how small, make a huge impact on this important work.
