Part of an ongoing series, Reiki, Yoga, & Therapy: Where these healings intersect.

Do you remember the first time you heard of a yoga practice? I still do.

When I was around 17 years old I was taking a dance and movement class at a college near my home in Seattle, WA. Our instructor would lead us through different avenues for moving our bodies; it was usually a form of dance or gymnastics, but one day it was a little different: slower, included straps and stretching, and it had a name I’d related only to meditation. Yoga.

Contrary to how many in the west have been introduced to yoga – perhaps as a physical exercise that improves well-being, tones your abs, and includes a little nap at the end – I was taught the meditation side first, and the physical practice years later.

What I knew of yoga was what a dear, older family friend had taught me on the weekends I spent at her house as a child. Her name was Karin, and she had spent much of her adult life studying and teaching yogic philosophy and sadhana, a daily spiritual practice. Karin’s humble home was a sanctuary for me. It was a space where my need for peace, quietness, and presence – which I already recognized by age 11 – was met with patience, curiosity, and support. At Karin’s, my creativity could run free, through quiet visualization and through expressive art. My inner world and my outer world flourished there, from wholeness, wholesomeness, and a feeling of being connected back to source… whatever I understood “source” to mean at that age.

I remember a specific weekend when a friend of Karin’s was visiting: an Acarya, a spiritual teacher authorized to perform mantra diksha. During this sacred initiation, the Acarya transmits a personalized, vibrating sound syllable – a bij mantra – to the seeker, linking them directly to an ancient lineage and opening the path to inner awakening.

At the time, I had no idea what this initiation would mean for me in the years to come. I only knew that I experienced a powerful, vivid visualization: sitting at the steps of a beautiful palace, in front of a long pool filled with lotus flowers, repeating the bij mantra I’d been given, and feeling home.

To me, this was yoga. A candle-lit space, the scent of incense, Tibetan bowls playing quietly in the background, and sitting in stillness, connecting with my heart and the steps to that inner palace where all that existed was serene.

Too soon, as I was starting middle school, Karin moved away. With her went that humble sanctuary, and the only adult around me who valued and practiced meditation. I never forgot the bij mantra or the visualization, but as a young teenager, my focus shifted to fitting in at a new school. With no one to share meditation with, yoga faded from my awareness.

Until that movement class.

There was no incense, candlelight, or meditation, but the instructor did mention that yoga had many lineages and being good for overall wellbeing.

Kundalini

Fast forward to my senior year of university. I enrolled in a yoga class for elective credit. It wasn’t just a series of exercise sessions, and it wasn’t a full teacher training either. It was something in between. Each week, my teacher introduced us to a different form of yoga, from practices you’d find at any local gym to ones I’d never heard of, and at the time, found borderline silly. Enter Kundalini.

We swung our arms side to side, slapping our lower backs as we twisted. There was an unfamiliar breathing pattern, unfamiliar sounds, and a practice that looked and felt nothing like the other forms of yoga I’d been practicing for four years. I was 22, and at the time, could only label it “weird.” It’s funny to look back now at how quick I was to judge what felt unfamiliar – at that age I was still so concerned with fitting in that this practice threatened the possibility, and I forgot about it as soon as we moved on to the next form the following week.

However, Kundalini wasn’t done with me yet. As I entered my Saturn return around age 27, I stumbled across a yoga studio in my neighborhood, right as Saturn was shaking things up in my life. The job I’d been in had just ended suddenly. I didn’t know which direction to take my career next, and I was struggling to figure out how I’d make rent with the little savings I had left. So when I came into this yoga studio, I felt some guilt about spending money on a class – until I saw a sign that read “30 days of yoga for $30”. Just $30? Well, I could certainly afford that, especially now that I had all this free time.

I attended my first class the following day. It was a blend of hatha with a lot of meditation, and it ended with a gong bath. What in the world was this gong bath? What were these sounds? I was the only student in the class, and as I lay there and listened, I felt like I was being transported on a journey – through space, through time, through myself. I noticed a sense of being called home. Of floating in black space, not afraid, just held. When the gong bath ended, I sat up slightly disoriented but fully relaxed. I felt like I had rested for weeks and suddenly had an abundance of peace to carry home with me. For a little while, my fears about finding a job and figuring out what came next quieted down, and I could rest in knowing that I was held, and that everything would be okay.

I came back the next day, this time I found the owner of the studio ready to teach her class “Kundinyasa”, a term she’d coined herself, blending Kundalini, Vinyasa, and Ashtanga. Again I was led through a unique practice, this time with mantras I didn’t yet know, but somehow felt familiar, finishing with another gong bath. After the class I spoke with the owner, Adesh, telling her of what I’d experienced in these gong baths. Of being transported. Of connecting to something…. else, something different but known to my soul.

She explained that these gongs were tuned to the vibrations of particular planets, that the mantras also held a frequency of their own, and that if I felt this drawn to the practice, I was welcome to join the upcoming yoga teacher training.

A YTT. This had been on my “someday” list for years – time to dive deeper into yogic practice and philosophy – but with it came a hefty financial cost, one I couldn’t afford on my nonprofit salary, and certainly not with no salary at all between jobs.

I told her I’d wanted to do a training for years, but that I’d just lost my job and couldn’t afford it now. She smiled, nodded, and began to write some words on a small whiteboard for me. “Take this mantra home, practice it everyday, and project from your heart what you need, send it out to the universe, and allow whatever comes to come back. If what you need is money, then ask for money. There’s no shame in asking for your needs to be met.”

I had nothing to lose, so for the next week I practiced it every day, for 22 minutes a day, asking the universe for money, for a sign, for hope.

Now, here’s a detail I skipped over earlier: when I lost that job suddenly, my contract had a clause stating that if my role were terminated, I was owed either a month’s notice or a month’s salary. I’d been trying to reach my former employer for two weeks about this, with no luck at all.

I don’t recall the exact day on which it happened, but sometime during that week of daily mantra practice, I finally got through to someone who could help me. He hadn’t been involved in the layoffs, but he apologized that they’d happened and told me to come by his office the next day to pick up a check.

How was this possible? I’d been trying, unsuccessfully, to reach someone for weeks, fearing my contract wouldn’t be honored, and suddenly a door opened.

I arrived the next day at our agreed time. He apologized again, sincerely, for all the trouble the situation had caused me, and handed me an envelope. I assumed it held a month’s salary.

When I opened it, I found a kind note expressing gratitude for all the work I had done, and a check for more than double the salary I was owed!

My salary alone was the exact cost of the Yoga Teacher Training I wanted to attend, and this check provided me enough to cover the cost, plus several months of rent! It felt like nothing short of a miracle, and I couldn’t help but start to believe that I had conspired in making this miracle possible, through my intention and mantra practice.

YTT

For the following nine months I dedicated myself to my training, to a daily sadhana (a personal spiritual practice that for me included yogic postures, pranayama, and mantra), and to completing every challenge and assignment my teacher, Adesh, required to graduate from her program.

It was a transformative time of learning, exploring, and pushing the boundaries of what I thought my mind and body were capable of.

My sadhana required 120 consecutive days of practice. If I missed a day, I’d start over from 0. This happened more than once. I learned that integrity is built in a commitment to yourself, more than a commitment made to or for someone else. Nobody was holding me accountable to counting these days honestly except me, and building this trust with myself was one of the biggest takeaways from the practice.

While this sadhana gave me so much empowerment, it also gave me challenges. Doing the same postures with intense breathing everyday puts pressure on the body. There were times I experienced intense pain, but my commitment to the practice was louder, and I listened to my mind over my body and pushed through. By about 3 months in, I’d developed a tension in my psoas that was affecting my posture and causing intense daily pain.I had to adjust my practice, to be gentler, and to accept that my intention had to be enough when my body couldn’t keep up. Thus Kundalini also taught me about the dangers of rigidity, of seeing things in black and white rather than the many shades of grey they truly are. I noticed that yoga wasn’t only teaching me how to be a teacher or a student. I was learning about my own shadow, my own patterns, through applying these practices in life.

After nine months of intensive study and dedication, I completed my training and celebrated with sunflowers from my best friend, proudly holding up the certificate I had given so many nights and weekends to earn. I was proud, but I was also exhausted. This training, and all the deep self-development that came with it – the transformations, the uncovering – had taken its toll. I noticed myself needing a break. Can you imagine needing a break from yoga, from the very space you’d typically go to for grounding and healing?

Yoga and meditation had brought so much to the surface, but I didn’t yet have all the tools I needed to transform those insights into healing. I journaled extensively, looking for the space between inertia and movement. How do we find the balance between being stuck in a pattern or trauma, and constantly doing something to try to process or avoid it? What’s the difference between a sun salutation and a Netflix series, if at times both are driven by an unconscious pattern of numbing the mind and body?

I found that while yoga gave me a set of tools for uncovering, there was a missing piece for what to do with what I found.

My body had already been trying to tell me this: insight isn’t the same as integration. I could uncover a pattern on my mat and still carry it home with me at the end of class. What I needed was a way to meet myself in my body, and integrate what I found there, not meditate it away.

That’s where I found Reiki, and where this story picks up next.

In health and happiness,
Leilany 🌻