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As someone who got her master’s degree in religion and wrote a thesis on kundalini awakening, it’s about time I respond to the HBO series Breath of Fire.
The docuseries tells the story of Guru Jagat, a wellness coach and influencer who rose to fame promising students enlightenment through the practice of Kundalini Yoga.
When Kundalini Yoga is exposed as a fraudulent yoga practice created in cult-like fashion by Yogi Bhajan, Guru Jagat’s livelihood begins to unravel. This ultimately leads to her untimely, yet convenient, death at the age of 42. As a yoga studies scholar, it’s a story I already knew. We see versions of it across traditions and industries. The notable piece of the story missing from Breath of Fire, however, is also what makes this one particularly captivating. Beneath the dysfunctional power structures of the organization, something was leading people to feel profound experiences of awakening. This force is the yogic mechanism for awakening herself, kundalini.
Guru Jagat, unfortunately, built her name and claim to fame upon the false promises of the practice Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan. A key detail to unravelling the authenticity of this practice exists blatantly within the name, Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan. Yogi Bhajan was a man who immigrated from India to the United States in the late 1960s. In India, his name was Harbhajan Singh Khalsa. He held no level of spiritual authority and worked as a customs officer at the airport in New Delhi. When Khalsa immigrated to Los Angeles, he began work selling “items to Hippies as part of an import/export business” (Deslippe, 2012). However, as an Indian man who arrived in the California hippie subculture dazed by the American Dream, Khalsa quickly recognized he could benefit from the naïve spiritual seeker’s biases.
So Khalsa became Yogi Bhajan, and he packaged two distinct faiths—practices from Hatha Yoga and mantras from Sikhism—to create Kundalini Yoga. Yogi Bhajan presented Kundalini Yoga as a secret lineage, never before revealed in the West. He grew his following promising students they could achieve spiritual enlightenment and prosperity by awakening their kundalini energy. Yogi Bhajan was not wrong that kundalini is an explanatory key to awakening within Hatha Yoga and other yogic traditions, but the way he presented it in the Western world was incomplete. Yogi Bhajan’s promises of awakening reflected the desires of the capitalistic culture in which he arrived. If you work hard enough, you too can achieve enlightenment.
The yogic scriptures from which kundalini emerged in India around 900 CE paint a more comprehensive definition of awakening. In the earliest descriptions, kundalini is described as a goddess who reveals the true nature of reality through the nature of the breath (Williams, 2020). When we breathe, we inhale and exhale, as with kundalini, there is an expression of expansion and contraction.
The definition of awakening Yogi Bhajan sold in the West encapsulated the exhale expression of kundalini, not the inhale. Yogi Bhajan described kundalini as an energy existing at the base of the spine that contains the creative nature of the universe but remains dormant for most people. When kundalini awakens, “you wake up to the reality that was there all along – that you are One with all that is” (“FAQs”).
When kundalini awakens, practitioners experience heavenly states of consciousness, and she can awaken through a variety of yogic practices. For those who have not felt the sensation of kundalini awakening, one can reference the feeling experienced through orgasm. It is a similar physical sensation that rises through the body leading to blissful states of consciousness but occurs through yogic practice as opposed to purely sexual stimulation. Awakening to heavenly states of consciousness through the body is the exhale, expansive expression of kundalini, but Yogi Bhajan conveniently forgot to mention the crucial corresponding effect of the inhale.
The inhale is the mechanism that grounds the heavenly experience of awakening back into the body. This contracted expression is necessary for anyone who intends to live an embodied existence within the world. Selling awakening as another pathway to perfection in the land of the American Dream was easy. It’s what people wanted. The reality that one must then come back down and still meet the messiness of the human condition likely wouldn’t sell as well.
An exhale expression of kundalini awakens people to the divinity of the world, but when they inhale, they must meet humanity. In humanity, there is imperfection. So, when we awaken, we do not just awaken to divine bliss. We awaken to the beauty of being divine and the pain that comes with being human. Awakening to the divine allows us to hold our experience of humanity with more tenderness and care, infusing it with a greater experience of love. This ultimately alchemizes our pain so we can move on with a greater capacity for love. The process, however, can take time and be especially difficult for those who are not supported in it.
Most people who are on a spiritual quest have met pain in their life. They’ve felt suffering and seek enlightenment to escape or transcend it. There is also often an assumption that enlightenment can be monetized and help one grow a following. Most people in our culture seek validation through career success or social stature, but some seek worthiness through awakening. Through awakening, they can become perfect, loveable, and even successful. So, for those who really do achieve an experience of awakening, the disillusionment that occurs when they realize they must still come back down to meet the human condition can be incredibly painful, especially when there is an added element of feeling spiritually misguided. The last of which is an entirely distinct kind of pain.
In Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga, practitioners wear all white and take on a new spiritual name. This outward declaration of spiritual significance reflects the way Yogi Bhajan’s teachings encouraged practitioners to take on supra-human personas. In the case of Katie Griggs, or Guru Jagat, her superhuman persona became too large. She could not handle the contraction and massive ego death that was coming for her. It’s no wonder Guru Jagat died at 42 from cardiac arrest caused by a pulmonary embolism on a plane after ankle surgery in London (Phelan, 2021). The doctors told her not to fly because flying on an airplane after surgery put her at risk for exactly that (“Breath of Fire, Episode 4,” 2024). Guru Jagat disregarded their medical advice because in her world, human rules did not apply.
When kundalini awakens, the simultaneous divinity and depth of pain she reveals can be jarring. Seeing kundalini stir in our cultural consciousness through Breath of Fire makes me, somewhat reluctantly, wonder what she’s here to teach.
On a micro level, kundalini reminds us that when we awaken, we realize we are both imperfect and divine. This experience of the divine allows us to feel our pain points and alchemize them so we can move onward with a greater capacity for love.
Kundalini could also be stirring in the cultural consciousness right now, reminding us to view our leaders through the same lens. When we entrust someone to lead in any matter of importance, we cannot let their superhuman persona blind us from their humanity. Our leaders are not exempt from the requisite contraction within the rhythm of life. If someone is only promising, offering, or modeling an expanded state, we can see and consider how they meet contraction.
In the case of Katie Griggs, contraction could have looked like an apology, a recognition of her own blind spot, the moment allegations against Yogi Bhajan started to arise. Her embrace of a reparative process truly could have served her community. She could have modeled for her students a way to reintegrate both the beauty and pain experienced through Kundalini Yoga.
In the world of the American Dream, we are a culture obsessed with enlightenment and expansion in a variety of forms—whether it’s through spirit, money, love, or power. It’s not the norm for us to recognize the cruciality of the contracted state. The lessons that come from the contracted state, however, can truly catalyze real growth.
So, on an individual and collective level, kundalini could be calling, nudging us to awaken from the American Dream. Recognize both the beauty and pain in her story, allowing a greater experience of love to inform the way we carry on.
References
Deslippe, P. (2012). From Maharaj to Mahan Tantric. Sikh Formations, 8(3), 369–387.
Breath of Fire, Episode 4. (2024, October 23). In H. Pappas & S. Stevens (Directors). HBO.
3HO Foundation. (n.d.). FAQs. 3HO: Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization.
Phelan, H. (2021/2022, December–January). The second coming of Guru Jagat. Vanity Fair.
Williams, B. L. (2020). Vijñānabhairava ‘Bhairava in the form of consciousness’ [Translation for REL617E: Meditation in Yogic and Tantric Traditions]. Naropa University.
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