Happy Birthday

By Mehtab, Founder of YOGA YOGA
August 2009

On August 26th, we will celebrate what would have been Yogi Bhajan's 80th birthday.

The master of Kundalini Yoga, Yogi Bhajan guided and inspired the original founders of Yoga Yoga to become teachers, open a yoga center, and train hundreds of teachers. Whether you have ever been to a Kundalini Yoga class or not at Yoga Yoga, it is because of Yogi Bhajan and his teachings that there is a Yoga Yoga.

What was so special about this teacher and his connection with us?

I remember the first time I ever saw Yogi Bhajan. It was in 1973 in Houston at a White Tantric Yoga course he was conducting. When he walked into the room, I saw rainbows flying around his turban. Granted, seeing rainbows around people was not that unusual for me in the psychedelic seventies but at that moment I was as straight as I ever was during that decade.

I saw him again at the Summer Solstice celebration the next summer in New Mexico and decided to move into a Kundalini ashram in California to begin an in-residence teacher-training program. He visited us a few times during my life in the ashram, an imposing tall yogi in his forties with a jet-black beard, piercing eyes, and an aura of mastery I had never seen before or since in any human being.

I later moved back to Texas, disconnected myself from a serious yoga practice, and got married to the love of my life. We practiced yoga intermittently and I kept a picture of Yogi Bhajan in the closet, along with my college degrees, hippie paraphernalia and assorted memories of a misspent youth.

As life sometimes does, difficult times replaced happy times and when pain became more present than pleasure, we looked for better answers. My wife found the picture of Yogi Bhajan in the closet and though she had never seen him before, she had taken a Kundalini Yoga class when she was sixteen and knew he had made a big difference in my early adult life.

Out came the Yogi-ji picture from the closet and onto a recently constructed alter where he watched us practice Kundalini Yoga for three hours every morning before sunrise.

Instead of our old lives just getting better, we discovered a new way of being. We traveled to the Summer Solstice celebrations year after year, meeting and seeing Yogi Bhajan whose beard was now much whiter than when I first saw him and whose presence had become a powerful presence in our lives.

We studied with him every opportunity we had for a number of years, seeing him privately when possible for guidance and instruction.

He knew about our struggles and our successes with Yoga Yoga. Once when a group of graduates from our Kundalini teacher training program got a chance to visit him, he looked us up and down and then held us in silence for several moments. "Austin," he said, " has no problems."

It was our teacher training programs that fed the growth of Yoga Yoga. The first Kundalini training in 1997 gave birth to our original location on South Lamar. Practicing and teaching yoga was fun, but we discovered that training people to teach was the real mission in this life.

"I did not come here to gather students," Yogi-ji said. "I came to create teachers." And so we took his advice to heart, and 10 years later after the first teacher training at Yoga Yoga, we have one of the largest number of Kundalini Yoga training graduates in the world.

Yoga Yoga has celebrated Yogi Bhajan's birthday every year with a special 2 ½ hour meditation before sunrise. The only thing he asked of his students was that they practice yoga every day, a regular sadhana in the meditative hours of early morning.

And so we will, on August 26th his birthday. It's our gift to the teacher that has given so much to us and to our yoga community. Join us if you can. Yoga Yoga Westgate. Come early or stay up late - we start 2 ½ hours before sunrise!