What's in a name?

My name is Nam Hari Kaur. It’s a Sikh name. It means “princess of creativity and kindness who meditates on the sound current of the universe.” As a Kundalini yoga teacher, I had the opportunity to receive a name in Gurmukhi, the Sikh’s sacred language. My name arrived in the mail in the final days of my first year in college, just before I flew home for the summer holidays. I opened it carefully like a Christmas package.

When I saw my name, my heart sank. Nam Hari Kaur. Another N name, I thought, how can that be?! Why not an S name, like the famous musician Snatam Kaur? And how was its meaning relevant to me? I was a dancer and an academic. Why had I been given a name about meditation with sound and music?

There it was on the page in front of me. Nam Hari Kaur. I couldn’t get another name, this was the one that had been given to me.  Oh well. 

That summer, I struggled with my spiritual and personal identity. While taking summer classes at Yale, I didn’t use my new name, but I did try to wear my little white turban as often as possible, to connect me to my spiritual self. As the hot weeks of summer dragged on, self-consciousness began to take its toll. Before my flight back to California, I took off my turban and changed back into my normal clothes. I started sophomore year looking like everyone else.

This weekend I took another look at my name and my spiritual identity. I was invited to travel to Cordoba for work. It was a wonderful opportunity to share on a larger scale. I was glad to accept the invitation. I knew the itinerary I had set up would be grueling: a 3 hour Kundalini yoga class in the afternoon followed immediately by a flute and harp concert that evening. The next day, I would do 6 private sessions. Each session would unfold organically. It might turn out to be a sound healing session, a coaching session or, for those with physical pain, a cranio-sacral session. I would end the visit with an early morning yoga class the next day, before taking a bus home.

I ironed my white Indian clothes and prepared the material for a turban. It would be my first time to wear one in many years. 

One of the organizers had made three beautiful posters. 

I was sure they were recruiting mostly through word of mouth, but I relished the posters anyway; it was special to see so many of my passions all on one poster and happening all in one weekend.  

Fifteen yogis participated in my 3 hour yoga class. I called it the yoga marathon. 

We launched with an active series that included jumping for nearly 30 minutes. We closed with a moving meditation accompanied by the harp: "Sa Re Sa Sa," the Antar Naad meditation. This meditation prepares you to receive the full effects of any other sacred sound or meditation. It was perfect preparation for the evening ahead.

There wasn’t much time to transition between the class and the concert. Calling it a “concert” was a bit of a misnomer. My offering was more of an interactive sound meditation evening. I guess I hadn’t communicated that very well to my co-organizers. They had rented a space in an active restaurant. I was ready to be flexible, because that is the best way to deal with things when you are in another country. Still, I wasn’t sure what it would be like to have half the audience meditating, and the other half polishing off a meal. I helped the servers to move the tables and rearrange the chairs in a circle. I wasn’t quick enough to keep some of my participants from settling into a table and starting their dinner, ready to “listen” to the concert.

As I set up my area in the front I wondered, would people be able to hear me? Would anyone want to close their eyes and meditate in the middle of a restaurant? The evening I had prepared was ... the one I had prepared. No going back now.

Looking out at my audience, I had to smile. They had come to relax, enjoy and bathe in sound. It was going to be a wonderful night. How could it be otherwise?

First, my audience participated by creating a circle of authentic sound, using a beautiful sound healing form I learned from its founder, Nina Umai Spiro, called Pravada. Then, silence. Each person soaking up the power, calm and healing of their own sound.

Next, I invited the audience to close their eyes and receive sound. Long notes from the ocarina began a journey inward. A journey of sound. 

Then, I turned to my harp. No matter what notes I played, the harp resonated at a higher vibration. There is lightness in the sound. I played until I felt the sweet chords land with the group.

Putting down my harp, I lifted my flute and I started to play. Suddenly a rude sound pulled the flute from my lips. Loud music was blasting in from the street. Was it possible? Yes, it was - karaoke night next door.

All the servers had stopped their serving to listen to my music. They stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the restaurant. I used my hands to signal a plea that they close the door to the street. Maybe because they were also enjoying the concert, they obliged. Thank goodness! Muffled sounds, so much better than before. 

I closed the evening with a healing meditation “Ra Ma Da Sa” that everyone sang along to. With the harp and all the human voices, I felt so blessed to be a part of this circle of healing. 

When I took up the harp three years ago and the flute shortly after, I had no thoughts of someday using them to send sacred sound to others, to support their connection with themselves. As I played, it clicked. Nam Hari Kaur - a person of creativity and kindness who meditates on the sound current of the universe. 

Tonight I was the nam - that universal sound current that can be accessed so easily when we seek it. Listening for the sacred sounds that wanted to come through me, I was vibrating cosmic sound.

Yoga Adventure

This is my office:

Or part of it. I’m settling into the different aspect of my work, and today my focus was yoga. 

I’m a Kundalini yoga teacher. I started my teacher training in my first week of college and I’ve been teaching on and off ever since. When I studied abroad in Scotland and France, I taught my classmates. This continued in France until I picked a set with too much jumping and the director had to come in to tell us we had broken the one rule in this old building, no dancing and no jumping! No more yoga after that.

While I’ve been teaching for a few weeks now, today was a particularly special day. Outside of my usual Tuesday-Thursday teaching routine, I made the trek into town on a Monday to teach the first class of the morning. Pati and Hector, the owners of the yoga studio were encouraging me, “Are you ready for today? It’s going to be a really big class!” I was excited. Once a month, yogis from neighboring cities, traveling an hour or more, to practice at Karuna Yoga, and today, I was the highlighted teacher.

Kundalini yoga is a rigorous yoga that stretches you to your physical limits so that you can move beyond them. Practice to become limitless. With a new group, I often catch myself wondering about the experience of my students - will be too hard, will they be irritated that it’s not the traditional flow yoga they were expecting, or will they be weirded out by the strange chanting and the white fabric on my head? I prepared the room with excitement and anxiety. 

Curiosities and doubts traveled easily through my mind as I sat down on my yoga mat. Everything was in place. There was my harp. There was my flute and my new ocarina.

Mexico is known for creating the most exquisite clay flutes shaped like animals called ocarinas. I bought two on my trip to Atlisco and I was ready to play it for the first time in public today!

It was 8:30, the start time for my class, and the room was empty except for me. By 8:35, a few students began to trickle in.

“Don’t panic,” I told myself. This would be like my fourth birthday. I turned four in Nicaragua and planned a big party for my preschool friends. The house was ready, the piñata in place and the cake in the back. I sat on the front stoop waiting for my first guests to arrive. I waited there for an hour. No one arrived. 

Exactly one hour past the party’s start time, my first guest appeared. A few minutes later, my second. Soon the house was full of little friends, all acting as if arriving an hour late to a children’s party was the most reasonable thing in the world. This class would be like that, I concluded. Only not an hour late, more like 15 minutes. 

No problem! I had planned ahead for that. I always design an hour and fifteen minute class here even though the classes are an hour and a half, because I’m in another culture and it’s reasonable to assume we will start a little late.

By 8:45 the same seven students sat looking at me. No one moved and I began to wonder if maybe there had been some confusion – perhaps this wasn’t the special day and I wasn’t the highlighted teacher. Seven seems like a good number for a yoga class, but when you’re expecting 25, it’s a let down.

I had to start. There was no point in spending my brain waves revisiting unmet expectations; better to meet the students in front of me and give them the best that I had. I explained a bit about Kundalini yoga, we tuned in with our beginning prayer “Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo”. We were off!

At 9:05, in the midst of a neck stretching exercise, the door from the street burst open. Students came flowing in, hugging the people present that they knew, gathering their blankets and bolsters, waving hello to Pati, the owner. 35 minutes into my class, I had 28 faces beaming back at me. It was just like my birthday party! My little friends had not forgotten my birthday party and now I had a studio filled with loving, late energy.

We made up for the lost 35 minutes in the 55 we had left! The students from Cordoba and Fortin had come just in time for the fun stuff. Three minutes of chanting, five minutes of crazy arm shaking, and 7 minutes of holding one posture without moving a muscle. I had picked a wacky set for the class and the students met me with stamina, courage and enthusiasm! To me, yoga is the place to safely meet adversity and laugh at it, stay with it and celebrate what it can teach.

The class ended with 20 minutes of relaxation and meditation to my celtic harp, flute and ocarina. Adding music to the class cleansed the space. The students let the music carry them – in a journey, in their state of rest, in their heart. They opened their eyes with a bit of a glow.

My class was truly a community event. From the studio, we rejoined each other at the weekly organic market and restaurant for brunch. We talked of yoga, vegetarianism, native trees that are going extinct, and how to teach kids about mindfulness. One of the things I so admire about the people here is their access to play. The amount of laughter here is astonishing and so joyful! Surrounded by yogis, I didn’t get all the jokes, but I still had a good time! The yoga class was complete and it was a special day!