by SS Dr. Shanti Shanti Kaur Khalsa, Espanola, New Mexico
2024 (First Quarter)

Where There is Courage, There is Happiness

Soon after I became a Kundalini Yoga teacher in December 1971, I had the sensation that there was an unseen sangat—a not yet identified community—that I am to serve. When I became a Sikh Dharma Minister a year and a half later, the same sensation filled me.  I called upon the Guru to bring me to this unseen sangat, so that we would be known to each another. 

Over the decades, the Guru has brought me into several communities: in the 1970s it was women coming into spiritual and social consciousness; in the 1980s it was people living with HIV disease; in the 1990s and 2000s, it was those with serious health conditions and the medical community. In the 2010s and early 2020s it was the worldwide yoga therapy community, and the establishment of an internationally accredited Kundalini Yoga Therapy Professional Certification training.

Guru Arjan tells us that it is through chanting the Naam that one’s destiny is awakened. I believe that it is the daily sadhana practice that has brought me to these unseen sangats. We found each other through the vibration of the Naam.

For the past 13 years, the Guru has brought me to support communities who are displaced or in conflict areas. This is my ministry today.

Yuri is taking Level 1 Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training online one weekend a month while on the frontline in Ukraine. When he graduates in July, he begins training in trauma responsive Kundalini Yoga for recovery from traumatic brain injury with the faculty of the Guru Ram Das Center.

Beginning in 2011, I started to train Kundalini Yoga teachers in the knowledge and skills of teaching in a trauma-responsive manner. This approach requires a different set of skills and a different way of thinking than we learn in Level 1 teacher training. Along the way I prepared a core faculty to do the same. We now have a team of six women who have prepared hundreds of Kundalini Yoga teachers in trauma-responsive methods across five continents. These faculty-trained teachers have found their own unseen sangats in survivors of sexual assault and domestic abuse, veterans, at-risk youth, and those recovering from natural disasters. They teach an evidence-based curriculum—Kundalini Yoga for Recovery from Post-Traumatic Stress. (The trauma field no longer uses the word “disorder.”) 

In 2015, when hundreds of thousands fled the civil war in Syria, the Swedish and German Kundalini Yoga teachers we trained brought their new skills into refugee camps. The primary focus was recovery from post-traumatic stress This service continued until the COVID pandemic.

As pandemic restrictions lifted, the Guru brought our team a greater challenge.

Singh Sahib Simran Singh, from the Office of Public Affairs, was involved early on, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In coordination with 3HO Europe, he assisted safe passage of women and children who arrived by the trainload into Poland from Ukraine. Daily necessities, food, water, and medical supplies made their way to those in need. He carried the Siri Guru Granth Sahib from the Odessa Gurdwara into safe keeping.

In late May 2023, Simran Singh and I spoke about the role Kundalini Yoga teachers can have in meeting the challenge of war and of repairing lives. This is not post-traumatic stress we are addressing. The people of Ukraine are undergoing conditions of acute and complex trauma as missiles drop into the major cities almost nightly. Homes, hospitals, electric and water supplies are destroyed. Men, women, and children endure the violence and atrocities of war.

Within three weeks of my conversation with Simran Singh, the Guru Ram Das Center formed the Resourcing & Sustaining Ukrainian Resilience, a 5-7 year initiative to bring Trauma- Responsive Kundalini Yoga training and support to Ukrainian Kundalini Yoga teachers. A whole new four-day curriculum that is specific to a war zone environment was developed and delivered to 120 Ukrainian Kundalini Yoga teachers, including a two-star general. This initial group learned and practiced the application of six core skills crucial for teaching Kundalini Yoga in trauma environments. 

Before the course was complete, Jagtaran Kaur, the Guru Ram Das Center’s representative in Ukraine, began leading a rehabilitation protocol daily to troops in a military hospital in Kyiv. The protocol focuses on stabilizing prana through the tattvas—building vitality and stability that is maintained for months following the classes. From there these troops return to the front lines. 

The troops were reluctant to practice on the first day, Jagtaran Kaur says. Tuning in, the asanas, the movement, the breathing—it was all too strange. Yet by day five, they were so engaged in the yoga they asked her to come to where they were going: 20 kilometers from the front lines. The accompanying video shows her leading a class there.

In October we followed up with a three-day training in acute trauma protocols designed to meet the needs of women and children in military families, troops in military rehabilitation, those recovering from traumatic brain injury (TBI), and amputees. 

In March 2024 training will continue with acute trauma protocols designed for special forces, veterans, and women recovering from sexual assault.

There is a Ukrainian proverb: “Where there is courage, there is happiness.” 

In the early days of working with the Ukrainian teachers, I asked them to share with me what it is like to live in an occupied country. One tip I received: “When the warplanes come, make sure the lights are turned off, hide, and hope for the best. Oh, and open your mouth. Keeping your mouth open reduces the risk of getting injured or killed by the pressure waves from the blast.”

Good to know. 

Yes, the courageous teachers have found a way to stay connected to happiness.

We intentionally work with them to build their radiant body, arc line, pranic and auric bodies to serve in the presence of suffering and to stabilize and restore themselves from their own experience of acute and vicarious trauma. 

The two-star general participates in every training and has arranged to deploy those in the protocol group to teach in military facilities in the oblasts of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Chernihiv, Poltava, Odessa, and Mykolaiv in the months ahead.

These teachers bring their skills, knowledge, and compassion when they lead the groundbreaking protocols. They help those impacted by the trauma and displacement of war; restore stability; build endurance; and cultivate resilience. They have the skills to help someone who has lost one or more limbs overcome phantom limb pain. They can assist someone with TBI to restore healthy brain states after contusion. 

Ajeet Arti Kaur is one of the teachers participating in the protocol training. She says, “From the very beginning of the war I knew that I would be among the people who would be rehabilitating veterans and the victims of war one day. . . Thank you for giving me the skills to serve in this way.”

With the war entering a third year, there is an enormous number of people to serve.

Through 2024, the training and monthly support continue and our outreach expands to an additional 127 Ukrainian Kundalini Yoga teachers. 

This effort is the first of its kind and we are taking steps to conduct scientific research on the specialty protocols being taught by the Ukrainian teachers trained by us. Guru Ram Das Center board member and Sikh Dharma Minister, Singh Sahib Sat Bir Singh Khalsa, PhD, is working closely with his counterparts at the G.S. Kostiuk Institute of Psychology of the National Academy of Educational Sciences of Ukraine to develop research models that document the outcomes of each protocol that the teachers bring into military settings.

By this time next year, we may have valuable data that documents the effects of Kundalini Yoga protocols and helps us to further refine them. This research has meaningful impact that reaches beyond the military. The more the effectiveness of Kundalini Yoga Therapeutic protocols are scientifically demonstrated, the closer we are to serving in broader settings, including Ukrainian medical and educational communities.

This is what being a Sikh Dharma Minister means to me: saying yes to a call, showing up, being present where I can be, sharing the gifts that I have, growing a team, and supporting others as they awaken to their own gifts and cultivate their own unique service.

As you read this, there exists the largest number of displaced people at any time in the history of humanity. Nearly all are a result of war or conflict. May we serve them, together.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

SS Dr. Shanti Shanti Kaur Khalsa, Ph.D., C-IAYT, YACEP, is Assistant Secretary of Religion for Sikh Dharma and an ordained Minister since 1973. She is a Medical Family Therapist and founding director of the Guru Ram Das Center for Medicine and Humanology, a nonprofit organization with the mission to bring Kundalini Yoga into healthcare. She directs the 1,120-hour IAYT accredited International Kundalini Yoga Therapy Professional Training in 49 countries and coordinates outcome studies on the medical effects of yoga practice. Dr. Khalsa’s Kundalini Yoga program for people living with HIV is featured in the book, Yoga as Medicine by Timothy McCall, MD. and her groundbreaking work in Kundalini Yoga Therapy is featured in the book, Yoga Therapy and Integrative Medicine: Where Ancient Science Meets Modern Medicine.