Why Kundalini Yoga Needs Music (And Why Your Nervous System Already Knows This)

There’s a truth I’ve been circling for years, and I’m finally just going to say it:

Kundalini Yoga without music is hard.

Not enlightening-hard.

Not transformative-hard.

Just… unnecessarily hard.

And there’s a reason for this that has nothing to do with personal preference or teaching style.

It’s structural.

It's neurological.

And it's deeply tied to the framework Yogi Bhajan set up for his students, and what he  believed intensity would achieve in his students.

Kundalini Yoga Was Built for People Who Aren’t Us

The kriyas were originally created for people whose lives looked nothing like ours:

• Monastics.

• Ascetics.

• Long-term practitioners with unusually strong nervous systems.

• People who could sit with internal intensity for hours.

• Humans who didn’t have to return to work, caretaking, or emotional multitasking after class.

In other words:

Unrecognizable compared to the modern student walking into a yoga space after a full day.

The practices are brilliant.

The practices are potent.

But they were not originally designed for the emotional and nervous-system realities of 21st-century humans with jobs, phones, trauma histories, and children.

Originally, Yogi Bhajan was teaching a group of young people—mostly in their late teens to early twenties, back in late 60s to early 70s California. 

Like these kids in this nifty AI generated photo

These young people were rebelling against the status quo of their parents, religions, government, and schools. Many were experimenting with altered states as a pathway to enlightenment.

Central to this was the idea that pushing through discomfort and intensity is a deliberate (and safer than using drugs) method to reach a different state of awareness.

This intensity wasn’t accidental — it was a central mechanism of the system.

So with many exceptions, usually the most popular kriyas, Yogi Bhajan and his top followers created some really challenging flows.  There was also the use of humility, the pressure to KEEP UP, and sheer exhaustion leading to emotional eruption to unblock conditioned responses.

Mike and I had a great Kundalini Yoga teacher.  She was trained by Krishna Kaur, who was into not only the energetic pathways kundalini yoga is expertly and uniquely able to access, but to biomechanics, safety, attuned to women’s bodies, aging, modifications, gentle delivery, and brilliantly curated playlists.  Kimberly Douglas, Ramjeet, I owe to you most of the entire arc of my teaching expertise.

Forever my teacher

When I took KRI/3HO Level 1 Teacher Training, I was keenly aware of the culty-ness of the environment.  I didn’t really bond with it because I was raised without a bond to any authority.  No religion, no adherence to any philosophy, no parental rigidity, no previously held belief systems.  Other than science, which if one embraces cleanly, one is never allowed to fall in love with a data set, or any authority. That's a death knell for the practice of Science.

So how was it that after the revelations about Yogi Bhajan was it not easy for me to abandon the practice?

I’d say for most, it was a little bit of “good riddance.”  Most teachers had been trained and adhered to the firm rules:  Do not in any way alter the kriya.  If the kriya is too hard, don’t do the kriya.  If the kriya is too long, cut it in half or in quarters. If the kriya is assigned to you, or taught in a class, you do the kriya.  If it’s chosen or assigned for 40 days, you do it for 40 days.  No matter the danger, the cost, or the brutality of what it will do to your body.

Okay, that said, Kundalini Yoga is meant to be HARD to do.

It’s not too hard at Kundalini Yoga in Detroit, but that does not mean it’s not powerful, transformative and healthy for your body, mind and soul.

The main reasons: 

1.  I curate the kriya.  I modify, remove, reduce times, or soften asanas that I myself find either impossible, or painful, or unsafe.

2. I amend according to the bodies in front of me. If you're young and healthy, it's gonna be harder. If you're over 50, I got you.

3. I make sure the change is energetically sound and in alignment with the purpose of the kriya.

4. I use music to make the harder stuff feel doable.

Music Is the Co-Regulator

Music does what the kriya alone cannot:

It co-regulates the nervous system. It creates emotional arc and safety. It gives the mind a tether so the body can open. It brings the student into rhythm, breath, and felt sense. It softens the entrance into discomfort. It makes the work doable.

Music doesn’t make the practice “easier.”

It makes it possible.

Especially for:

• students with anxiety

• people who carry chronic tension

• those new to embodiment

• anyone rebuilding trust in their body

• people who dissociate under silence

• people who are simply… human

Music Frees the Nervous System from “Effort’s Strangle”

Without music, most students default to:

• over-efforting

• holding the breath

• bracing the shoulders

• collapsing inward

• self-monitoring

• comparing

• dissociating

Music interrupts this autopilot. It shifts the student from performing the kriya to being with the kriya.

It’s not a distraction.

It’s a bridge.

Music Turns Discipline into Devotion

There is a moment in every class where the music carries the student further than willpower ever could.

It’s subtle. It’s somatic. It's real.

The beat turns into breath.

The melody turns into mantra.

The body stops “doing” and starts letting.

And suddenly the impossible becomes available.

Music Brings Belonging into an Isolating Form

Kundalini can feel solitary, vertical, austere.

Music makes it communal.

Even one voice, one drum, one gentle rhythm creates a field of:

• safety

• relational warmth

• emotional coherence

• shared humanity

This matters.

Especially now.

My Cleanest Truth

Kundalini Yoga with music is not a modification. It’s a restoration.

It brings the practice into right relationship with the bodies and lives of the people who are actually showing up.

It honors the tradition and honors the nervous system. It protects the student and amplifies the practice.

Music doesn’t dilute the kriya.

Music completes the kriya.

And your nervous system already knows this.

And the students of Yogi Bhajan who were musicians KNEW this.  They understood instinctively that music was the nervous system’s bridge into the practice.

This is why Spirit Voyage became the home for so much of the music that carried Kundalini Yoga forward.  Whatever the larger organization was doing, the musicians themselves were creating something profoundly humane.  They saw the power of the practice and knew it needed rhythm, compassion, breath, and emotional balm.

I use a lot of Spirit Voyage music.  Not all the time, but a lot.

And it matters.

This is why Kundalini Yoga via YouTube or even Zoom is suboptimal.  

If you must, go ahead and do it that way.

But here in the Detroit area, coming in-person to a class with a trained teacher who was trained not just by KRI and 3HO but by Krishna Kaur through Kimberly Douglas, and through thorough knowledge of how kundalini yoga works energetically, is the best way to begin, or to tune back in, to this powerful practice.

Do it at home, but not with a video.  Do it with the app (kundalini mobile) or with a printed copy of the kriya, and a good playlist (I’ve got them all on apple music and I’ll share!)

Choose a kriya with me, specifically for you, and you can do this at home.  Come see me for one class or two, then maybe once a month or so for a tune up.  

Practice with the right music is the ticket.

It will change your life.

Sat Nam, and happy holidays,

Andrea and Mike