Healer Q&A: Healing the healer with Karuna
The following interview is a transcript excerpt from The Heallist Podcast episode. Listen to the full audio version below and subscribe to get notified of new episodes.
Step into a world of transformation with celebrated Kundalini Yoga teacher and healer, Karuna, as she enlightens us on the power of spiritual maintenance through Kundalini Yoga. Karuna opens up about her journey from the fast-paced life in New York City to the serene spiritual waters of Rishikesh, India. Here, she found profound healing and growth, which she now shares with others. She emphasizes the importance of embracing both light and darkness, guiding us to navigate this transition with authenticity and compassion. Her insights on creating balance and a partnership with the divine feminine offer a roadmap for personal and spiritual growth during challenging times.
Our exploration continues with the remarkable synergy between spirituality and prosperity. Witness the transformative power of Kundalini Yoga healing through Karuna's account of a white tantric yoga workshop in New York City. She shares the incredible story of a spontaneous encounter with a healer that led to the alleviation of a painful frozen shoulder, demonstrating the profound impact of divine timing and unexpected healing. This episode encourages us to trust our journeys and appreciate the unexpected ways the universe supports our healing, offering a deeper appreciation for the connections and energy centers that underpin personal growth.
Power of Kundalini Yoga Healing
Karuna: I take this yogic practic, but I don't even notice when I'm doing yoga or not doing yoga anymore. I'm right here with all of us in the same way. I just want to be supernatural in my approach and organic. And how can I become that more purely and satisfy my words to get to you, to get to the true you, and I know we can sit and retreat, and we do every December in Costa Rica, and we go all the way to the blue zone and we trust that.
So what do we want to do? Do we want to sit in judgment and dwell in that darkness, or do we want to somehow find a relationship, a partnership if you like, with divine feminine? Comes through right now, like, “okay, yes, she's bringing everything up for us to look at and clear.” And so this is when I know that sadhana works. Sadhana in yogic practice. Wherever I am, you can come to my yogic sadhana practice, whether you're taking my retreat or not, because I invite you to sit with your soul to line up those demons every morning before the sun rises, to use the technology and the grace of light.
We're seeing the pinnacle of the Piscean Age, which is the dark age, the Kali Yuga, and we're in the Aquarian Age, and that told us we had some cleaning up to do. And so, in my book I mention my own experiences that have taken me to my knees. My soul has become super sensitive to the darkness. And yet we're going to turn it around. So the phoenix is rising, we're going to get rid of all that materialism. It's hard not to see your friends in their homes again and what everyone is facing like COVID changed us, this is going to change us, and it's auspicious to be here, divine timing.
Lifting your Own Power Using Kundalini Yoga
Karuna: The tool here is getting up. Become the forklift, so like, get yourself out from horizontal to vertical to the altar and release that tendency to live in those subconscious patterns. We have to heal the healer, because the healer sometimes is so busy healing others that she forgets about herself or himself. To take those incredible therapeutic moments to walk, to breathe, to bathe, to do the Ishanah, to sit at the altar and pray. It's no specific religion. All are welcome, and that's why I love kundalini yoga, because it takes us back to the 10 gurus that were back in the 15th century, up until the 17th century.
Why would we ever turn and look at gossip? I've never been asked about the gossipy part of Kundalini Yoga ever, because the students just know that I'm sort of ancient wisdom. But to really own that ancient wisdom, to polish those antiques inside of us, those wisdom keepers, and believe that kundalini yoga is 5,000 years old. And those gurus all sacrificed so much. As Buddha reminds us, suffering leads to compassion. When you surrender to a yoga practice, you watch the gossip and you make sure you don't get involved with that. It isn't unknowing, it isn't good knowledge.
Grace is very generous. She'll teach us how to deal with gossip and how to use the practice of angles and triangles, kundalini yoga, to release, but we do have to have a conversation about it because it does bother our sensitive souls.
Navigating Holistic Career
Karuna: I started when I was certified. I started bringing teachers to Boulder, Colorado, and I started doing teacher training programs with other teachers, because I wasn't qualified at the time to lead my own. So I was the facilitator, but I had always remembered that becoming a teacher is the highest caliber of our being. And so I thought I'd tell the students that I was teaching to become teachers and take responsibility for their families as householders, to understand that we can make it through, with as little as we might have at times. It's hard work, long days, 10 hours a day.
As a happy, content woman, working on divine feminine projects, like the Founding Mothers movements, working to empower women in their voice chakra to open up their truth and authentic self, and know that inside of every one of us there's that brilliance. Rarely do I use genius, but I love that you brought Light on Kundalini up as a brand. We need to be profitable, we need to create and live into our own witness of creation. And yes, , we have mentors, but most of the time–and this is the hard part–mentors just moved on and I was like, “I'm here on my own.”
So everything started to slow down. Everything became so much more conscious of my doings. And in our 30s, we're rushing everywhere. We're thinking this is it. I'm going to become a yogi. When I was a model in New York with Ford, I realized that I was living right next to the Integral Yoga Center. For a reason, there was something about that. I was becoming vegetarian, vegan, organic and just allowing that grief to come through. Right then and there, that wisdom and that grace of the healer in us, and to really drop into how we walk around with this awareness of how we have to rest and relax and bundle up.
Journey of Personal Growth and Healing
Karuna: As human beings, we are so afraid to dive into something new. I always get new people in my Costa Rica retreat, and they range from late 20s to late 70s and I hear, “How dare you bring me here? You should have warned me about–” these aspects of conversation that are just so out of my league of understanding to even put that fire out. “It's not necessary.” That is exactly what you want to hear from a student. Because if you're saying that that brings such a smile to myself and my inner love and compassion for that.
You work by getting there. 70% of your practice is getting there. Do it the best you can do it. But your psyche, your soul, knows you're doing it and therefore is so congratulatory that it's applauding your every move. It doesn't matter how you do it. What matters is that you showed up for yourself and that your children see you. Your community sees you. You just share this willingness to say “I'm learning, I'm a perpetual student in this practice of life”. Everything you do is offering you an opportunity to bend in a way in which it's changing the conversation on how you see things. That linear practice of yoga is not necessary anymore.
We're talking about indigenous teachings here. We're talking about walking these paths, and it doesn't matter if you're sleeping well and if you're getting up well early, and there's none of that stuff that they call grumpy. I was always wondering where does grumpy come from. That's just the craziest idea that someone would get up unhappy. When we regulate our patterns and see our wrinkles in the mirror, say, “I love you, I love you. You deserve those lines in your face. You worked hard for those lines.” Never, ever change who you are, because what you're becoming, every breath you take, is something spectacular.
