I was raised Catholic on the Sunshine Coast and loved the singing and biscuits at Church, I enjoyed the “theatre” of Church, the robes, candles, smoke, choir, hand gestures, seriousness, passing the bowl around the congregation, kneeling, sitting, standing. I loved putting my index and middle fingers in the Holy Water and making the sign of the cross to bless ourselves. I didn't really understand the sermons as a little girl, but I remained quiet and would look up and study the Stations of the Cross stained-glass windows, and knew them by heart, I could feel them in my cells. I wondered who made the Crown of Thorns, whose idea was it to make it and whose job was it to put it on Jesus’ head? What was the intention behind the Crown of Thorns?
We dressed in our Sunday best, I loved to wear scarves over my head like Mother Mary, hats and pretty head bands. There was a large statue of Mother Mary outside, I used to look up at her often and think how lucky the three children in Portugal were to have witnessed her apparition and hoped I could one day too. I waited by the statue willing her to come.
The Church ladies would talk about Holy Water and if anyone visited Lourdes they would bring some home in a small vial and we would get to hold the bottle, carefully take a drop and apply it to our wrists, heart centre or brow point. Once my mother was gifted a very small bottle of holy water from Lourdes and I asked if I could keep it, she asked what I wanted to do with it and I put it under my pillow.
As a little girl I wondered how to get to Lourdes. I loved to pray, to have the feeling I could “pick up the phone to God and he would listen”. I felt like if people needed hope or healing that I could pray for them, I felt somewhat helpful, that it was at least something I could do.
In the Australian Women's Weekly during my teens I was struck by an article about a celebrated yoga teacher named Gurmukh. At that time in LA she was teaching and working privately with big names like Madonna, Michael Jackson, etc and I remember I had never seen anyone like her. She appeared gathered, radiant, steady, feminine, and empowered. I wondered, “How do you become like that?”. I tore the article out and kept it.
By around Year 10 I was introduced to Buddhism through a friend at school, I just got it. I respected it, I felt it and enjoyed learning about it. I loved the concepts of Karma, Dharma, life cycles, reincarnations, loving kindness, compassion, chanting mantra recitations, discipline, and community.
In Year 12 we had a substitute teacher for a science class, the curriculum was rocks and fossils, he gave us a ten minute summary and then said, “Let's go practice yoga!”, so we did. I felt like me, in my body, so present and calm; cue the start of a new chapter.
In my early twenties I booked a reading with a seer, she said to me, "You hold a technology, you will wear mostly white, you will have music around you all the time, you will speak many languages and you will travel, a lot, you have many bridges to cross. You will bless people just by being in their presence and you will help people to heal themselves through their third eye."
I had two sons, my first in my late 20s and my second when I turned 30. I was protective, anxious about perpetuating bad habits and cycles, I had absolutely no clue how to be the kind of Mother I wanted to be. I covered their tiny heads and had music on ALL the time, I didn’t know why but I felt it helped. They fascinated and terrified me, and I didn’t understand how or why I got to have the experience of being their Mother, and why they would incarnate at that time using me as a channel. The responsibility of having them felt unbearable but slowly we all found our way as a family as I grew and developed at Earth School trying many different things.
I chose to experience a past life regression with a hypnotherapist and during my session she said I retrieved a tool that would help me, and help others help themselves. I asked what kind of tool, she said she didn’t know but I would wear white and work with people’s third eye points, she said music would be an integral part of the modality and it would be like a catapult.
In 2014 I was very sick with mercury poisoning from amalgam removal, I stumbled across Kirtan Kriya Meditation and it proved to be the missing piece of the puzzle for my recovery and completely saved my cognition. I soon started practicing Kundalini Yoga with Harjiwan Yoga in person and Guru Jagat virtually; I knew I was recovering and was on my destiny path. I found it majestic, elite, effective, challenging, empowering and practical. I wanted to practice this yoga and meditation everyday to try and understand it.
I enrolled in Teacher Training in 2018, never with the intention to teach Kundalini Yoga, only to deepen my practice, but during the training Dharamjot Kaur looked me square in the eye and declared, "You have to teach." So reluctantly I began.
In 2019 I was teaching regularly, had been studying with Guru Jagat in the United States and considered founding a Kundalini Yoga business. I booked a reading with Belinda Moore, she said, "You have a white snake, it's your Higher Self," and immediately I was reconnected with the white snake, her name is Prem, the Sanskrit word for LOVE. White Snake Yoga was born, and I recalled what the other seer and hypnotherapist had both said to me years before, we connected the dots, realising what they had foreseen was Kundalini Yoga. I shared with Belinda my ability to see the human mechanics, the ten bodies in people and to help them manipulate and manage them to feel better; like pulling levers, tightening screws, turning on or off switches, and rewiring themselves.
In 2020 I suffered another devastating dental injury and am still recovering (you can’t make it up! 😅). This yoga, this daily practice, with #nodaysoff has been the friend that has held my hand and pulled me through, kept me steady, given me hope and healing, along with my family, friends and A Team. It has provided what was required to manage and accept pain, trauma, and living with what feels like a deficit to me.
Our community was shaken up by the sex scandal in recent years, but every day I rolled out the mat and just kept practicing, learning, studying, blessing those humans involved and relying on my own experience of the practice, the blessings and benefits it has brought me and the students before me on their mats. I realised almost every school of yoga has had sex scandals and whilst I condemn any abuse I wondered why students and teachers who abandoned Kundalini Yoga so quickly and threw their text books in the bin had practiced and taught in the first place? All idols fall, were they practicing for the idol or were they practicing for themselves? I pondered this but at no point did I ever contemplate quitting my practice or my Dharmic path or commitment to sharing this practice.
In this digital age, with these pressures, viruses, coercions, planetary shifts, expansions, changes in how we conduct business, broadcasting and receiving so much data daily and having the responsibility, I believe, for self-mastery my respect for and reliance on Kundalini Yoga has only strengthened.
We each have a destiny pathway, not everyone’s is Kundalini Yoga obviously and I firmly believe no one finds Kundalini Yoga, Kundalini Yoga finds them. We receive many signs about our destinies, when the student is ready the teacher appears and people are always put on our path to guide us on our path.
Becoming a link in the Golden Chain, studying with such elite, wise and inspiring teachers, staying steady on my path, taking responsibility for self mastery and serving the community has been the highest honour.
Sat Nam,
Kylie xo
Credit to Angie Kruger Photography for capturing this moment with Halo and I, thank you.