This is me and my other half, Nishad. Not only is Nish my love and best friend, but he’s my yoga chum too. We practice together every morning. Sometimes it’ll be a few sun salutations and a lucky dip of hatha postures. Other times we’ll do a kundalini yoga kriya that I want to teach, or we’ll choose one from our stockpile of old favourites, like kriya for detoxification, sahibi kriya, or nabhi kriya. Once in a while we’ll do the ashtanga primary series. We usually end our practice with a meditation, and sometimes we’ll do venus kriyas.

Venus kriyas are beautiful little gems in the kundalini yoga treasure chest – they shine ever so sweetly. The name venus kriya may sound a little saucy, but sex doesn’t have a place in these sacred practices. They must be done with sincerity, purity and a heart-felt intention to deeply honour the divinity in your partner. Save your sexy time for later! On that, you don’t even need to practice them with your love partner… a friend, usually of the opposite sex, will do too.

Sharing the venus love

Venus kriyas balance the masculine and feminine polarities between you, bringing you into a state of equilibrium with each other. They come with a few words of guidance: always tune in with the Adi mantra (ong namo guru dev namo) before you practice a venus kriya, treat the kriya with reverence and respect, and don’t use the kriya to seduce your partner. They’re best attempted after you’ve warmed up with a kriya, too, so treat them as a kundalini yoga meditation. Also venus kriyas are not to be practiced when pregnant.

Heart lotus kriya

The one that Nish and I practice most often is the heart lotus kriya (Click to access). It’s a six minute meditation, the first three minutes of which you gaze into your partner’s eyes holding your hands in lotus mudra. Sometimes we’ll giggle our way through this part… if Nish starts smiling, I can’t help but smile too, and then we’re off. But we pull ourselves back, and then we’ll get that wowee feeling of expansion, sweetness and profound recognition which we then fold into our own hearts for the next three minutes. Beautiful.

We don’t call it such, but for me, every morning’s yoga practice is a venus kriya. Whatever’s on the cards each day, that hour or so of yoga in the morning is our time together. Even though we’re not talking or engaging with each other directly, we’re sharing something beyond words, something that doesn’t need chatter. And when we bring ourselves around to our closing sat nams, we’re shining with each other. It’s lovely to have that.

I thank all the lucky stars in the world for Nish.