We’ve all been there, holding our trembling arms over our head for what feels like a century, shoulders screaming in agony, mind yelling at us to give up, and the kundalini yoga teacher announces one more minute to go. Aaaaaargh, really? Well, take a deep breath (or a few powerful puffs of breath of fire), and tremble on through to the finish line – kundalini yoga timings are very precise, and there’s a science behind it…

3 minutes of a kundalini yoga kriya or meditation affects the aura and the circulation. It takes your blood about one minute to travel around the body, so by practicing a specific meditation or kriya for a three minutes, you’ve morse-coded its effects into your cells on a basic level.

11 minutes starts to affect the nerves and glands.

22 minutes brings a balance between the negative, positive and neutral minds – they’re the functional minds, the ones that constantly chatter away to you.

31 minutes brings the effects of the kundalini yoga meditation deep into the body’s cells and natural rhythms. It influences all levels of the conscious and subconscious minds.

62 minutes fundamentally changes the brain’s grey matter. The subconscious becomes conscious.

2.5 hours irrevocably changes the individual psyche and aura. The subconscious mind is held firmly in the shape by the kundalini yoga meditation. I can testify, having done 2.5 hours of long Ek Ong Kars as a daily practice for 40 days, that this is true!

Now, the mind works in cycles of days, weeks and years, so we can use a repeated daily practice of 3, 11, 22, 31 etc minute timings or a kundalini yoga kriya or meditation in conjunction with these cycles to change unwanted habits or behavioural patterns. By meditating for a specific time, over a specific number of days, we replace a limiting belief system with an expansive, infinite one.

Do a kundalini yoga kriya or meditation every day for 40 days, and you’ll change a habit/destiny. It takes 40 days for the meditation to sift out any thoughts and emotional patterns that limit you.

Do it for 90 days and you’ll confirm that changed habit/destiny. That means the limiting belief has been replaced by an infinite, expansive one.

Do it for 120 days, and you embody that habit/destiny. It becomes who you are.

Do it for 1,000 days, and you’ve mastered the habit/destiny. It is your infinite self.

Daily sadhana

Commit to a daily sadhana (practice), and see the gradual life changes that a daily conversation with your soul brings. If you’re not sure where to begin, I can highly recommend that you start with a 40-day practice of 11 minutes of a meditation like Sat Kriya (3hO does a great write-up). Sat kriya’s not called the ‘everything kriya’ for nothing, as it heals deep childhood trauma – some of it you didn’t even know you had! And if Sat Kriya does’t resonate, there are plenty more fantastic kundalini yoga meditations to choose from, like those listed here: Kundalini Yoga Pink Lotus. It’s like being a kid in a sweet shop, isn’t it?

If you can practice every morning in the amrit vela – that’s the tranquil time three hours before sunrise – you’ll really feel the benefits of your yoga turbo-charging you through the day!

Sat nam x

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