Harijot Kaur Khalsa

In the mid-1970s the Los Angeles community was very yoga-centric. Whenever a new Kundalini Yoga manual was published, everybody was excited, because at that time Yogi Bhajan wasn’t currently teaching any new yoga sets. Then, in the early 1980s, he began teaching yoga sets again, and Harijot started illustrating these for the 3HO quarterly magazine, Beads of Truth.

One day Yogi Bhajan told her to put all her illustrated yoga sets into a manual and that is how Owner’s Manual for the Human Body came about. From then on, her compilations and illustrations resulted in a number of new manuals - Physical Wisdom, Self-Knowledge, Self-Experience, Reaching ME in Me, and Infinity and Me.

She was also asked to edit and illustrate Guru Prem Singh’s books Divine Alignment and The Heart Rules. Praana, Praanee, Praanayam came about partly from the instigation of Nam Kaur (who was then head of KRI) requesting a book covering all kinds of yogic breathing.

On her days off, Harijot enjoys working with horses. She says that they have a greater perception of energy than ourselves, and it is essential to stay in the present moment with them. They can read our energy, respond to us, and help us recognize what our personal energy is saying. There are ancient traditions of horsemanship that have a lot of similarities to yoga and meditation, because of the importance they place on being in the present moment, breathing, and interacting with Consciousness.

She currently teaches a class at Yoga West, LA, built around breathing and what we are experiencing in the present moment. As she says, you cannot breathe in the past and you cannot breathe in the future. You can only breathe Now. When our awareness of our breath keeps us in the present moment, we offer ourselves the opportunity to experience Consciousness, because the only place that Consciousness resides is the Now.