MANILA, Philippines - For 30 years, I believed I was as blessed as I could be: a beautiful family, an Ivy League education, a job in London that afforded me glamorous gifts, and a lifestyle of international travel and elegant entertainment. Yet, these blessings could not disguise the mental, physical and spiritual exhaustion that I felt in my most quiet moments. I had found solace in yoga since I was a teenager and I applied the same drive to the practice of Ashtanga, Baptiste, Bikram Yoga and more for up to 10 hours a week. As a yogi, I thought I knew myself, but I still only knew my own ego; I would never be satisfied enough with external rewards to break the cycle. No one should have to experience tragedy to be released from a prison of her own making, but that is what it took for me.
I was riding the train to work the morning of the July 2007 terrorist attack on the London Tube and I survived to see the bloody bodies being brought from below, each on their way to doing what I did every day. In the days to follow, as the rich stories of these lost lives emerged from the darkness, my anxiety about how neutral I felt my own life to be still did not stop me from taking that train, enduring tirades from my boss, drinking after work, falling asleep in front of the television and waiting for my annual bonus. It was only a few months later, when my heart suddenly stopped in a restaurant in Washington, DC, that I began to find the relief that I had been seeking.
When I was finally revived in the hospital and my heart’s electrical patterns were being recorded, the doctor asked if there was any history of sudden death in my family.
With the unexpected passing of my third cousin at the age of 27 only a week prior to my own episode it was decided I would have surgery to implant a pacemaker. During the procedure six months later, my atrium was sliced and my heart and lungs collapsed from the bleeding. I had no pulse and I was not breathing: I was clinically dead.
After being revived, I went on to endure three more heart surgeries, including an open-heart procedure, multiple lung surgeries and a medically induced coma. My ribcage was broken and I had six inch-long punctures in my lungs in addition to the lacerated atrium and torn nerves and muscles around the heart. The scar tissue that had begun to form on the inside and outside of my body itched like worms crawling continuously beneath my flesh; the respiratory therapy that required me to take deeper breaths into my collapsed lungs made an enemy of the air around me; fiery aches kept me up all night and when I finally fell asleep for an hour, I would wake to wrenching nausea from the anesthesia. But it was also during this time that I began to see a light that promised relief. I felt its brilliance in my front cortex during the darkest days of my pain and I sent it through my broken body. Sometimes, as it shimmered through my cells, I felt it was Jesus; other times, as it lit my mind with the will to continue, it was the Blessed Mother Mary.
The healing became a personal hell for over a year. Once I left the hospital, each step I took felt like climbing a mountain. As I battled persistent lung infections, measles, shingles and mouth sores and constant pain, I was told I might have to take immune system-depressing steroid shots for the rest of my life. I was only a 32-year-old woman when I was told I should never have children. When I did not recover in the timeframe my doctors gave me, I began to see more doctors. Despite seeing 24 doctors and a psychiatrist, hours of physical therapy, a daily diet of organic food and fresh flowers weekly, the increasing limitations to my life no movie theaters, no shopping malls, no bike-riding, no swimming left me so depressed I would wake up crying. Finally, as my earthly pain had taken me so far from the solace of the light I felt in the hospital, I did what I had not done since I was a child: I prayed. I continued to pray for help and healing even though I was not recovered, even though I felt that I would never be the same again. What would follow those prayers indeed changed my life forever. One night, Jesus visited me in a dream. We were in a vivid desert landscape a place in which I had often imagined I would find Him. Though all around Him was scorched and desolate, His robes were a brilliant red and blinding white. He told me that He was sending someone to help me.
Life Begins with Yoga
Shortly after I had the dream, I visited my sister, Stephanie, in Los Angeles. She brought me to meet the members of Golden Bridge Yoga, home for a spiritual community of master teachers of Kundalini Yoga trained by Yogi Bhajan. Stephanie insisted that her favorite teacher, a woman called Tej, could help me with my pain and that I had to move to California. I finally joined her for the first of 40 days of Kundalini Yoga with Tej, my sister cried when she realized how completely the pain had transformed me. I had not practiced yoga for some time before my heart stopped; I now found that my shoulders were permanently hunched to protect my chest and that I had to rest at least 20 times in a class otherwise I lost my breath completely.
The practice of Kundalini differs greatly from the common perception of yoga. More than just a workout, it summons the divine within you and alters your consciousness to allow for the deepest healing. This ancient technology of angles and vocal vibrations moves the water and cells in your body, calling for a healing power to cleanse the spiritual toxicity that creates physical discomfort. Kundalini opens a dimension of dreams and visions that can be unsettling but, ultimately, sublime. Different vocal tones, meditations, breathing patterns and yogic postures speak to specific sufferings, yet all are meant to access the ecstasy of love and the security of being one with God. This divine connection opens you to the bounty of energy that surrounds you and the prosperity you already enjoy, to feeling full no matter what you are missing, to trusting in the good that is and will be.
Strange things happened after just a few days of Kundalini Yoga. Intense pressure would build in specific parts of my body and be released completely by the end of class. I saw the anger I had held against my doctors and myself leaving my mouth in a cloud of smoke. As I recovered from my wounds inside, I watched my scars fade from a burning pink to the alabaster white of my own skin.
In the months that followed, the doctors observed with disbelief how my heart had healed, but only I could see the love that made it full again. I had again found the light that I thought I had lost in that hospital room.
I believe in Kundalini healing so much that I went to India to study with Gurmukh and the greatest living masters of Kundalini yoga.
Today I work with many clients from all walks of life to teach them natural, or divine healing, which is the only permanent cure for any kind of disease. I have a client with cancer whose doctor is shocked with how much cancer disappeared from her body so quickly. Pharmaceutical remedies may help to make people feel better, but they do not heal the negative subconscious patterns at the root of illness it’s part of why illness returns or becomes chronic in so many people. Nutrition is also extremely important, and if we eat in line with natural laws, our bodies will remain healthy.
It was my dream to teach these concepts, and my friend James John (a NYC health guru for high-profile clientele such as Donna Karan, P. Diddy and Mase) and I got together to create a Yoga & Healing Retreat. This November, we will teach yoga, chi flow, energy and natural healing, and nutrition in Costa Rica. I will be in Manila in December, and will be available to see private clients (please book in advance) and may organize a retreat as well (please contact me if interested).
* * *
For information on Costa Rica, visit www.neotaolife.com. For information about private consultations (either over the phone, Skype, or in person in DC, NYC, or Manila), e-mail karen@neotaolife.com, or call +1 703 300 2534.