The Reconstruction of Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga

PHilip Deslippe

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Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan is an outlier within the world of modern yoga. It claims an ancient origin and a unique tie to the Sikh tradition, and contains forms and exercises that are seemingly unique among other popular forms of contemporary yogic practice.

In this talk, Philip Deslippe will build upon his article “From Maharaj to Mahan Tantric” published in the academic journal Sikh Formations in 2012, that gave a detailed and evidence-based account of the origins of Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga for the first time and has been downloaded over 23,000 times. He will describe the archival and interview-based research that formed the basis of the article, unpublished findings and subsequent discoveries made over the last seven years that have added to its argument, and the effect that the article has had on understandings of Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga.

This talk will conclude with larger questions about Yogi Bhajan, his Kundalini Yoga, the organizations he created, and the nature of tradition-making and historical revision within modern yoga lineages.

This event is free but booking is required. Book your place via Eventbrite .

Speaker Biography

Philip Deslippe is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Religious Studies and a teaching associate in the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He specializes in the history of Asian, metaphysical, and marginal religious traditions in modern American, and holds degrees in American Religious Culture from the University of Iowa (MA) and in English and American Studies from the University of Connecticut (BA). Philip’s doctoral dissertation examines the early history of yoga in the United States from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century.

His work has been published in several academic journals including the Journal of Yoga Studies , Amerasia , and Contemporary Buddhism , and in numerous popular print and online magazines such as Yoga Journal, Tricycle, and Scroll.in. In 2011 Philip introduced and edited a new and definitive edition of the metaphysical classic The Kybalion for Tarcher/ Penguin which has since been translated into Portuguese, Romanian, and Turkish.