My Body is an Altar

By Sat Purkh Kaur Khalsa

I have been working for some time now on my issues around food. Some of you may have been following my process over the past few articles. This past week I went through a profound experience in my consciousness and in my body around shame, and it pointed to some very deep issues that I didn’t even know were there. In the moment of surrender and acceptance, I knelt to the ground and asked my body for forgiveness—forgiveness for all the years I had abandoned it, all the years I had mistreated it, all the years I had failed to take care of it. It would be easy to place this experience in the box called “socially constructed identity”; that is, I feel like crap because I don’t look like what I see in magazines or on TV. But it wasn’t that at all. I’ve done that work; I know how unreal those images are. Instead, this was a profound awakening to the fact that my body deserves to be loved and nourished and acknowledged. My body is an altar upon which my entire consciousness is bound and through which my consciousness transforms.

I've been using an afirmation where I acknowledge my body for the altar, the temple, it is. I acknowledge its beauty, its bliss, and I welcome my body back into being, as an expression of me and my identity. For too long I have simply been living in my head. Honestly, it’s easy to go there when you’re a celibate yogi living in the middle of nowhere! But meanwhile, my body has been neglected and I am living the consequences of that neglect. As I awaken to a new life, lived in deep concert and connection to my body, I invite you to do the same. There is really nothing less and nothing more to our practice as Kundalini Yogis than to embody the consciousness of grace, enlightenment and neutrality that is awakened when we wake up to our Self and live fully in our bodies.

Renew your health. Renew your practice. And love your body, for it is the altar upon which your consciousness rests and within which your heart dwells, either in peace or in pieces.

Sat Purkh Kaur Khalsa is a writer, editor, poet, singer and songwriter—and a pretty good cook, too. She serves as Editor and Creative Director of the Kundalini Research Institute. She has made three albums of sacred music including Queen Bee, Nectar of the Name and Beautiful Day. She is the author of Everyday Grace: The Art of Being a Woman, an introduction to women's teachings of Yogi Bhajan. She lives with her two cats Fatty and Slim, and her dog, Vinnie. http://satpurkh.blogspot.com/