3HO Luminaries

MEET THE 3HO LUMINARIES

The 3HO Luminaries Program honors and highlights individuals from around the world who are engaged in extraordinary service and provides a platform for them to share their message, create inspiring connections, and ignite the spirit of greater service. Through donations, 3HO makes it possible for them to attend an event, to speak and to participate and connect with a community and deep practice that supports and nourishes them.

Djuma Manirakiza

Djuma is an exile from Burundi now living in a refugee camp in Kigali that teaches Kundalini Yoga to refugee children in camps in Rwanda and schools in Kenya.

Banesa Tseki

 

Banesa is one of the founders of Kundalini Africa Rising, which promotes social justice as a spiritual practice. Every week, she teaches children at one of the most dangerous inner-city areas in South Africa. She also teaches with Street Light Kids and helped launch Open Kundalini Yoga to enable specific communities of color to gain access to the benefits of Kundalini Yoga.

 

Oinak Singh

 

Oinak was raised in a home for destitute children in Rishikesh, India. Introduced to Kundalini Yoga from yoga teachers visiting the children’s home, he now pays it forward by bringing Kundalini Yoga and meditation to “ragpickers,”children in the slums who pick through trash heaps looking for salvage.

 

Martine Brisson (Kiret Nam Kaur)

Kiret Nam is the only Kundalini Yoga teacher in Haiti.  She organizes a festival that shares Kundalini Yoga in the streets and public parks of Port-au-Prince.

Guru Updesh Kaur

Guru Updesh hosts a langar group that cooks and serves many portions of vegetarian food three times a week to the homeless and disabled. She teaches yoga and meditation as a seva to the elderly, and has cared for abandoned children.

Conny Brammen (Meherpal Kaur)

Conny founded a volunteer association that brings Kundalini Yoga into state institutions in Germany, sharing Kundalini Yoga with people in distress such as those with eating disorders, psychiatric disorders, people in prison, and former sex workers.

Shango Johnson

Shango teaches yoga to children pre-K to high school in Chicago, Illinois, where he helps kids learn to cope with their problems through meditation. He is a consultant and patrols Englewood doing violence prevention and also owns two non-profit organizations called Quad4Life and For Posterity.

Akarat Sivaphongthongchai

Akarat teaches Kundalini Yoga to autistic and special needs children as well as female prisoners in Thailand. He is also a volunteer for the National KY Thailand Group and helps to organize Kundalini Yoga festivals in Thailand.

Zutu-ocloo Kofi

Zutu-ocloo Kofi keeps the teachings of Kundalini Yoga alive in Accra, Ghana. He also helps African-American youth on trips to Ghana to rediscover their African heritage and develop a daily sadhana.

Chamois Anderson

Chamois Anderson is a Kundalini Yogi in Laramie, Wyoming working for Defenders of Wildlife, a non-profit that focuses on threatened and endangered species. She works to restore wild bison to tribal and public lands, and to bring back the endangered black-footed ferret by building up prairie dogs to sustain their populations on recovery sites across the Great Plains. She also works with Native American tribes all across the Great Plains on reservations.

Marina Maia (Sunderta Kaur)

Sunderta is developing a donation-built community center in an underserved area of Brazil for impoverished children and adults to learn the tools of Kundalini Yoga. She is the founder of Yoga e Negritude, which seeks to raise the profile of Black yoga students and teachers in Brazil.

Alejandro Felipe Oliver Mascarelli (Gyanpreet Singh Khalsa)

Gyanpreet runs the Vegetarian Popular Pot, an organization that shares vegetarian langar and seeks to educate the public about the Sikh minority in Argentina. In addition, he hosts group sadhana, organizes Kundalini Yoga events in Buenos Aires, and is a founding partner of Sikh Dharma Argentina. He teaches Kundalini Yoga classes to jails in Buenos Aires each week, and is expanding his free classes to public welfare institutions in both Argentina and Brazil.

Maria Martinez Feduchi (Sarandeep Kaur)

Maria serves the Spanish Association of Kundalini Yoga (AEKY) tirelessly, organizing up to 4 annual meetings for the community and sharing Kundalini Yoga at fairs across Spain. She is a founding member of an organization that promotes the welfare of women and children.

Renato Oliveira Moura (Tej Partap Singh)

Renato brings gong and sound healing to the elderly in nursing homes and shares Kundalini Yoga in men’s prisons in Brazil. He also takes children on outdoor hikes to help them connect to the natural world, serves at festivals, and supports his Gurdwara however he is called to serve.

Thi Phi Anh Tran (Bhakti Akal Kaur)

Bhakti Akal Kaur brought Kundalini Yoga to Vietnam after her teacher training in the US. She shares weekly free classes with her university students and has opened the Tara House Project, making Kundalini Yoga free and accessible for all in Hochiminh. Her students in Vietnam say she leads with tremendous self-discipline, kindness, peacefulness, and joy.

Dalia Adel Ibrahim (Amrita Nishan Kaur)

Dalia Adel Ibrahim (Amrita Nishan Kaur) hosts free and donation-based community Kundalini Yoga classes in Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt. She is passionate about sharing that you can be a Kundalini Yogi and a Muslim and tirelessly supports the studio which brings teacher training to Egypt. She is currently working on a translation of the teacher training manuals in Arabic.

Gene Wright (Dev Ardas Singh)

After a harrowing and ultimately triumphant journey through addiction, Gene now shares Kundalini Yoga with the people with addiction he selflessly guides through the 12 steps.

Luis Alvarez (Teg Sunder Singh)

A champion of sadhana, mantra, and classical Indian Raag, Luis rose out of addiction with the help of Kundalini Yoga. He tirelessly pays it forward, guiding people in great need to the light of sadhana and the path of the 12 steps.

Janna Guetaba (Ram Singh)

 

Ram Singh has been leading Kundalini Yoga classes and sadhana in Togo since 1989.  In 2002, he became the leader of the Kundalini Yoga association in Togo and since 2005 has supported Krishna Kaur’s teacher training. He makes TV/radio appearances to share the benefits of yoga for stress and nutrition in Africa. He also organizes yoga conferences, and holds free classes on the United Nations Day of Peace.

 

Denise Davidson

For 20 years, Denise has shared Kundalini Yoga in the South Central Community of Los Angeles to both the elderly and the youth. She also goes to South Africa to serve at-risk youth has brought Krishna Kaur there to train teachers in Y.O.G.A. for Youth.

Tammy Foster (Tej Inder Kaur)

Tej Inder is one of the only teachers in a small beach village of Costa Rica, where she hosts women’s circles and workshops regularly to support the community. She also actively works as a doula bringing the teachings of Kundalini Yoga to pregnant and postpartum mothers.

Liam Pfeiffer

Liam teaches youth in detention facilities and to young adults on Riker’s Island for the New York Corrections Department. Liam provides incarcerated youth meditation, breathwork, and movement techniques from Kundalini Yoga, Hatha Yoga, and Tai Chi.

Off the mat, Liam is a head basketball coach with the non-profit Steady Buckets, an organization serving over 5,000 members of New York City’s youth. He developed the yoga and meditation program for the community and actively weaves Kundalini Yoga with basketball to expose children to natural healing modalities and empowerment practices.

Jap Mant Kaur

Jap Mant Kaur is an international yoga and Kundalini meditation teacher from Argentina. She specializes in yoga for children and pregnant women. She currently owns a yoga and meditation center called “Sat Nam Center,” as well as being the host, director, and producer of a yoga and wellness TV program called “En Armonía” (In harmony). Jap Mant organizes Seva through yoga events, where she collects clothing and food for people with limited resources. She also teaches classes, workshops, and sadhana online and in-person to people in need.

Kenneth Strickland

Kenneth has been educating youth in the power of Kundalini Yoga and the breath. He believes in the inherent wisdom of children and works to create spaces where children can become aware of this wisdom. Kenneth is currently teaching English, Social Studies, and Meditation at North Little Rock Academy in Arkansas. Kenneth is also attending Naropa University, in Colorado, where he studies Clinical Mental Health Counseling with a concentration in Mindfulness-Based Transpersonal Counseling.

Gloria Zacskai (Jagdeesh Kaur)

Jagdeesh Kaur writes about Kundalini Yoga in Croatian and helps serve as a translator to other Kundalini yoga students, bridging the gap between English and Croatian, helping many who otherwise would not have access to the teachings. She has taught classes and workshops in Banja Luka, the capital of Republika Srpska; in Serbia; in many cities in Croatia where she grew up; and now most regularly teaches classes in Zagreb, Croatia’s capital. The war in the Balkans ended 25 years ago, but the after-effects are still very much present in the society and culture. People are eager for solutions that will help them reduce their stress and feel happier.

Simranjeet Singh

Simranjeet has a degree in Philosophy and a Masters’s in Education in which he developed research on the practice of Kundalini Yoga with youth in detention facilities. This research resulted in the creation of a seva project, which offers Kundalini Yoga workshops to youth in these facilities. Additionally, he was involved in another seva project that brought Kundalini Yoga to inmates. He is currently a teacher at Miri Piri School Brazil.

Tara Libert

Tara Libert is the Co-founder and Executive Director of Free Minds Book Club & Writing Workshop. Her nonprofit uses books, creative writing, and peer support to awaken DC youth incarcerated as adults to their own potential. Through creative expression, job readiness training, and violence prevention outreach, these young poets achieve their education and career goals and become powerful voices for change in the community.