Dark Roots. Split Ends.
Dark Roots
“I want to keep it long” I say as she pulls from my hair in between her fingers, and I realize every tug reveals more split and broken edges. Edges that I had let go for too long. She realized she may have been insulting me with her corresponding face of disgust at my scraggly hair and quickly pulls back her hands “Oh I’m sorry!” I tell her it was okay, “I know what I’ve done.”
*****
The emotional and physical toll my step-father left on my body and soul, the pain I was perpetually put through daily, hourly, minute by minute was true agony. There was a time I truly didn’t believe I would survive my childhood. There were many moments I believed my step-father would kill me, times I believed I may take my own life to escape the pain, the mental exhaustion. From telling me point blank that he would harm me sexually, to countless hours of nightly bare bottom beatings for seemingly no reason, from the mental and emotional torture, the gaslighting and belittling. I lived in a perpetual state of fear that followed me into adulthood, long after I was able to run away as a teen and never look back. I dreamt from a very young age of a loving, kind, and accepting place. One where I would feel as though I belonged, where I was wanted, and treated well and with respect. One where I could simply breathe and not be in emotional, mental, and physical turmoil.
As a seventeen-year-old, I didn’t have a plethora of experience with faith and religion. I went to some non-denominational Christian churches here and there with cousins, as well as some Catholic masses with my grandparents during sleep overs. And, tragically, a Catholic church for my cherished grandmother’s funeral when I was fifteen, leaving a soiled taste in my mouth for the tradition. It wasn’t until my senior year of high school when I was fortunate enough to attend a semester long World Religion course with my favorite social science teacher, Mr. Robinson, that I experienced countless types of religions, spiritualities, and faiths, opening my mind and heart to a world I had once believed I would never inhabit. I attached myself to Mr. Robinson in a way that I know now was unhealthy. That I know now was a direct result of the way I was betrayed by the man in my life I was supposed to trust. I repeated this behavior even into graduate school, where I became obsessed with certain professors and mentors. I just wanted so much to be loved and cared for the way my childhood self was supposed to.
Mr. Robinson and his new wife, a science teacher at my high school who had waist length flowing blonde/gray hair and wore entirely white every day, practiced a faith and spirituality unheard of by most people I had ever met before or since. One I would learn ten years later leaned into being more of a cult than a religion. A Sikh/Yoga hybrid called Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan (KYATBYB). After getting a signature from my mother, I was able to attend a makeshift Kundalini Yoga class in the school’s auditorium, directly on the stage, with the rest of my class, along with my then boyfriend, Brandon, who came from another class with eagerness to participate.
I was more enthusiastic for this experience than I had been about anything I had partaken in at this school. The World Religion class had had such an enormous impact on my existence, and this was such a beautiful extension of that. I felt so much gratitude that they would share their faith with us. My heart was open to any spiritual riches my mentors, Mr. and Mrs. Robinson, were to bestow upon me that day. I would have done anything they told me to do. And I did.
We began our Kriya, a series of poses with a set intention, by doing some of what I would explain at the time as odd type stretches. Putting our hands on our shoulders and twisting at our upper spine rapidly, grinding what I would later learn was called our root chakra, or Muladhara, in a circular motion counterclockwise, then clockwise, until the base of our spine was like jelly. All to loosen our spine so the energy we cultivate through the Kriya can shoot up from the foundation of our spine through the top of our head like a brilliant beam of light spreading positive rays of energy throughout the universe. A lot to expect from several beginners, but I personally was up for the challenge. The opportunity to cancel out the pain and turn it into love, and to spread that love to every crevice of the universe was something very enticing to me.
After an hour and 15 minutes, the Kriya was almost complete. All that was left was what is known as deep relaxation. Normally, I would learn, a gong was to be resonating throughout the room during this particular practice of the Kriya, but that was unavailable. So we laid there in utter silence, on the black and faintly dusty stage floor, on our backs, our arms limp at our sides, palms up, eyes closed, waiting for Mrs. Robinson to touch our forehead with her index finger when she felt we “needed” it. She told us explicitly that she will likely not touch everyone on the forehead, just certain people she was “called” to.
After some time of laying in this euphoric state, beginning to feel a peace I had only dreamed of, I feel our beloved science teacher’s finger touch the middle of my forehead, my third eye, the eye of awareness, the eye of enlightenment. I then feel a shock of what feels like lightning throughout the entirety of my body. Every blood vessel was full of bright loving light. At the time I could only attribute this to total nirvana. Complete awareness. I had finally experienced something otherworldly. Something I had been looking for all my life.
*****
She was wearing a costume of face paint, though I am unsure what animal she was, there was well done animal print on her left temple and nose.
It’s Halloween, the day most people pretend to be someone they are not. To confuse the demons, I once heard someone say. I was never actually allowed to celebrate Halloween, and as a result, I didn’t care for it. I couldn’t help but feel that maybe I was about to adorn my first ever Halloween costume. Becoming someone I’m not.
How had so much of my identity become wrapped into my hair? Riding the swirls and at times tight twists of each strand. My hair never really knew what it wanted to do. But don’t most people say that? The color has a natural ‘ombre’ to it. It goes from dark to light as it spreads down and breaks apart. Dark roots, split ends.
You can call it a guideline of faith, that which taught me the discipline to let things be. Our energy is seeping through every strand, they said. To cut it would kill our spirit, losing the positive energy we had worked so hard at cultivating through each and every Kriya. It would take 4 years of hair growth to bring back all of that obtained energy, they claimed. Cutting our hair is like a slap in the face of creation. Regardless of the reasoning, we have to stick it through.
They said this way of life reveals the true self. I say, I choose. I choose who I want to be.
*****
I was taught at the village that Yogi Bhajan came to the US in the 1960s with no money in his pocket and worked his way to becoming a religious leader, starting a spiritual organization in the desert of New Mexico, 3HO (Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization), where hundreds of people lived, worked for free, and did yoga all day from 4:30am to 11pm. This man’s photo was displayed at the village I attended in several places on their walls, including at an alter with candles and miniature statues of Hindu gods and goddesses. Kundalini is supposedly an iteration of the Sikh faith, but it always seemed to me that the teachers at the village were a bit confused about the god or gods they were to be worshipping.
Yogi Bhajan was, for all intents and purposes, an ordinary man, but I would learn later that mythical stories would be attributed to this man, causing his followers to believe him to be more of a god than human, and he perpetuated the lies, and abused his power, causing significant trauma.
As with many faiths, we were required to follow certain rules and abide by particular restrictions. Like a requirement to wear entirely white clothing every day, while also concealing our head with some kind of covering, whether it be a white turban or white knit hat. It was said by the “master” that wearing all white and covering the head would expand the aura by several feet. They would even test our aura by holding a metal rod, no different from a straightened coat hanger, in each hand, step back slowly, and watch as they came apart when our aura comes to an end. We were convinced this was real, as we didn’t understand how the two rods would come apart otherwise. Our faith was just so firm and unyielding.
We also wore a steel bracelet on our dominant hand. Seeing the bracelet was to remind us to do the right thing and treat others with respect. To not commit evil with our hands. We also were meant to eat a strictly vegetarian diet with lots of beets (women were firmly encouraged to eat beets for no discernable reason), to never consume caffeine, alcohol, and of course to never smoke. To take only bitter cold showers daily after rubbing our entire body with oils, pressing deeply into our glands and tissues with our fingers, to wake up every cell in the body and bring in the energy of the gods. To wake up every morning at 4:30 am to recite the entire holy text, the Japji, in its original language, perform a Kriya, and chant for 3 hours. To never, ever, cut our hair to maintain the energy we cultivated during the kriyas, and lastly, to answer to what they called a “spiritual name” (mine: Siri Lakshmi. Pronounced “City Lock Shmee”) given to us by a woman at the main ashram organization in New Mexico, who would meditate while thinking about our birth name and birth date and time, that, I would find out later was just another money making scheme.
Kundalini Yoga ATBYB practiced an abusive act of free labor disguising it as selfless service they called “seva.” Seva was meant to strengthen numerous aspects of our soul such as developing spiritual discipline, ego reduction, and unifying the community, and to be fair, it is rarely regrettable to volunteer your time to an organization you feel passion towards. However, this went beyond simply volunteering a couple hours of our time on the weekend.
They would have sometimes up to 3 people daily working, cleaning, manning the front desk, cooking, and for several hours a day, multiple days a week and for no compensation. I was a seva and worked 30 hours a week at the village, while attending classes for hours a day, every day, while also holding down a full-time (paying) job, and going to school full time, because I believed it was my duty to them for all I was tricked to believe they had done for me over the years.
I felt an intense obligation to exhaust myself with relentless work to pay them back for all of the kriyas they taught me that were supposed to enrich my soul and body. Kriyas such as the Kirtan Kriya, that which was supposedly designed to balance the mind, improve concentration, and enhance spiritual awareness. Or the Sat Kriya, that is supposed to strengthen the nervous system, stimulate the sex organs, and improve energy flow. All of which 10 years after I left came out to the whole world to have been completely made up by Yogi Bhajan himself. He simply combined two different ancient forms of yoga while also adding his own mix of poses and movements in order to keep us soaring on a different plane all day. We were basically high on oxygen. The higher the better. They referred to this as “blissing out” and we loved the feeling. We believed it to be our kundalini awakening, our soul and aura expanding. This was simply just one goal of KYATBYB we were meant to embrace.
He fooled everyone by making them believe that Kundalini Yoga ATBYB was literally ancient. But not just ancient, a secretive practice that stayed within a small community in India. A yoga that was passed down from guru to student for thousands of years in secret. What a clever way to make sure we were never able to find out the truth. I mean, if it were a secret for so long, that would explain why we can’t find it documented anywhere, right?
After ten years of practice, I was invited to train to become a teacher. Being a Kundalini Yoga teacher was not only a dream of mine, but the ultimate goal of all involved in the group. It was believed that everyone should desire to become a teacher while also striving to always be a student in the eyes of whatever you believed was the true god or gods. This, I came to find out, was one more way for the “master” to make money off of his followers. This training cost an upwards of $3000.
There was no discrimination against how long a person had been a part of the group. So, people would come in off the street with no experience, having rarely practiced Kundalini Yoga, and become a teacher. It was infuriating to me how they could allow someone who never practiced before reach the ultimate goal it took some of us decades to work towards, but it eventually dawned on me: More Money. That was only the first of several issues that sprouted throughout the training process.
Split Ends
I had been there several hours already. My body sore, and at its breaking point from hours of meditation, rapid repeated body movements, and short yet very fast breathing. Basically, hyperventilating for short bursts that ultimately also caused me to feel lightheaded and admittedly, a tad high. This breathing was adoringly called “Breath of Fire.”
My teachers had encouraged me to attend the Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training because simply “it is time.” I had been practicing twice daily and sometimes for the entire day for 10 years and honestly, I truly believed them. That it was time. After all, a kundalini practitioner’s ultimate goal must be to become a teacher. Right?
After I began the training and would have to sit through hours of videos of Yogi Bhajan teaching yoga to his flock, being told to always sit up straight at the feet of the master, even though our backs were killing us from sitting up for entire days without back support. We had finally begun to rest, beads of sweat dripping onto my blue and yellow woven blanket with white tassels. I felt as though I hadn’t rested my body in weeks, because that was precisely accurate. I even woke up at 4 am to meditate, chant, and squeeze in a morning kriya. They call that Sadhana, and I was hooked. We would chant the entire Japji in Punjabi. The. Entire. Thing. 12 pages of Sikh holy text, taking us 30 minutes to accomplish.
They began handing us a piece of paper with bright orange ink in the background of the photograph. I quickly realized it was a photo of our guru, Yogi Bhajan. Throughout the week I had been hearing stories about this man, stories he spread about himself that couldn’t possibly be true, yet it seemed like everyone around me was eating them up, truly believing what I could not bring myself to trust. That he could control the weather, being the most laughable. So, it caught me by surprise and made me intensely uncomfortable to find out what we were doing with this quite florescent photograph. We were to tape it to the wall in front of us at eye level, sit cross legged, hold a candle at our feet, and stare into the eyes of this man for a full half an hour. The eyes of a man I was beginning to think was actually a narcissist in disguise as a benevolent spiritual leader.
The next half an hour was pure agony. I wanted to, with all of my being, run away and never come back. Everything in me was telling me I was taking in pure evil’s essence, but I had been taught for 10 years that this man was godlike, spoon-fed quote after quote and lesson after lesson from him that were now beginning to just sound like word salad from a very good liar.
I decided I would count my way through it. I counted to 60, then pressed my thumb into my index finger. Counted to 60 again and pressed my thumb into my middle finger. I did this until I had counted to 60 30 times. I was almost exactly right in my calculations that it had been 30 minutes and afterward something just felt wrong.
Our teachers asked us how we felt now that we had taken in the master’s essence, his pure clean soul that we mere mortals would never be able to truly achieve without his help. The others cited they felt at peace, motivated, enlightened. I just stayed quiet. Feeling as though something in me had somehow been taken, though I am not quite sure why. There was just a vast empty void encompassing my heart.
Over the coming weeks I began to ask questions far more than I ever had. Admittedly, I hadn’t asked very many in the 10 years I had practiced there. But now I needed to. For my own sanity and wellbeing, I needed to fill the holes of their straw house stories.
*****
“Well, we definitely have to wash it, it will make it easier for me to see what needs fixed.”
The washing took seemingly longer than I would have expected, feeling her hands scrubbing and rubbing at my scalp but mostly the ends. She really focused on the split ends.
As the hairs that have already fallen out are dragged through the mess, they hang on still slightly fighting on their way out. Grabbing at anything they can on their way down. Breaking and tearing at their fingernails, kicking and screaming. At times taking out others with it, displaying the little white ball on the very tip, the seed, detached. There were handfuls of dead and knotted hair left over. I then admitted that I let it go on too long.
I sauntered over to the cutting chair after being sufficiently shampooed and conditioned, she getting to it far quicker than me, waiting patiently. The chair was difficult to mount with the footrest in the way. It hit my heels and I could see the old, dried hair dye on the backs of the wooden chairs fleetingly wondering why they wouldn’t clean that off afterward. There was no one else in the salon and I was glad for that. I felt shame. I wasn’t supposed to be there. I wasn’t supposed to be doing this.
Is it too late to change my mind?
*****
For about 3 weekends someone straight from 3HO came to help teach us and I attached myself to her hip, asking her questions of science that simply don’t match what they were telling us. How can this be, if the body works in such a way? How could the guru have done that if this were the case? I asked more questions than I thought I even realized I had and what struck me the most was, she didn’t have an answer to a single one. The first person I had ever met who had worked closely with him for decades couldn’t answer any of my questions. She simply talked in circles and at times would say “You’ve stumped me Siri Lakshmi” and walked away, leaving me feeling more and more empty and lost each time.
I wanted answers so I did what any millennial would do, I took to Google. I had never actually Googled Yogi Bhajan before. I can’t tell you why even to this day I still cannot explain it. I just believed wholeheartedly what I was told. I had all the information right there for me in the books at the village. Why would I need to Google him? On this day I did and what I found out would shake me to my very core.
People who had lived on the commune in New Mexico, and got out, divulged their stories of this man. These stories included extortion, abuse, rape, child molestation, slave labor, odd expectations and practices that were harmful to them. I went back the next day confused, hurt, and frightened at what I had become and who I had been following for the past decade. Strangely, another student walked in with a similar demeanor. She blurted out to me, when no one else was in the room, “have you ever Googled the yogi?” I told her yes and that I was indeed just as disturbed as she.
This was 2014 and not much was out yet about the atrocities he committed and the horrific abuse he put women and children through. But there were several anonymous accusations and a handful of detailed stories of what it was like living day to day at the 3HO ashram. I almost felt as though I knew what I was going to find. I saw it in his empty, emotionless eyes that day.
A few documentaries detailing these horrific events and cult activity have since come out to the public, and an ever-famous memoir by the woman who was his right hand, Premka, by Pamela Sharah Dyson, have shed so much light on what has been happening for over 60 years both at the ashram and at Kundalini Yoga Villages across the globe. Fortunately, I was not abused in these ways by the practitioners and leaders at my village. I consider myself to be lucky. The people who were teaching me lies were being lied to themselves.
They began to treat me differently after a time. My questions had no doubt changed their opinion of me. I was no longer as devout as I was and was clearly bringing others along with me. After the training, they slowly and inexplicably started to stop calling me by my spiritual name. Every now and then I would hear, “Amber” rather than “Siri Lakshmi.” It was gradual and subtle, but I noticed, and this caused me to feel mixed emotions of betrayal and a desire to do better in order to be put back into their good graces. I know now that they did this on purpose. To make me beg for forgiveness and work my mind, body, and soul down to the bone and sinew even more than ever. After weeks of this blatant change in their way of treating me, I decided, finally, to leave, staying until the end only to fulfill the debt of the training “gifted” to me through hours and hours of seva.
At the end of the training there was a small ceremony where each individual walked up to the small stage, was given a flower and a file folder with their certificate, everyone clapped, I was now officially a Kundalini Yoga teacher. Something I had wanted to be since high school. But as I walked up toward my teachers, people I have allowed to guide and control my life for 10 years, I felt hollow inside. I couldn’t muster a smile, or even truly look them in the eye. I had officially been brought into the ranks of those brainwashing the students into believing this horrible man was a mystical god and I wanted nothing to do with it. I would sooner disappear into thin air than teach any of this!
This incredible “technology,” the “yoga of awareness.” This is hogwash. We know now that he combined two already established forms of yoga and then threw in his own made up poses and breathing techniques for good measure. Sikhs don’t practice yoga or meditation anywhere in the world, and Kundalini yoga is not real. He bastardized multiple world religions for his own financial and personal gain, and it disgusts me. But what disgusts me more is that I fell for it. Hard.
I worked my body to the bone, I got little to no sleep, my weight began to waste away as I was eating little and exercising like crazy. Moving my body in ways that I now know did nothing but make me high as a kite in order to be further manipulated. There were times, many times, I was unable to drive after a kriya and had to sit and drink “Yogi Tea” (one of his many money making schemes that still exists today) in the garden to bring myself back to reality.
*****
It hurt as she brushed it. At times I felt the hair pull out from the root. I had brushed it more than once before I left the house, but it re-tangled quickly. There was no stopping it. So often times I actually wouldn’t even bother, leaving the house with a matted, and broken, crown. She reassured me that it was behaving better than I thought it was.
She started in the front as I asked for something different, bangs. I wanted a complete transformation. I could feel each piece hit the top of my feet, just after the sound of scissors cutting through the strands. Looking at the curled wet hair sitting on the counter, she sat there on purpose. “There it is. Would you like to keep some?” “No. Let it go.”
Every snip was intense. I could feel it all the way into my skull, seeping into the section of the brain controlling memory. Electrically creating snaps of recollection. Those times where I felt loved. Of times where I had breakthroughs. There were good memories but really, if I was being honest with myself, more sad ones.
The music was random. Each time the hair dryer turned off there was a different song always unrelated in genre and style to the last. I frequently brushed the little specks of sprinkled cut hair off my nose and cheeks. The ends pulled as she brushed them. I watched edges tangle up in her hand, though she never seemed annoyed or judgmental. She was happy to help.
As they hit the floor I saw them curl. I did think they were kind of beautiful, the backdrop, a floor that once displayed the end of others hair swept up into the filled dustpan sitting right next to my brown messenger bag.
The years of not cutting my hair due to faith hindered the health and strength of it. And for many years it helped me through intense nightmarish situations and celebrated the good times. The things that in many ways the village allowed to happen and even caused to happen to me. They were superficially supportive. While also holding me back significantly.
The longer I stayed the more devout I got. The more devout I got the more I fell apart at the ends.
*****
The encouragement and support I received at the beginning of my time at the village made me feel in many ways that I had an obligation to be perfect. A word they always told me to stay away from, but in the end, was expected of me. I felt like I couldn’t make a mistake. I felt I was being judged at every turn. Others had left just before me. Realizing before me the pressure involved and wanting out. When they would leave, I defended the village with all I had, saying “look how much they’ve done for us.” Only to realize not too long after what those people were talking about. What, really, I had been in denial about for quite some time.
It was difficult for me to leave because of all the work I had put in and the friendships I had made along the way. Because I did not live at the 3HO ashram I was free to go without much fanfare though I did have to do so without telling anyone, because they would have indeed used their powers over me to try to convince me to stay. And I am confident to this day, that I would have stayed longer had they got their claws into me in those last days.
I did go back a couple of times to practice the yoga to try to improve my stability and strength after a traumatic ankle injury, and they did not treat me the same way. They were cold, distant, they acted uncomfortable that I was in the room, there were whispers as they looked in my direction, and they definitely no longer called me by my spiritual name. The first thing I heard upon entering the door was, “Amber?” Proof I, thankfully, was fully cut off from the village and will not be welcomed back.
People referred to us often as a cult. The kooky people of the yoga world I once heard. The teachings resonated with me for 10 years. Though as time went on, and I started to question things, the more unhappy I was and the more questions I had. The longer my hair, the thinner the edges the more breakage and the eventual cut. I was done.
It has been 9 years since I left, and I have not fully recovered. Every time I believe that I have gotten passed certain things, something hits that pain button, and I am brought right back to it again. It is 4:21 am and I haven’t slept because I cannot stop thinking about the 10 years I spent in a cult after watching a vivid and detailed tell-all documentary that maybe I shouldn’t have watched. I was shook to my very essence listening to the testimony of women who had been sexually assaulted by their spiritual leader from the time they were children. I had told myself I was only almost in a cult, or maybe just cult adjacent, but no, no. I was indeed fully, 100 percent in a cult for 10 years. The entirety of my late teens and most of my 20s. And I have to live with the fact that I supported all of that nonsense, financially, with my body, and with my heart. I quite literally gave them my very soul to influence.
It makes me feel weak and easily manipulated. But honestly, I am none of those things. I was an innocent teenager, having gone through years of abuse as a child, looking for any kind of community I could find, and I had attached myself to my mentors, Mr. and Mrs. Robinson (who have since left as well, due to the atrocities committed by the guru), to such a degree that I was obsessed, and would have done anything they told me to do.
This was not my fault wholeheartedly. I just needed acceptance, and I found it. I went through years of therapy and to this day still attend weekly sessions and have learned to finally love myself enough to not have that intense need for love and belonging anymore. I found it in myself, my wife, and my loved ones. I am happy without an abusive, manipulative community. I survived.
*****
The end result, I was told, made me look like a completely different person. I couldn’t stop feeling, looking, and playing with my new hair. My new self. I notice the natural color of my hair goes from dark to light as it spreads down. Dark roots, split ends.
