Citation:
Khalsa, Nirinjan. 2023.“Healthy Happy Holy? Harm and Healing in Sikh Dharma's Kundalini Yoga Community”. in Uses and Abuses of Power in Alternative Spiritualities. Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Abstract:
Abstract: In January 2020, women came forward detailing sexual misconduct and other abuses by Yogi Bhajan (b.1929-d.2004), the spiritual teacher of the "Healthy Happy Holy" (3HO) community of Kundalini Yoga/Sikh Dharma practitioners. Through my scholarship and lived experience raised in this community, this talk will address the ways in which current and former members are now grappling with the contradictions between "the teacher" and "the teachings," finding community online to share their stories and address wider systems of abuse, appropriation, discrimination, and silencing. The second generation are now going through a reparations process due to their own traumatic experiences of child separation at young ages, sent to live with other families and to boarding school in India where many abuses occurred. This talk examines the path forward by looking to the varied responses within this community and by other communities who have gone through their own processes of reconciliation and restorative justice.Presenter bio: Nirinjan Kaur Khalsa-Baker, Ph.D. is Senior Instructor, Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles where she served as Acting Director of Graduate Yoga Studies (2019-2020) and Clinical Professor of Sikh & Jain Studies (2015-2018). Nirinjan was born into the 3HO Sikh Dharma community and studied Sikh drumming from a 13th generation exponent who honored her as its first female exponent. Her scholarship examines Sikhi through the lenses of embodied practice, pedagogy, philosophy, mysticism, ethics, identity, gender, and decolonization. Nirinjan currently serves as co-chair of the Sikh Studies Unit at AAR and on the editorial board for Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory.
Presenter affiliation: Loyola Marymount University