The Owner’s Manual for the Human Body: Revving Up Your Inner Engines!

I have recently started teaching more Kundalini Yoga classes. Since I learned never to teach anything I haven’t experienced, I’ve been doing a lot of new kriyas in my living room lately.

There’s nothing better than tuning in, waking up my whole body with some asana, pranayam and meditation, and getting a good sweat on top of it!

The manual I’ve been getting most of my challenging kriyas from recently is a classic: Owner’s Manual for the Human Body.

Here’s why I love this manual:

1. Mom Said I Didn’t Come with a Manual: And yet here it is. Owner’s Manual for the Human Body is written like a car manual, with section titles like “Engine Overhaul—Maintaining Our Organs.” When most of us take our car in for servicing we have very little idea what actually gets done to the car. Similarly, when we go to a doctor and get a prescription, we don’t really understand how else to reestablish balance in our body. In the Aquarian Age, we can perform “Routing Maintenance” on our body vehicle (i.e. body) all by ourselves. I did come with an instruction manual after all!

2. Learning About ME: Those among us who were taught about keeping our bodies healthy in school can count themselves lucky (that is, if any of the information turned out to actually be true). I can only imagine how much my nervous system would have benefited from laying off the caffeine and breathing a little deeper in college. And I might have needed less post-academia recovery time if I had been inspired to do just one kriya from this manual. Anyway, the time is now!

3. The Current Cure: I love opening up this yoga manual and being able to find the perfect kriya for my current state of being. If I am feeling overly tired, I might try sparking my glandular system with the “Glandular System Tune Up.” If my digestion is out of whack, there is the “Art of Equilibrium of the Stomach.” It’s empowering!

4. The Side Notes: This manual not only has fantastic (and super challenging) kriyas. Each kriya has a side panel with a relevant quote or explanation from Yogi Bhajan. For example, you’ll learn in the “Relieving Inner Anger” set that all skin diseases are the result of inner anger.

5. A Teacher’s Best Friend: Teaching a difficult kriya can be hard. Personally, I feel compassion for my students and it’s hard for me to watch them struggle. Teaching difficult kriyas, like the one called “Optimum Health” where you hold half wheel pose for six and a half minutes, was really challenging for me at first. However, in doing so, I am truly understanding the teacher’s oath: “I am not a woman. I am not a man. I am not a person. I am not myself. I am a teacher.” It’s helping me to pay less attention to how much my students like me, and more attention to how much my students are benefitting from the yoga. It’s not personal. It’s yoga.

For these and many more reasons, I highly encourage you to add this manual to your collection.