The Many Lifetimes of Krishna Kaur, Part 1

When I first heard Krishna’s new release ‘After Many Lifetimes,’ I couldn’t help wonder what Krishna’s life was like before she heard the call of following a spiritual path. We all know her as a treasured Kundalini Yoga teacher, one of the most loving and wise grandmothers, but who was Krishna before?

We had an opportunity to have a wonderful, rich and deep conversation with her about her story. She was born Thelma Oliver and grew up in a large family with a vibrant home life. When she was a little girl, she remembers music always being present in her life. Her father, Cappy Oliver, played trumpet with Lionel Hampton’s band, and her mother was a singer, dancer and more until she fully dedicated her life to her children.

Of her childhood, Krishna said, “We always sang. We sang when we were doing the dishes. We sang when we were setting the table for dinner. We sang when we were sitting on the back porch. We just never stopped singing. We just always sang. Once we were singing so loud, my mother told us we had to stop all this singing because we were disturbing the neighbors. So we stopped. No singing when we were doing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen for three or four nights. And suddenly the neighbors showed up at our house asking what happened. They said the kids are not singing anymore: We miss their singing. So we went out on the porch and stood outside and sang our hearts out. We always had three-part harmonies. When we traveled, we sang in the car. When we went camping, when we went to my grandmother’s house… we just sang.”

Krishna also remembers loving to dance from a very young age. She recalls, “I wanted to dance all my life. My mother said that at the age of five, I was teaching ballet to the neighborhood kids even though I had no idea what I was doing. I’d never had a class of ballet until I was 14 years old. I’d seen pictures that inspired me, and something told me I would love ballet, so I started teaching it. I didn’t have my first professional dance class until I was 14 years old. At that point my body had already formed and shaped, so it wasn’t an easy style of dance for me. I couldn’t do all the things the other dancers could do, but I could out-dance everybody in class because I was so enthusiastic and dedicated to doing it.”

Her love and dedication for music and dance opened a wonderful path for her. Some years later, Krishna, studied dance with Jenny Ligon and became a lead dancer in her company. Eventually, she traveled to Paris and started doing choreography for theatre. She traveled and studied, taking all kinds of lessons to work on her skills, including traveling to take classes in Cuba, which created the foundation of her career as solo dancer.

“I actually was dancing in LA in a show called Fly Black Bird that was put together by two UCLA professors. One was the piano player in my dance class at UCLA. Some scouts came looking for dancers for a big New York, Broadway musical. I auditioned and got the understudy role of one of the leading roles. The person I was understudying was Nichelle Nichols.”

Some years later, Krishna auditioned with Bob Fosse for Sweet Charity, which played for a year and a half on Broadway. By that time, she had worked on her voice, her singing, and her acting, taking her to the next step toward her goal of becoming a triple threat performer who could dance, sing, and act on stage, in film, and on television where she performed in movies like “Black Like Me” and “Pawnbroker” with Rod Steiger. Some time later, she had her own TV show, where she played herself, called, ‘The Thelma Oliver Show’ where as a single young woman she shared stories about her daily life in song and dance.

“It was a very healthy show, with a really positive, spiritual message at the end, a good thought for the day.” Parents really enjoyed her as a show was one the whole family could enjoy together. Even though it only had a handful of episodes taped, they played reruns for a couple of years after that. “I had sort of made it.”

But despite her success, Krishna started questioning her purpose in life and her beliefs. The spiritual search was starting to call at her door.

“I was starting to search, and ask myself ‘What do I really believe? What do I know about God and the Divine? What do I really understand? What’s real? What’s not real? What makes sense? What doesn’t make sense?’ I was questioning a lot of things.”

This search inspired her to start meditating, and she began exploring the Yoruba religion. “I was searching and I started learning one of the sacred African religions. One afternoon, I did something completely out of character, and I don’t know why. I was in a bookstore with a friend of mine, and I saw the back of a man’s head, and something said I needed to know that person. So, I just went up to him and said, ‘I am supposed to know you.’ He was shocked, as you might imagine. But eventually he and his wife, Flora, became my mentors, guiding me through many interesting and, for me, unheard of spiritual practices and understandings. It was all very new and sometimes confusing for me. But I listened, and I followed, and I tried to understand it all. The same voice that told me I was to know that man continued to guide my way along this search for how I was to worship God.”

Krishna traveled to Africa looking for answers. She spent one year traveling through four different African countries, searching for meaning in her life and the heart of what her spirit was yearning for.

“When I came back to the US, I knew I had learned a lot in Africa, but I hadn’t found my way to worship God. I decided that I was not just a child of Africa, I was certainly not just a child of the United States, but I was a child of the Universe, and I let it go with that, and I found peace with that.”

After her long journey through Europe and Africa, she came back to the US and visited her brother who was living in the mountains of Colorado. During her visit, he invited her to join him at a big event called the “Holy Man’s Jam” in Boulder.

“There was a large group of famous yogis sitting around, the field was full of people doing cat & cow, and my brother jumped down and started doing it. I thought, if he’s doing it, I should do it too. When I did it, it just blew my mind! It felt awesome. After that first experience, I started hiking down the mountain from where I was living with my brother, every evening to take the yoga classes.”

Soon after that, Krishna met a woman, Deborah, who taught her how to do the morning sadhana practice, which she practiced every morning. “Deborah was going to Santa Fe to learn to do massage, and I thought, well, I am going to go too. So, after Deborah left, I hitchhiked down to Santa Fe to join her.

In Santa Fe, I found the Conscious Cookery where Deborah worked in the restaurant in exchange for staying in the Ashram. I followed her there as well.

The Ashram was a large open bare piece of land. It was in Santa Fe, but it was just off a main road where there was nothing, just a big field. We slept and lived together in a huge, greasy circus tent, women, men, children, singles, we were all in this tent. Right outside this tent there was enough flat, cleared land where we would do sadhana in the cold mornings, on the cold ground.”

Krishna’s journey to find her spiritual home continues... Read the next part of her journey coming soon.

Krishna Kaur’s single ‘After Many Lifetimes’ was inspired by her journey in search of her spirit’s purpose. 

Listen to After Many Lifetimes now.