Talk:Kundalini yoga/Archive 1

Update and edit
I have updated this article and put the original content under the heading called The Kundalini Yoga technology. I still think this particular section has too much of a personal/biographic tonality, and I think it would benefit from a different or more professional tonality in order to make it more fitting as an encyclopedic entry. Hawol--129.241.94.253 13:27, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

NPOV
Having studied it more closely I think the section called "The Kundalini Yoga technology" needs a thorough re-write in order to make it more neutral. I shall look into the matter. Hawol --129.241.94.253 14:46, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Removing NPOV
I have now rewritten the disputed section, added some new material, and added more neutrality to the article by deleting sentences with a biographical bias. I hope I have not offended the orginal contributor in any way as my intention was not to act as an editorial judge but just to add more neutrality and academical scholarship to the article. --Hawol 11:08, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Interrelations
Does anybody know anything worth contributing about the relationship between Kundalini Yoga and other Yoga practitioners? Am I right in getting the impression that Kundalini yoga is seen as sort of edgy or heterodox by, say, Hatha yoga types? QuartierLatin1968 01:39, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Reply
A contribution explaining the relationship between Kundalini Yoga and other disciplines of Yoga would definitely improve this article. I am not so well-informed about Yoga as to comment upon wether Kundalini Yoga is considered more edgy or heterodox by practitioners of other yoga-disciplines. All I know is that many teachers of meditation (within genuine lineages) warns their students about the hardships and pitfalls of contemplative practice, and I believe that Kundalini Yoga is no exception from this warning. Many commentators express that it usually takes years of preparation, a well-defined cultural context, and access to a credible teacher to help a student become stable in a contemplative practice.

--Hawol 13:47, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Merge with Kundalini-article
Kundalini yoga should be merged with Kundalini, which it already shares a lot, then maybe separate out the parts that are specific to the yoga practices

See below - If Kundalini Yoga is copyrighted by the 3HO it is like a brand name assembled from 2 non-brand words. I think this article should probabaly be under the same rules that commercial articles are.

Old Cleanup Archive

 * Taken from the old Cleanup entry…Archived by HopeSeekr of xMule (Talk) 01:02, 9 August 2005 (UTC)


 * kundalini yoga - needs much work: underwikified, more external links and references than article!

"Kundalini Yoga" was not copyrighted by the 3HO organization. This is a misconception. They actually copyrighted "Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan". Gurugordon (talk) 01:23, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

I am also puzzled by the Tummo Reiki reference at the top of the links, which is a relatively recent organization. There are many different types of Tummo and Reiki, and many Kundalini teachers. If you are going to advertise one then advertise them all.

Recent contribution needs re-articualation and documentation
I have removed most of the recent contributions to this article submitted by user:Guruka. The parts that have not been removed have been re-articulated in order to conform to wikipedia guidelines. Although the contributions might be said contain valid information from a Yogic practicioners perspective, they could not be said to have a neutral point of view. Also, most of the claims put forward regarding the health benefits of yoga are unsupported by bibliographical references. I would however be willing to re-include some of these passages if they could be supported by documented studies. The spiritual point of view articulated by user:Guruka is of course a highly valid point of view, since Kundalini Yoga is fundamentally a spiritual discipline. I do however believe that it is imortant to maintan encyclopedic tonality and source-critical assessment so that articles can be appreciated by a wide range of readers. Terms such as "universal Self", "highest consciousness", "prana-sub-atomic energy" have considerable ontological dimensions that needs to be elaborated more clearly, and preferably related to socio-cultural and socio-religious contexts, before they are comprehensible to a modern reader. I hope this makes sense.

--Hawol 16:53, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Clean up
I have tried to clean up the article up a bit in order to make it more comprehensive. The section on medical research has been expanded. References that are not cited in the article has been removed from the bibliography. The article still needs a lot of work. Whether the article should be merged with the kundalini-article still remains unclear. I believe that the article, in the future, might gain enough internal consistency to be able to stand alone. On the other hand, a merger might lead to a more economical presentation of the subject of Kundalini. Time will show.

--Hawol 13:48, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

More editing
I have removed some features of the article that were problematic from a source-critical point of view, for example the term 'Yoga of Awareness' (origin of the term is undocumented), the association of kundalini with sudden inspiration and the ability to complete complicated tasks easily (also undocumented) and how the effects of kundalini yoga vary with each practitioner (also undocumented). I do not mean to be overtly critical. I am aware of the fact that the practice of Kundalini Yoga has a broad range of important subjective dimensions that can not easily be documented. I do however think that the article would benefit from a more precise location of the information that is contributed. Otherwise the information might merely be reduced to the status of hearsay (i.e a mixture of truth and untruth passed around by word of mouth).--Hawol 11:27, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Missing title
Message to contributor of the reference Sat Bachan Kaur (2004). Please include this title in the reference-section.--Hawol 10:35, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Removing section on Simplified Kundalini Yoga
Although relevant to the article I have removed the section on Simplified Kundalini Yoga because it highlights a particular spiritual organization, and because it doesn't include any reference matarial the the information that is contributed. --Hawol 10:46, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

More NPOV
I have removed this section because it is not written from a neutral point of view. It makes claims that are not verified by a credible written source.

''The practice of kundalini yoga is universal and non-denominational. Though it has been attacked by some spiritual leaders in other religions (notably Christian), this claim can be readily dismissed as a general misunderstanding of yoga's purpose. Yoga is a deep, spiritual tradition that brings stability and peace of mind to the individual.''

--Hawol 17:01, 19 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep up the good work. There is still absolutely no medical citation backing up any of the physiological claims, can you assist in finding references to "Kundalini Syndrome" in a medical textbook?  All of the claims are being made by psychologists, not physicians.  This could be called quackery unless it can be put into a more clear context. Buddhipriya 19:37, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

-- January 9, 2008: Yes, please, as someone who's practiced Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan (http://www.3ho.org/), I've never heard of "Kundalini Syndrome". On the other hand, we were always taught to do the sets exactly the way they were taught. Generally a set will start low, in the core, and work it's way up the body. I've since run into people who seem to do a "mix and match" method where their sets have similar poses, but totally different (and seemingly incorrect) orders. Given the ease with which things are marketed these days, and the growth of hybrid yogas where people with some experience in various forms try and merge them, perhaps people have gotten themselves into trouble. I know Gurucharan of 3HO has been working with MIT and medical groups to get scientific data on changes that can be produced by doing yoga. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.243.36.88 (talk) 05:25, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

number of chakras
i only want to add that there is a discrepancy between 'kundalini yoga' and 'kundalini' article in the number of chakras. it is generally understood that there are 7 chakras along the length of the body yet the 'kundalini' article acknowledges only 6.


 * Sometimes the sahasrara is not counted, so the same 6 + 1 are common. In some texts you may find additions and in very old Buddhist texts you may find less. --Simon D M (talk) 16:30, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

There is also a discrepancy between the Indian set of Chakras and the Oriental set. The Indian set has no Solar Plexes Chakra. While the Oriental set merges the Root Chakra with the Sexual Chakra. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.83.9.107 (talk) 05:26, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Edit war
It's getting a bit old - maybe new ground would be covered by moving it to the talk page. Failing that we could get some admin involved perhaps. K2709 (talk) 12:55, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Sometimes the admins just show up uninvited :-/
 * I've blocked User:Fdl234 for 24 hours for edit-warring - since this seems to be just one editor edit-warring against consensus, I am not blocking any other editor at this point. However, this does not resolve anything; it merely prevents the disruption to the article. As suggested above, I urge editors to begin a discussion here rather than attempting to resolve issues by reverting. Edit summaries are a good way of recording what you did, or why you did it, but a bad way of resolving disputes. (For some better ways, see WP:Dispute resolution.) S HEFFIELD S TEEL TALK 17:53, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

First item in the edit war
OK. Let's do it here. One by one. The original article has this:

"Sovatsky (1998) describes 'kundalini yoga' as an energetically guided yoga. This means that the discipline is informed by the Hindu understanding of pranotthana, or "intensified life-energy". Pranotthana is sometimes thought to lead to spontaneous psycho-motor manifestations which, according to Yogic hermeneutics, might be interpreted as signs of psycho-spiritual growth and bodily maturation."

What I did is to point out what is missing in the reference. In Sovatsky's book, it says "intensified life-energy". I pointed out that there no measurement in terms of calorie about the "energy" by adding the sentence "But, there is no measurement how many calories a kundalini generates"

Technicality-wise, it is a hard fact, not speculation. It can be easily verified by counting to zero. If this is original research, then the standard is too low.

Technical-writing-wise, the meaning of "energy" is a word in physics which represents something measurable in terms if calories, BTUs and Joules. There is no reason to not allow other editor to point out that the word "energy" is vaguely used. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fdl234 (talk • contribs) 03:14, 22 January 2009 (UTC)


 * No you don't point it out, this is not a forum. See WP:NOT.  You rewrite it, delete it, or wikilink to another article that explains the term.  The word energy might be interpreted several ways here.  Also, this article is about a topic that has largely been unexplored through western science, that seems to be made clear in the article, so need to further point our that definitions here don;t necessarily match those of western science.TheRingess (talk) 04:18, 22 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with Ringess, these additions are not helpful. Gatoclass (talk) 07:18, 22 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I'd also like to point out that you are not stating facts, for your statements to be classified as a fact, someone somewhere at some time would have had to make an instrument for measuring kundalini, tested it and failed, then had their results peer reviewed and published before we could definitively say that there might not possibly be any kundalini. Please don't make blanket statements such as "there is no measurement...", statements like these can never be fully proven.  For example, even if someone attempts 100 hundred experiments that attempt to prove that something is impossible, they might have missed the 101st experiment that would have proven the impossible to be completely possible.TheRingess (talk) 08:01, 22 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I think the basic point is that he didn't provide a source for his statements. You can't just make a statement like "there is no measurement how many calories a kundalini generates" without providing a source. Who said there is no caloric measurement? You can't just assume there is none because you personally have never heard of such a test. Gatoclass (talk) 08:14, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree wholeheartedly.TheRingess (talk) 08:20, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

For the above comments, here is my responses:

>> You rewrite it, delete it, or wikilink to another article that explains the term.


 * I did not rewrite anything. I just copied.


 * My point exactly, Wikipedia is not a forum, if a term is not clear, you expand upon it.TheRingess (talk) 17:52, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

>> peer reviewed and published


 * How many of the references in the articles is rigorously peer reviewed?


 * Therefore we should not add more unreferenced unsourced statements we should find sources for the article or delete statements that have no sources.TheRingess (talk) 17:52, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

>>The word energy might be interpreted several ways


 * Agree. But, which way? Why not specify it? Or, just mentione that it is not specified.


 * And another editor has subsequently gone and disambiguated the term.TheRingess (talk) 17:52, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

>> he didn't provide a source for his statements. >>You can't just assume there is none because you personally have never heard


 * OK. I rewrite the statement to be: But, in Sovatsky (1998), there is no measurement how many calories a kundalini generates  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fdl234 (talk • contribs) 17:00, 22 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Not relevant anymore as we have now disambiguated the term to make it clear. BTW please sign your comments with 4 ~'s.TheRingess (talk) 17:52, 22 January 2009 (UTC)


 * OK, I take "Not relevant anymore" by removing it from the article as you have agreed that "energy" is a vague description of kundalini.Fdl234 (talk) 00:36, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * That statement is no more or less true than "At no point does Sovatsky (1998) mention that kundalini is actually a type of pasta". I could put any falsehood or nonsense I wanted in there and it would still be just as true and just as non-encyclopedic.  The way to ensure your words endure longer than my hilarious pasta joke is to anchor them in the words of authorities.  Given kundalini's millennia-spanning history it seems unlikely that your suspicions have never been formally articulated before, why not search a little?  K2709 (talk) 17:10, 22 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Disagree. Pasta is not used to describe kundalini. Energy is. You can search as you want. I can only to count to zero.Fdl234 (talk) 00:36, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * This misses the point. I too can count to zero, so know that Sovatsky really DOES mention my much more important idea (that kundalini is pasta) zero times.  That zero is a FACT, check yourself if you don't believe me.  Now, suppose I feel strongly that other people must be warned of this biased neglect of the pasta interpretation.  Do you think I should lace the article with spaghetti and then demand that everyone searches for anti-pasta quotes to refute it?  No, you don't.  I'm using just the same flawed logic as you though.  Please, go and find some *informative* references so we can all learn something, leaving me free to look up how many calories pasta has.  K2709 (talk) 12:45, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Energy has been used so frequently in the references of this article to describe kundalini, there is no reason and no way to hide. The editors shall take the responsibility to point out the vagueness. If there is no further comments in 2 days, I will add a separate paragraph at the end of the section, or someone can do the trick instead. After K2709 search a little and find something, he can replace it. Fdl234 (talk) 00:36, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Please don't add any more original research or vague speculation, this is not a forum. Original research will get deleted.TheRingess (talk) 04:25, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Don't worry. I will go for arbitration.Fdl234 (talk) 03:25, 28 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I understand that the article links energy to Energy (spirituality) which makes it quite clear that what is being discussed is not energy as used in modern thermodynamics and engineering, but a spiritual concept. In an attempt to forestall a potential unproductive discussion, I am now going to assert that no reliable source has been provided (or ever seen, for that matter) that links kundalini with calories, watts, joules, ergs, BTUs, or any other scientific unit used to measure energy, work, or power - and that on that basis, the article should not mention them, and this issue should really be called resolved.  S HEFFIELD S TEEL TALK 14:28, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The most popular and intuitive understanding of "energy" is calorie. If the energy in the article is different, it shall be clarified and/or quoted. How about I add the following sentence:


 * In this article, energy means spirituality, not energy used in thermodynamics, and energy flow means spiritual-energy-flow. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fdl234 (talk • contribs) 17:50, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Good luck getting consensus support for that proposal. Having read the article, I don't see any need for it. The text makes perfectly clear that this is a spiritual, not scientific, topic.  S HEFFIELD S TEEL TALK 18:15, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't know that there is any fundamental difference between "physical" and "spiritual" energy. However, I think Fd is making a simplistic assumption here. When we talk about energy in a human context, we are not just talking about the amount of energy which might be available in a caloric sense, but also its organization. Case in point: you go to sleep because you are so tired you can't function any more. You wake up in the morning refreshed and ready for the new day. In a caloric sense, you only expended more energy during sleep, so you should wake up with less energy than you went to bed with. But clearly, that doesn't happen.


 * What has happened during your sleep is that the organism has somehow reorganized itself so that you bounce out of bed in the morning with more energy than you went to bed with. This can't be explained in any sort of caloric sense. Likewise with other manifestations of what people commonly refer to as "spiritual" energy. It's a reorganization of the available energy, not necessarily an increase in the overall amount. Gatoclass (talk) 18:48, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
 * In Webster's, physical energy and spiritual energy are two different things. As SheffieldSteel just said:


 * the article links energy to Energy (spirituality) which is not energy as used in modern thermodynamics. Fdl234 (talk) 03:25, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

OK. Finally found where the "energy" came from


 * "Hatha Yoga ......the purification of the mind (ha), and prana, or vital energy (tha)."

What does that "tha" really mean in Sanskrit?????????

The wording of this article fails any tech writing test. Just look at this sentence:


 * An eighth chakra exists in Kundalini Yoga, which is the electromagnetic field, sometimes called "aura."

Is aura a spiritual electromagnetic field? Biological electromagnetic field? Live electromagnetic field? Vital electromagnetic field? or, it is just not an electromagnetic field? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fdl234 (talk • contribs) 03:41, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Howdy guys, The articles, Kundalini, Kundalini Yoga and Kundalini syndrom should complement each other or be joined. There is just way too much of duplicate information.Atmapuri (talk) 17:18, 19 May 2009 (UTC)