In this episode of Out of the Clouds, host Anne Mühlethaler explores the transformative world of Kundalini yoga with accomplished yoga teacher Kia Miller.
In addition to Kundalini, Kia also teaches meditation, breathwork, and Vinyasa yoga. In their conversation, Anne and Kia dive right into Kia’s meditation, grounding and breathwork practices, before Kia recounts how she has blended her beloved Ashtanga Vinyasa with Kundalini tradition to form the unique Radiant Body Yoga school.
With an emphasis on the power of breathwork and energy coherence, Kia shares how she evolved to discover these practices and how they harmonise the energies of heart and mind, ultimately offering a balanced approach to managing the stresses of modern life. Kia's journey reveals the profound impact that yoga can have on building self-trust and presence.
Kia opens to Anne about her personal evolution from an athlete that was disconnected from deeper self-awareness to a yoga teacher who embodies authenticity and presence. She discusses how Kundalini yoga ignited a spark within her, leading to a newfound intimacy with herself and a conscious way of living. Kia found inspiration and support through her teachers Guru Singh — whom she calls a wayseer — and Guru Chan. Kia explains how she found a path to connect genuinely with the present moment, shedding her old skin metaphorically, and became the teacher she is today.
Kia talks in depth about the spiritual awakening that is facilitated by Kundalini yoga in focusing energy at the pineal gland. Kia likens the pineal body to a radio receiver that, through dynamic movement, breathwork and meditation, can release powerful chemicals, facilitating deeper spiritual experiences. Kia tells Anne how Kundalini kriyas (a specific sequence of physical actions that work toward a particular outcome) help shift awareness from a "me-centric" to a "we-centric" consciousness, enhancing interconnectedness and making infinite potential accessible.
Grounding practices are another focal point of the conversation, with Kia emphasising to Anne the importance of breathwork, core kriyas and energetic field practices for maintaining energy and stability. She shares her secret superpower of deep empathy and highlights how food, nature walks, and connection contribute to radiance and happiness. The episode concludes with Anne and Kia making reflections on the essence of happiness found within connection, reinforcing the idea that true happiness lies within.
A compelling discussion about self-discovery, finding the source of inner power, and our interconnectedness, with a devoted yogini and accomplished teacher. Happy listening!
Out of the Clouds website: https://outoftheclouds.com/
Out of the Clouds on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_outoftheclouds
The Mettā View website: https://avm.consulting/metta-view
Anne on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annvi/
Anne on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@annvi
Anne on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anne-v-muhlethaler/
Find out more about Kia and Radian Body Yoga on her website https://www.kiamiller.com/
Kia Miller Yoga on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kiamilleryoga/
Upcoming retreats and events https://offerings.kiamiller.com/rby-events
200h teacher training https://offerings.kiamiller.com/rby-200-hour
Sri Sadhana Retreat in India https://offerings.kiamiller.com/sri-sadhana-retreat
Take classes online with Kia via Glo.com https://www.glo.com/teachers/kia-miller
Find many free practices and talks on Kia’s YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@KiaMiller
Discover Kia’s interview on the Finding Harmony Podcast for more on her childhood, ashtanga and more. https://harmonyslater.com/finding-harmony-podcast/2022/kia-miller
Kia’s Miller’s choice for what song best represents her is a mantra, Waheguru
Pandit Rajmani Thiginayak’s book ‘At the Eleventh Hour’
00:05
Hi, hello, bonjour and namaste. This is Out of the Clouds, a podcast at the crossroads between business and mindfulness, and I'm your host, Anne V Muhlethaler. Today, I am delighted to be bringing you an interview with a wonderful yoga teacher called Kia Miller. I had the pleasure of being introduced to Kia's yoga style by my own teacher in 2019. So it's been a few years. I was then going through my own yoga teacher training. We were doing two weeks in June and two weeks in October. Training we were doing two weeks in June and two weeks in October, and in that middle summer period we were recommended a number of wonderful senior, experienced teachers to check out, and Kia was among them.
00:54
So Kia Miller teaches Kundalini Yoga, as well as meditation and breath work and Vinyasa Yoga. She has practiced with Ashtanga for many years and did her first 200 hours with the wonderful Annie Carpenter. I had the pleasure of dabbling in kundalini practices since 2019 and I delved into it more the following year, particularly the breath work during the dark and difficult times that we experienced in 2020. I personally found Kundalini Yoga to be a very balancing and reorienting practice. So Kia has been on my list of dream guests for Out of the Clouds because I really, really enjoy her teaching style and I'm fascinated about Kundalini Yoga. Because I really really enjoy her teaching style and I'm fascinated about Kundalini Yoga and this is an amazing opportunity to ask her all of the questions that I wanted to ask her. And while we do talk about a lot of things, what I need to tell you is that, instead of going with my planned questions because I do research before every interview Today we decided to ditch the questions and to simply go with the flow. Instead of starting where I normally do, where I ask all of my guests to tell me their story, their background. For that, I will supply you with some other links where you will be able to find out more about Keyers at Bringing in the Falkland Islands, our early days of modeling, etc. Etc.
02:26
So, as a result, this conversation has a natural flow and we move through yoga philosophy, her own experiences. We talk about energy upgrades, transformational breath work. Kia tells me about her teacher, guru Singh, whom she calls a way seer, a term I'd never heard before. We talk about connection to ourselves and building self-trust through kundalini yoga practice, as well as how she blends her favorite lineages, which earned the first nickname, ashtangalini before she created Radiant Body Yoga, with all of that entails. We discuss working from a discordant heart-mind connection and to bring it to a high state of coherence, and also how that translates what it means for our mental and physical energies and physical energies. Kia shares her views on the science and spirituality of yoga as a path to our inner selves and to elevating consciousness, which nowadays would effectively balance out the stresses of our modern life.
03:41
Now I must add that I had a couple of aha moments over the course of our conversation, so I'm really excited for you to listen to this conversation. Now, I must add that I had a couple of aha moments over the course of our conversation, so I'm really excited for you to listen to this conversation and see whether it also leaves you feeling inspired, as I was, to take to my mat and practice more Kundalini Yoga with Kia. And so, with that said, happy listening. Kia, it's such a pleasure to meet you. Thank you so much for being here and welcome to Out of the Clouds.
04:10
Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.
04:15
It's a real pleasure to have you in front of me, even though it's 2D, because I've been practicing with you through Glow since 2019. And yes, I was doing my yoga teacher training and we did a two-part two-week session in June and another two weeks in October with a teacher who is one of Annie Carpenter's trained teachers, called Susanna Faith.
04:44
Some people had less experience of various kinds of yogas and she'd said I'd like you to try some of these teachers on Glow, and she sent us to Marla Apt, Annie Carpenter and Kia Miller. I'm very grateful that she introduced me to Glow in that way, because I'm not sure I would have found you in any other way. Where am I finding you today?
05:07
Right now I'm in California. I'm in Topanga, I'm in the mountains outside of Los Angeles where I live. It's a little Eden up here. The saying in Los Angeles is that this is the best country. Living in LA, I have a farm across the street from me and I feel like I live up the mountain. So when I go into town I go down the mountain and it serves me well. I'm close to the ocean and yet I'm up the mountain.
05:37
That's wonderful, so I thought I was going to ask you, after being inspired, as I mentioned, with another conversation that I heard you have on a podcast called For Soul's Sake that I wasn't familiar with how am I finding the state of your soul today?
06:00
I feel delighted in my soul today, and that's because of many reasons, but it's because I took a deep dive, personal meditation week last week, and so I dedicated many hours to shifting my state, to overcoming the old me, to overcoming the old me.
06:32
I had that moment of deep relief spread through my body when I got to tune in deeply enough and expand myself enough that the constriction of my personality was released, and it's like the relief that flowed up through my body, like every cell going yes, thank you, now I can breathe. And I really got to reflect in that week just how much our dominant mental, emotional state is impacting our cellular energy, so much so that it can feel like our mind and emotions are literally holding our body and our cellular energy hostage, because it's this consistent, repetitive pattern of thinking and feeling that's unfolding, that is impacting the physiology of the body, everything that's being turned on or off hormone, wise, cellular energy, all of it. So I was having my own personal deep dive last week, and so my soul feels very freshly, restored in its rightful place.
07:43
That sounds like something I need. Can I ask you what kind of meditations were you practicing?
07:50
I was doing breath work, first to change my state. I was walking to change my state, and then I was doing internal focused meditation, sometimes through the chakras. Internal focused meditation, sometimes through the chakras, sometimes on one particular chakra or another, sometimes with mantra, sometimes not. So what's happened for me personally is nowadays, as I meditate, I get to use all of the techniques that I've studied and practiced for I don't know 25 years now, and so I am connecting to the moment, often intentionally, with what I will choose to use as my internal anchor or focus, but sometimes it's what arises in the moment that feels the most relevant, and actually I find a lot of juice that way.
08:45
I wonder do you feel like the techniques and the meditations, the breath techniques and the kriyas? Does it feel to you today, with the knowledge you have like?
09:00
a toolkit that you can pull from to support you. It is exactly that, For whatever, yeah, it's 100% a toolkit. This is what I stress when I lead my teacher trainings is that when we're teaching or sharing, we want to teach or share from our own direct experience, not just pass along a technique. And because I've been deeply, I've deeply invested my time and energy into these practices for so long, I really understand and have my direct experience of the different tools and when to use one versus another and in what environment, et cetera. And so that's yes, they are an incredible toolbox left by the most extraordinary beings who tapped into such levels of consciousness that they could share something that can lead you back to them or forward to them or present to them. However we want to look at that. I love that. I love that that space-time unfolding.
10:13
So anyway, yes, I'm so glad you said that because, at the back of my mind, before I sat down, I was listening to you earlier because I decided to listen to more podcasts today before speaking to you and I heard you speak to that point share from your lived experience, and I want to stress it because I think that often we can talk about concepts more than trying to find sometimes it is hard to find the words to explain our own lived experience, but I would love for you to share. For example, I was very curious to hear what was your first experience of yoga like. And I'll tell you why I'm asking you this because I was listening to you and Annie Carpenter and it's hilarious that, even though Annie is such a movement person like me, her first thing is it was shavasana, because I like to say that yoga had me at shavasana. So how?
11:12
about you you know, for me, my way of handling difficult emotions. I couldn't say exactly when that began probably my teenage years what it was to dissociate. So for me my first profound experience of yoga was actually through a shanga, and it was actually to get into my body, to feel my body, to be able to feel my muscles. Now I've been an athlete my whole life. I trumped so many records in my speed and high jump and long jump and all those things.
11:46
I had all of that, but that wasn't the same as coming present in my body with the breath. There was an intimacy that was missing. I knew how to dial in to extreme high performance out of my body, dial in to extreme high performance out of my body, but I didn't know at that point how to dial in and be at peace in my body, not in the way that I do today. Now, sure, when I was sitting on a horse, I could be one with the horse, one with nature, one with everything around me, and indeed that through those teenage years was my way of staying balanced. But off that horse in a city, when I started my modeling years, I didn't have that resource and so I wasn't really in my body connected. So that was the big learning for me Just get in the body, feel my muscles, learn to breathe properly, and it opened up a different experience.
12:55
I love the word you used, intimacy, because you'd think, as an athlete, that with that control and the learning and the capacity that you had to do what you did with your body, that you'd develop this connection. I also love the word dialing in. When did you get into breath work and breath practices energy?
13:28
well, I didn't get into breath work like you were referencing, like I feel you're referencing, like deep, transformational breath work. I didn't get into that until I arrived in guru singh's class at Yoga West in Los Angeles for Kundalini Yoga. I'd been doing already Ashtanga for a good 12 years by the time I met Kundalini Yoga and that was transformative from the get-go. It was extraordinary and it just it was like the spark that was needed to set my soul on fire, to help me to access a whole different level of authenticity, of presence, of inner power. It was the kriyas and the breath work within Kundalini Yoga that lit up my life and that's why I love to share them.
14:19
Because the practices work, it's undeniable. I have people after my teacher trainings do 90-day sadhana practices with certain techniques and then they write an essay to me and I love reading the essays and hearing all about their personal transformation and the echoes and just feeling the depths to which people go within their practice, the depths of intimacy they have with themselves. And then also, on the flip side, the struggles, the commonalities in the struggles, depending on our level of sensitivity, the things that are easy for us or hard for us, the things that are easy for us or hard for us, and just seeing how the practices have this extraordinary healing impact in everybody's lives, who really chooses to delve in in this way?
15:32
Tell me a bit about your teacher, because I don't know much about him, but I can feel that he had such an impact on you and in the way that you discovered Kundalini. Yes, guru Singh is so special. He's still a mentor to me today.
15:37
If I ever need to see something from a different perspective, when the ego is in charge, we don't realize it, but we have a limited perspective. Often when the ego is in charge, we think we very much have the right perspective and the full perspective. But when I need to see things from another perspective, a more holistic, not Kier-centric, I go to Guru Singh because he has a unique capacity to see things differently. He's edgy that way, not energetically edgy, but edgy in terms of how he sees things. He has been the one who has helped charter my course as an evolutionary human being, always pointing me to something that's just a little outside of my experience that I have to quest to move towards, because of his way of seeing things dimensionally, in such a vaster way than how I would ordinarily be seeing them. So he's one of those kinds of teachers that I think really he's a cosmic being and so he's dialed into thinking that's outside of the box of the average human being.
17:02
That sounds amazing. It's funny how, as you speak, you were saying edgy, and I could see what you meant. But it's funny because I had this sort of image of him on at the top of a how do you say this in uh, fallas like a cliff, but almost as if it was the the bow of a ship. So he sees way beyond because he's high on a cliff and we're somewhere else.
17:29
So this is the image that was coming up for me yes, that that is it, and I think we all need the way seers in our lives. We need those who have a greater perspective, and for me, when I first met Guru Singh, I needed to even know that there were people in the world like him, because what he did and the greater Kundalini Yoga community did is that through being in the community and under his and Gudicharan's mentorship, I really got to change my life up level. I learned a system of values, a way of being. I was within a very supportive community of people who were equally interested in consciousness and human potential and evolution and, ultimately, emergent consciousness, so that really fueled my capacity to transmute and transform a prior identity and really access a whole new way of being in life.
18:50
And starting to teach was a big part of that as well, because when you really sit in the teacher's seat, especially in the way that I've been trained, you are setting aside your personality and you are allowing yourself to meet the moment in full presence and respond to the moment and speak to the moment. And so I'm just so deeply grateful in my life that I stumbled upon the people, that I did that, whatever Punya, whatever I had in me, that was able to receive all this goodness, that I did get to receive what I did, and I'm so blessed to be able to share it now. I can't imagine what my life would be otherwise, or I can, and it isn't anywhere near as exciting would be otherwise, or I can and it isn't anywhere near as exciting.
19:48
I wanted to ask you because you were talking about two different Kiyas, two different identities so to speak?
20:01
Who was Kiyah then? Compared to who Kiyah is now Such a good question and as I look through my life and I think we can probably all do this we can see how many lives we've lived in the one and how there's an automatic process of shedding one skin, so to speak, which is like that theme of the snake shedding one skin when we're really ready to embody a new one. I went through a few of those, but that old Kia was very concerned about what people thought of her. She was already quite evolutionary in the way that she thought and was. She already engaged in lots of evolutionary habits. But there was still an underlying facet of her that was seeking approval and love and there was an aspect of her that had not yet found true self-trust and self-confidence. She had it, but not in a. She hadn't taken authority of that. She didn't, she hadn't allowed that to really take center seat.
21:11
So the evolution I had through the Kundalini practices was to really access that sense of intimacy into me. I see relationship with that source of inner power, inner knowing, the self-trust that is built through listening to the intuitive voice of wisdom and acting upon it, the courage that was being developed because I started to step out of the known into the unknown. I started to do things that were not what everyone else was doing and I had confidence in that. And I have to say, through that whole phase, especially as I was teaching Kundalini Yoga in a less than traditional way, gurdas Singh was always right beside me and he would just say to me, shaking his finger you do radiant body yoga, you do it. And he said if anyone has any issue with you, you tell them to call me. And he was like this I don't know wizard evolutionary being who was always there to affirm me, doing me like in the best way. And so, yes, really, really grateful that's beautiful.
22:37
I appreciate the the sequence that you described, talking about intimacy, connection to inner power, moving towards self-trust and self-trust being based on listening. There is no intimacy if there's no inner listening. Right, and then you talked about the courage to act upon the wisdom that you gain. If I'm correct from the story you're telling, one of the biggest acts of courage for you was to not teach Kundalini the classical way, but to merge it with vinyasa, with the practice close enough to Ashtanga in. How did it come to you? How did radiant body yoga come to you?
23:38
It was an outpouring from my own direct experience and practice. I would be in the Ashtanga room in the mornings with actually with my husband Tommy's teacher, guru Prem Singh, and Guru Prem and I would be, we were dedicated Ashtangis and then I would be practicing kundalini in the afternoon, or, yes, teaching in it in the afternoon, and then it just we would laugh and joke and say we were doing, oh, we're doing ashtangalini, and and then it just came from. It came from that. It came from my own love of vinyasa and kundalini and the understanding that really, in order to access the full potential of each of the kriyas on a physical, energetic level, you wanted your physical body to be ready for the kri. And so often in straight up classic Kundalini practices, I was being guided into a practice. Because I come from a stiff body originally, I was being guided into a practice that my body wasn't ready for and so I was much more prone to injury and struggle. So, just on the very practical level of, oh, let's get the body fully warmed up, the energy primed, the energetic channels primed, now let's drop into a Kriya, and now we start to charge those nadis, those channels, with a lot of a high voltage of energy. Now we get to stimulate the different energy centers, the chakras, the different nerve ganglia that create a shift in the physiological effect. Now we get to stimulate intensively the glandular system to change and upgrade whatever chemicals are in the body. And so it was just that that made the. It made the most sense for that level of preparation.
25:41
What I also found was there's a lot of people attracted to Kundalini yoga who love to live in the ethers and all the energy going up was taking them into the ethers and it was hard for them to find grounding and stability. So doing the practice and getting firmly rooted in the body first acts as an anchor then, so that when you do start to move the subtle energy and you move it quite powerfully you've already got an anchored base in your body. So then when you access these very elevated, expanded states of consciousness, you're more able to stabilize and integrate the energy. Otherwise you do all this energy it raises up, you open up, you feel the bliss, but then very quickly it dissipates and you're back at square one. Whereas when you've got the stability in your body and you build the energy and you start to stabilize it and you begin to be able to feel it because you're in your body more.
26:51
Stabilize it Now that energy is going to last you through the rest of the day, maybe the next day and the next day, and you can slowly start to build on your capacity to stabilize your consciousness in more and more expansive states. And to me, that's the journey of Kundalini Yoga. That's the evolutionary process, that's the awakening of kundalini, learning how to release energy from old patterns, stabilize it at a higher, coherent energetic state and then learn how to access that place over and over again until you can get a continuity of access to that elevated state. And then you refining and you keep refining and the journey goes on. So that's where it came from. For me was this personal experience and love of all the practices and need to stay in my body as I was moving high voltages of energy.
27:52
I'm so grateful that you explained it the way you did because, as I mentioned before we started recording, I did one of your practices this morning and at the end of the 30-minute practice you said if you can lie down for a few moments, and you said just something like this about stabilizing, and I felt quite tired. I've had a little bit of stress lately and so I decided to take you to follow your advice, and I lied back and I actually rested my shins on the chair next to my yoga mat and I stayed there for a long meditation for about 25 minutes. And this afternoon, as I was going around doing many things, I was reflecting on how much better I feel than I have felt the last few days, and obviously I am not saying this to you because you're here now. I haven't done a longer practice the last few days because I've hurt my ankle. It's recent, but I'm still in recovery.
29:00
It's been three weeks, so I've not done much yoga at all and the difference is palpable. And I was reflecting as well that my dog seems so settled today because I think he's a little baby mirror of my own state and I was thinking, god, you're so cute and chill today. And then I thought, oh, I'm so cute and chill today. Thank you, kia, I know what I'll be doing tomorrow morning, without a doubt.
29:32
I love that so much. You're right, our little furry friends they do. They're just direct reflection of the energy. There's so much intelligence in those beings. It's so wild to me how, as a species, as human beings, we have relegated certain states of consciousness to certain species of animals and yet this is so much more than we could possibly imagine. And yes, just to speak one last thing on the Shavasana experience, that relaxation afterwards. That's often when the big breakthroughs come, when you've done the effort toward liberation with your practice. But then you lie down and you just relax and every muscle relaxes in your body and your energy expands as the muscles relax and then the energy gets to stabilize, as it begins stabilizing. Sometimes you find a rush of energy moving from one part of your body to another, or a rush of a certain emotion that comes over you. And there's something about that moment when we lie down and we are in truly a state of receiving and there's no more doing, when magic can happen.
30:49
Oh God, the no more doing, yeah. I don't know the no more doing yeah. I don't know how previous generations or how humans operated in previous millennia, but it's true that it feels so. I feel like I always need to be doing. Apparently, it's the masculine in me that needs to plan, but it's possibly one of the reasons why I was interested in transformative breathwork and keen to try Kundalini. I'd love for you. I mean, how would you explain Kundalini in your words to someone who has never heard of it or is interested in a new yoga practice?
31:40
I would say that the crux of a kundalini practice is that it's designed to help you to access your inner potential and inner power. It's an evolutionary practice. It's something that you do when you know that you're ready to change and transmute and grow within yourself. The impetus of kundalini practice is not, so is not, solely body focused. The methodology uses the body and uses the breath in order to transmute, transform old, old beliefs, old ways of being, old ways of thinking, so that you can upgrade yourself and your life. So if you're ready to up-level, if you're ready to upgrade, you might choose a kundalini practice, knowing that it's going to take you there. It's not always a comfortable practice, but then nor is Ashtanga. No, it's definitely not no when you're trying to stretch into a muscle. Trust me, after doing lots of athletic stuff as a kid, my muscles were tight. I have fast, twitch muscles and they tend towards tightness and tightness in my joints, and Ashtanga was excruciating for me in the early days. I had to really work hard to open up my body. So it's not that there isn't challenge in those practices too, but in Kundalini Yoga it gets a little bit different, because now you're starting to upgrade your energy, your vitality and you start to find that, ooh, when you have that much more energy and vitality and you begin to build your intuitive power, you know you want to start to behave differently. You just do.
33:23
You're like, oh, I don't really want to do that, that I've always done. I want a new experience and I've got all this energy and insight coming through me. I've got more creative potential coming through me. Maybe I don't want that corporate job after all. Maybe I want to start my own business. Oh, that art easel that I put away when I was 12. I think I want to get that out again. Or, huh, I always wanted to learn the drums. I think now's the time. I think when you start to access a deeper well of energy and inspiration rises through that, there's this desire to actually use the energy in creative ways. So I think that's a big bonus as you dive into these practices.
34:12
I love that image of the well, a deeper well of energy, and as it rises. I just had a really big aha moment as you were speaking. So last week I went with a friend of mine to a presentation by a. It was a workshop by a public speaker in a networking group that I was discovering in Geneva, and so she referenced.
34:40
This was about public speaking presentations, and she referenced a famous TED talk that you may have heard of or seen, with a lady called Amy Cuddy, where she talks about body language and how much the body language can change your, shift, your state, and so she talks about how, before a big interview, for example, you want to go in the bathroom and stand like this with your arms in a V. For those who are not going to see me doing this. Or this particular person was referencing a part of the talk I've forgotten about and a study about how I think it was Roger Federer that they'd studied and tennis players that kept on going yes, the most times after they won a point always won. Do you know where I'm going with this?
35:24
I'm having my own. And now, oh my God, and I'm just thinking, but it's Kundalini, it is, isn't it? Because this is one of the for victory. The arms up in the air happens in several kriyas and in various moments. I'll let you speak to that. And then this when we go, yes, and you hit the side of your ribs, that's another move. Okay, so tell me about what those are and let's have fun with this.
35:52
Absolutely. I just want to say for the record which is my little fun giggle moment as you're saying that yes, it's one of my favorite words to say, and when I'm teaching people about sadhana and getting up to do your practice first thing in the morning, set your state before the rest of the day gets hold of you. Set your state, decide who you want to be, how you want to be in the morning. And so I always say to that when the alarm goes off, you don't even let the negative mind jump in. You just like yes. When you get on your mat, you're yes. When you're challenged, you're yes.
36:29
Because we have to recognize how powerful the mind is and the subconscious mind has enormous power. That's the 95% of the mind. So if we are not consciously directing our mind in the moment, there's a subconscious direction which can feel quite heavy and lethargic and I can't do this, or this is too much, or why she's teaching this, I don't like her anymore, or whatever. The stories are that are there, coming from the subconscious, and as that story is running, the cellular body is responding to the story. Now you have lower energy, now you don't have that oomph to shift and change. Yes, when they hit the ball right and they get their shot. Yes, is an affirmation of how on point and in the zone they were in that moment.
37:25
And yes, within Kundalini Yoga there's an understanding of how energy, how prana, how life force circulates through the body. So we want to put the arms up in a V shape whenever we want the energy to rise and flow through the heart, through the throat. The arms, the limbs are part of this expression of prana that drives our expression. So when we want to strengthen our capacity to communicate well, when we want to strengthen our capacity to have heart and mind connected, we have the arms above the head. It's one of the things about Kundalini Yoga. So many people are like oh, but the arms?
38:13
because quite a lot of arm work because of how you are directing and stabilizing the prana. I would teach level two, three vinyasa classes at Yoga Works in Santa Monica for many years and people are doing handstands and arm balances and we're doing all the things. But then I would ask them to do three minutes of eager eradicated with the arms in the V and they would just be struggling, eyes rolling up like I'm so glad it's not just me.
38:45
No, oh, that's fantastic. And what is that one called?
38:54
Is that the one, oh, this one, where you strike your ribs, so your arms go up to 60 degrees. There's your inhale. Then you exhale sharply and you strike your ribs. We call this a prana, shakti move, shakti being, you know, an expression of energy. Prana, the life force, it's like stimulating your energy.
39:18
The life force, it's like stimulating your energy, those ones with fast, bostricka style breaths are super transformative when you need to cut through whatever your dominant mental emotional state is that's holding you hostage.
39:28
Literally, you do one of those breaths and it just, it cuts through and all of a sudden you're able to sit inside of yourself and have an experience of yourself that's not colored by the dominant mental emotional state that you lug around as a super heavy suitcase. So you have these moments where you're just you, meeting you, and it's divine and delicious and sublime and cozy and it's all of those things. And the more of those moments we can string together, the more we're able to access that true identity, what we call our Sat Nam, our true identity, because we're experiencing the moments that seem to be just beneath the veil of our otherwise waking reality. They're just beneath the veil and there's a resonance, there's a soul resonance in that space there's a resonance that we start to feel with those around us. It taps us out into more of life as a connected experience versus life as an isolated experience.
40:46
Yeah, that resonates with me a lot. I want to thank you actually, because when you describe this, I realized that probably when I did the most amount of Kundalini was in 2020. I do recognize that the practices, because they do cut through, because it helps shift mental states. I was able to go away from doom and gloom into feeling okay in myself and that's when I did the most. And I did certain practices, particularly breath work and meditation. I did my own little 40-day sadhana with you on a couple of occasions, though Annie Carpenter had said I needed to do maybe a little. I had to be conscious about not doing too much breath of fire because it can obviously be a little bit triggering, but I always did the cooling down as well.
41:39
For those of you listening who've never tried, what Kia is describing is something that I have never tried to put into words because I've never tried to speak to anyone about Kundalini. But my own lived experience was to feel a state of some of the moments are quite blissful, as you're describing, but also just a sense of freedom, a sense of release, a sense of having let go. But one of the most surprising short practices that I found on Glow, the platform where you teach online, which I used several times and I should have thought of doing it today because I was feeling poorly is actually a healing practice, I think with the arms extended. Could you speak to that, and how can Kundalini also have a healing effect on our body?
42:35
Absolutely. I think if we understand the model of the human being, we start to understand how it's having a healing effect. So, number one, the physical body is just one aspect of our being. Right, it's the densest part. If we were to look at what we're made up of, it's just energy. But the energy slows down enough to become our physical reality. But ultimately we're energy beings and it's the energy that's informing matter, not matter informing energy.
43:09
So understanding that, then we understand that if we work with a practice that is directly about shifting energetic state, then we see that when the energy holds coherence, comes back into, say, for example, when you're born there's a certain blueprint of you that exists in the energetic field. When we are not thinking and living correctly, that blueprint starts to get distorted. The energetic field starts to get distorted because the energetic field starts to get distorted because of the dominant thinking and feeling patterns. So what we do in Kundalini Yoga is we address the energy body. We address them all, but specifically the energy body. We bring the energy into a state of high coherence. We bring the heart into a state of high coherence. You go from discordant heart-mind connection into orderly heart rate variability, which then pulses out a very potent electromagnetic field and then that coherent energy starts to bring the whole energetic body into this deeper, coherent state. Then that starts to inform the physical body and the healing begins. That's one level of it right. Also, when you stimulate the nervous system and you stimulate the glandular system, once you can create homeostasis in the nervous system, once you can upregulate the autonomic nervous system, or should we say optimize the way the autonomic nervous system is functioning, so you get that nice regular heart rate variability, you get the right amount of calmness versus gas pedal in your nervous system, and then you stimulate the glandular system to begin to upregulate. And then you start to stimulate all of the other things like oxytocin levels, the bonding hormones. You start to balance out cortisol and different factors within the kidneys. You start to basically shift and upregulate your whole glandular system.
45:24
Now there's more and more studies being done on this now, because obviously this is a huge part of where the scientific medical community is. The front runners are really looking into all the different factors that are producing shifts in the blood, shifts in blood chemistry, shifts in hormonal factors, and what we know is that these practices work on all of those levels. And what we also know is that there is an infinite pharmacy within us. If the body is experiencing pain, there's ways to access our own form of morphine, which is why often, when we are in Kundundalini kriyas, we're holding our body in some awkward positions for very long periods of time, because we want to stimulate the nervous system and glandular system in certain ways so that these natural chemicals coming from the inside are secreted, and then that helps us to stabilize a new energetic state.
46:26
Because when your energetic state starts to get reflected in your blood chemistry and your energetic body and your cellular energy, that's when you can start to feel it more deeply and you can start to stabilize it. So quantum levels of healing are possible when you work with your mind-body energy in this way. That's what I'm interested in. I'm interested in that edge where quantum healing is happening, because you create such a transformation that the new you doesn't even have access to the cold codes of the old you, and so your physiology starts to respond to the new you and now you have an upgrade and you're thinking, feeling and experience of life is different. That was a lot somewhat incoherently coherently put together.
47:25
No, that's very coherent. I completely follow you. One of the thoughts that that follows through for me is also the kriyas. We hold them for a certain amount of time. Some are accessible, some much harder to stay in position. This morning I was doing one where I was lying on my side and it was very much like a bar exercise, like floor bar, except that you're doing breath of fire at the same time, which is really awkward and very funny and I do that barre exercise regularly.
48:04
So I was thinking, great, that's two in one. So I think there's also a lot of joy that happens every time that I'm like, oh my God, I did it, I did the whole minute or the whole three minutes. Oh, there's that sort of push pull and I appreciate that and I'm sure this is what a lot of other people find when they do various forms of exercise. When you're able to do that, it feels like you've already conquered something about your day right, because I didn't give up, I didn't say I couldn't do it, I just kept going, even though my arms or whatever was just being uncomfortable.
48:43
And I think this is this constant readdressing of what we think we're capable of. This is what technically rewires the neural pathways. I remember listening to several really interesting scientists that were talking about the myelination of the neural pathways. And the more often we're able to think new thoughts or do new movements or go beyond what we think is the only thing we can do, the more we open up the possibilities Effectively. We become a little bit like your teacher we climb up that cliff to see ourselves in a different way.
49:28
So beautifully put. Thank you, yes, so beautifully put. That's exactly it. That's exactly it. We are renewing ourselves and that's an interesting thing about the Kundalini practices, at least those from the kri tradition, which I share, mostly because of how effective and easy they are. Um doesn't mean that they're not hard to do, but easy in a certain perspective. The prescriptions, the formulas are easy to follow. Uh, but to your point, it's exactly that when you do something that you didn't think that you could do now you've opened yourself into a new realm of possibility.
50:10
And so often in the Kundalini Kriyas there are some very weird moves. I don't know, maybe you're just moving the tips of your thumbs for a little while and figuring that out. Maybe you're circling one arm in the air and not the other, maybe you're laughing out loud for a while. There's so many strange movements and I used to have so much resistance to them. The old Kia didn't think was so invested in what other people thought of her. She didn't think it was cool to do some of the moves. There was that part of it right and just resistance to something she didn't understand. I try to make a point when I'm teaching of helping somebody to understand the why? So that their conscious mind can get involved on a deeper level and they're more willing to go that extra mile or edge or whatever it is to overcome. Because now they're consciously invested in what the exercise can do for them, versus just meeting the unknown without having had that.
51:25
Yeah, yeah, I completely hear you and I think you, having such a breadth of knowledge about all of the bodies and about the anatomy and the sort of biochemical aspect of what happens, of what happens, this does help because it just stimulates that extra modern part of the brain which needs to be appeased to hear scientific facts. Actually, I wanted to ask you I remember you speaking. I was seeing classes that I did online about the power that lies in the pineal gland and what happens when we stimulate this particular part of our anatomy. Could you speak to that a little bit, Because I'm curious. I feel like I don't know enough.
52:15
Yes, the pineal gland that sits towards the back of the head, but middle back of the head it's connected. It depends on the yoga tradition, but in the traditions that I've studied in it's connected with the crown. So it's connected really to our access point to cosmic consciousness. The pituitary gland is connected to the pit, is to the third eye, which is obviously connected also to the frontal lobe. So there's that idea of that's the command center and the pineal gland when it gets upgraded, it informs the pituitary gland, and the pituitary and the hypothalamus are the ones that figure out exactly what chemical they're going to release.
53:02
So what recent studies have shown about the pineal gland is that it's like a radio receiver, for one it discerns the circadian rhythm for your body.
53:13
If you're receiving light through your eyes, it stimulates the cells in the pineal gland to release serotonin.
53:22
If there's no light coming into the eyes, then it's melatonin, and so we have those two that are the main drivers for daylight active energy versus nighttime internal energy, where a different sort of visual cortex comes online with the melatonin. So what recent studies have shown is that when you bring a lot of energy to the pineal gland, it can shift its transducing capacity so that there's an upgrade that happens in the chemicals that are being released. One of those chemicals that is released ultimately as a byproduct from the pineal gland is dmt, which is known as the most psychoactive substance that anyone has encountered, and we have that capacity to release that within ourselves. What that does is it opens the doorways of perception. So when the yogis speak to seeing the worlds upon worlds and having these like multi-level orgasmic experiences where full understanding on a cosmic consciousness level is happening on the level of physiology that's being stimulated through the pineal gland, for the rest of us who may not be having that level of inner orgasmic brain experience yet, shame.
54:43
The pineal gland when it's activated it can open us up to information that we're not able to receive on the level of our five senses.
54:54
So our five senses have a certain bandwidth of frequency that they can tap into. What we see, what we hear, or taser. All of that. The pineal gland, when activated, is tapping us into a whole new wavelength of energy, and every wave of energy is holding an infinite amount of information. But so we start to get different information, we start to understand ourself in the context of the whole at a much deeper degree.
55:23
And this is part of the awakening of Kundalini, when we go from the me-centric awareness into the we-centric awareness and we start to recognize the interconnected nature of all things.
55:38
And the more we tap into these higher level frequencies, the more the inner experience comes alive and we're less dependent on our outer environment for our pleasure, for our happiness, for our sense of self. It all starts to unfold more easily from the inside, because we're connecting to deep spiritual experiences that are simply coming about because of the level of information that we're starting to access with an activated pineal gland. So you see, in the kundalini practices we do a dynamic movement, we do a breath, and then we inhale and we squeeze mulaband, we squeeze the energy from the root, all that creative potential energy, and we start to press it up the spine to the center of the brain, to hit that gland and to also bring more energy to the frontal cortex. And so this is that movement of energy towards the evolutionary potential. And yeah, so if you look at it from that perspective, we see just how important it is to who we are and how we are in our perception of reality.
56:58
Thank you so much. An incredible explanation and I'm really my curiosity is satisfied and no offense to the conversation we're having right now, but I'm looking forward to my practice tomorrow. This feels very motivating, also really happy. You used the words we-centric awareness, which I think is a beautiful expression of a shift that I think most of humanity would benefit in doing practices, and you do that to try and tap into our collective consciousness, to bring people online, figuratively as well as uh as metaphorically, so that we all then support certain kriyas, certain meditation states, to wish for the rest of the world to be well, to recognize that sense of interconnectedness. Could you tell me when you started to bring, perhaps when your inner experience transformed and you became, let's say, a spokesperson for we-centric awareness?
58:30
That's such a great question and I think that's been an ongoing journey. But I will say that during the shutdown of COVID and my desire to connect with people, my desire for people to have a practice and a way of using all this extra time they suddenly had then, rather than it being siphoned into worry and fear that they could use that time for a giant leap of consciousness, really for evolution, for their own development. I think that was the first part and then, once I started, it was an evolutionary leap for me because I already knew from teaching classes on Glow for so long. I've always sensed when I look into the camera, I'm going into time space, so I'm going beyond our three-dimensional reality and experience of time. I'm going to the place where we are connected. Whether you take the class right now or you're taking the class in some future, we're still in the now, together. So I've always intuitively felt that when I teach classes online but there was something about coming together for a live experience, which I do so much of still to this day, all over the world people connecting in the same moment and after doing a practice and getting in a very enlivened and after doing a practice and getting in a very enlivened, subtle, sensitized place, to be able to literally feel into all the different souls in that moment, connecting like little light bulbs in a circuit board being all lit up and connected and the energetic space that then starts to be held. It's like we're all meeting in the unified field. We're meeting in this place of unity consciousness and in doing so we are strengthening the subtle reverberation in the unified field of unity consciousness. You know, in the realm of infinite potential, you know, in the realm of infinite potential, we're consciously, collectively tapping into this unity consciousness and when that happens now, there's suddenly more availability for all souls around the world to connect into that unity consciousness because it's reverberating, because we're all individually choosing to reverberate it if that makes sense. So it came alive for me at a whole other level because of COVID and for that reason, even though we're beyond the pandemic now, I'm choosing to keep teaching a lot of my modules, my trainings, my immersive experiences online, because I understand the power that is created. It's different than in person, but you can't say one's better than the other, they're just different.
01:01:34
And what I've really enjoyed about it this is slightly off from your question, but what I've really enjoyed about? It is empowering people in their home practice, because they're not. Sometimes they come with me to an exotic location and we have that experience in spiritually charged places. But if that's not what you can do and you join online, you get to empower this sacredness into your home environment. That is your chosen place that you are practicing in. So you're charging your environment and you're going through a very transformative practice on your mat in your home and then you're getting up to directly interact with your family and loved ones.
01:02:23
And then there's that moment of how skillful can you be at translating the levels of interconnectedness that you're accessing in the internal realm? How skillful can you be at bringing that into your lived reality? And to me that's the higher level of yoga is right there, bringing it into your lived reality. And to me that's the higher level of yoga is right there, bringing it into your lived reality and being able to be a touchstone for a different consciousness state within your lived experience yes, because we are householders, most of us.
01:02:58
We're not monastics, and that's such a good point. It's interesting because a lot of my friends are not keen at all on doing online practices and I find it so empowering because that means I can always fit it in. Yes, exactly, and I've made such a lovely space for it as well. But I wanted to tell you you really moved me when you described the way that we connect and we light up, and you described something about creating a field and I had another aha moment. It's two. Thank you, kia. This is very unusual. Do you know this quote by Rumi that says says out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there, and suddenly I thought that's the field. Right, when we have that sensation of interconnectedness, we lose the right doing and the wrongdoing and we see each other, or we're we have have not see, but we have that sense of connection.
01:04:06
Absolutely. Yep, there's no mistake. This word, kshetra, exists in the yoga tradition. It's the field, or the haranya garba is the cosmic womb that is also the reference to the unified field, as the modern terminology speaks to. It's very powerful when we begin to discover different dimensions of existence through interacting with this field.
01:04:33
So you have a trip to India and various exotic locations planned next year. Which one are you most looking forward to?
01:04:46
year. Which one are you most looking forward to? I think the one I, if I had to say the one I'm most looking forward to is India, because where I'm going is a place where I go a lot for my own personal practice, when I want to take a month out and up level myself so I can teach and exist from a different space. This place in India where I'm taking people is in central India and there's a beautiful shrine on the grounds where we will be practicing and I will say it's just one of those environments. It's truly a spiritually charged environment. When you go there, the energy of the space helps your transformation.
01:05:26
I would say that what I've experienced in that space is that the energy teaches me. I go, I sit, I get myself receptive and the energy teaches me. So I have such a profound relationship with the place that I want to take people to go and experience it for themselves. So that's happening at the end of February 28th, maybe till March 9th, something like that. I want to take people to this charged environment to deepen their relationship with stillness, with their capacity to deeply listen and, yeah, to access that very powerful inner space.
01:06:10
That sounds beautiful. I'm very tempted. I like to ask all my guests about what practices keep them grounded or feeling their best selves, and it can be anything for most people. We all have something which is a go-to and of course you have a toolkit of practices, as we said before. But is there one thing in particular that really just resources you, brings you joy or grounds you, something that you would do almost daily or daily?
01:06:46
I think breath work is one of those, breath of fire is one of those. It's a constant companion in my life because if our energy is stagnant, our mind is stagnant, and so just moments to revive and awaken the energy can just shift so much and keep digestion strong, so that I do core kriyas often to keep my navel strong and to keep my gravitational center there, that sense of really being grounded in who I am, so I'm less at the mercy of my environment. So those practices sometimes auric field practices, where I'm really working the whole energetic body again, because that makes it enables me to stay more stable in myself in unstable environments, yeah, and food is something that I use to ground food. And walking, knowing when to eat and what to eat in order to ground my energy, especially because I run a lot of voltage through my system constantly, and then walking in nature, yeah thank you.
01:07:59
Now here are some of my closing questions. I think you've answered this one, but let's check what is your favorite word? And by favorite word I mean one that you could live with or tattoo on yourself.
01:08:12
Radiance, Because to me radiance is an expression. The radiant body in Kundalini Yoga is an expression of the authentic soul self, that reflection of the unique reverberation of pure consciousness it has a lovely sound to it as well radiant.
01:08:36
What does connection mean to you? The all in all, the one in all, the connection is the one oneness that one tends to be everyone's at least liked, because it's very hard what song best represents you wow, wow, wow, wow.
01:09:03
The one that's just immediately came into my mind is a mantra Waheguru, ah, yes. And Waheguru is a reflection of deep gratitude for life. Waheguru, wow, really, life, this and this. Waheguru, wow, it's an expression of the awe, the experience of awe.
01:09:35
Thank you. What is a secret superpower that you have?
01:09:40
Secret superpower.
01:09:42
Wow, yes, something that you haven't mentioned yet, wow, Wow.
01:09:49
What is my secret superpower? That's a hard one. I'm a deep empath, I know that much. So I feel a lot of what people are feeling. It definitely gives me insights beneath the surface of what's being communicated into something that may be existing or speaking in the nonverbal realms.
01:10:20
Yeah, what is a favorite book you can share?
01:10:27
One of my favorite all-time books is by another of my teachers one of my primary teachers, pandit Rajmani Tiginayat, and it's a book about his teacher, swami Rama, and it's called At the Eleventh Hour, and, if you want an insight into the path of the Himalayan yogis, which is where most of the authentic yoga that we are experiencing and practicing in today's world is coming from the North yogis and the Himalayan yogi tradition, at least that I'm seeing mostly in the west. There's other lineages, of course, represented from south India and different places, but so much is coming from the Himalayas.
01:11:12
so, yeah, yeah, it sounds gorgeous. I'm very curious now, and this leads me to my last and favorite question what brings you happiness? And this leads me to my last and favorite question what brings?
01:11:25
you happiness In a connection. That's what brings me happiness. If I feel connected, I feel happy. If I'm not feeling connected, I'm going to seek happiness from the outside. But if I already am connected, I've got the eternal well there of happiness right within me. And I think that's one of the most profound teachings of yoga and the most empowering of philosophies to understand ah, my happiness lies within. If I can access a deep inner state of connection, then happiness is a byproduct of that.
01:12:13
That resonates very strongly within me when you say that. Thank you so much, Kia. It was such a joy to speak to you and to get to know you. Thank you for saying yes to this interview. I will put lots of links for people to be able to find you in the show notes. Have a wonderful rest of your day and I hope that perhaps one day in the future, or in the past or in the present, perhaps one day in the future in India or somewhere else, we'll have the opportunity to meet.
01:12:45
Oh, I would just love that. Thank you for your presence, thank you for the way you hold space and the sweetness that just resonates through you and your own deep inner philosophical connection and understanding of life also just easefully radiates through you. So thank you for that and I hope that you feel better through the rest of this day.
01:13:11
Thank you so much. So, friends and listeners, thanks again for joining me today. If you'd like to hear more, you can subscribe to the show on the platform of your choice and if you'd like to connect with me, you can find me at Annvi on threads on Instagram Anne V Muhlethaler. On LinkedIn If you don't know how to spell it, the link is in the notes or on Instagram, at underscore. Out of the clouds, where I also share daily musings about mindfulness. You can find all of the episodes of the podcast and much more on the website outofthecloudscom. If you'd like to find out more from me, I invite you also to subscribe to the Meta View, my weekly newsletter, where I explore coaching, brand development, conscious communication. Where I explore coaching, brand development, conscious communication and the future of work. That's the MetaView with two Ts TheMetaViewcom. So that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening to Out of the Clouds. I hope that you will join me again next time. Until then, be well, be safe and take care.