The tradition
Most yoga marketing gestures at antiquity without naming anything. Here is exactly what the Kundalin Institute teaches, where it comes from, and what it deliberately leaves out.
Kashmir, and the kundalini tradition
The material we teach comes from the classical tantric tradition of Kashmir, a body of thought and practice that treated consciousness as something you investigate directly, by method, rather than something you believe things about.
Its central text for our purposes is the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra. One hundred and twelve concentration practices, set out as a dialogue, described plainly and without ceremony. It is the oldest practical meditation manual most people will ever encounter, and it reads like an instruction sheet because that is what it is.
The kundalini material sits inside this. It is a map of what happens in sustained practice, drawn from the classical hatha and tantric sources, and taught here in the sequence those sources give. Preparation first, and the strong practices only after.
We name the texts we teach from, and we tell you which practice comes from where. That is not scholarly fussiness. It is the only way you can check what you are being told.
A tradition that names its sources can be checked. One that does not, cannot.
Three things, at every level
There is no level at which you stop doing one of these. What changes is depth.
Asana
Physical practice, in every programme. Not conditioning and not performance. A body that can sit for an hour without argument, and can keep doing so at sixty. Alignment, sequencing and modification are taught from the first week.
Pranayama
Working with breath directly. Mechanics first, then ratio, then retention, each with prerequisites and each with limits that we teach rather than mention.
Concentration
The dhāraṇās of the Vijñāna Bhairava, taught one at a time with the source text alongside. This is the part most schools skip, and it is the part the tradition is actually about.
What the Institute does not do
We do not teach the system assembled in the West in the late 1960s.
Sold internationally under a name close to ours, it arrived with a claimed lineage that scholars have gone looking for and not found, and a repertoire that does not appear in any classical source. That is a matter of record rather than an opinion. What we teach is named, dated, and available for you to read.
We do not improvise a lineage.
Every practice here is traceable to a text we can put in your hands. Where a reading is contested we say so, rather than picking the version that suits us.
We do not promise awakening.
The classical sources are considerably more careful on this subject than modern marketing is, and we follow the sources.
We do not teach without preparation.
The strong practices come after the preparatory ones, in the order the texts specify. That is slower, and it is the point.
Lineage
Kartik Dhar teaches from a Kashmiri Pandit lineage. The Kashmir Shaiva material taught here is not a scholarly interest acquired later. It is the tradition he was born into and has practised in for years.
That alone does not make the teaching authoritative, and we would not ask you to take it on that basis. It does mean the sources are read in the interpretive tradition they came from, rather than through a secondary English rendering.
Registered Yoga Teacher at the 500 hour level with Yoga Alliance. Certified by the Yoga Certification Board, Ministry of Ayush, Government of India.