Tomorrow Shree Yoga Taos will host an evening with a very special guest. Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa, began her life in 1943 as Mary May Gibson in Downers Grove, Illinois.
She is a teacher of Kundalini Yoga as taught (to her), by Yogi Bhajan and has long been known as a groundbreaker in the field of pre-natal yoga.
The co-founder and director of the Golden Bridge Yoga Center in Los Angeles, the author of two books, Gurmukh means guru-oriented person, or one who has realized the Word.
At nineteen, she left home to attend San Francisco State University. There, she met and married her first husband and in 1964, gave birth to an infant boy with a congenital heart defect. The baby died seven months later. Her marriage ended soon after.
She moved from Haight Ashbury to Big Sur, then traveled to Mexico, where she lived among tribal people for a while before moving to Maui. She then moved into a Buddhist Zendo, where she practiced silent meditation seven hours a day for a year.
In 1970, she and a colleague went to the 3HO ashram in Tucson, Arizona. She stayed in Arizona for two years, working at the ashram, while teaching yoga at the University of Arizona, as well as at the Arizona State Correctional Facility.
It was in 1970 at the ashram that she met Yogi Bhajan, master of Kundalini Yoga.
On their first meeting, he gave Mary her new name, “Gurmukh,” He also told her she would help deliver babies.She began working in the field of home births with a Santa Fe obstetrician/gynecologist.
In 1977, Gurmukh went on a pilgrimage to India and upon her return moved to Los Angeles, where she met Gurushabd Singh Khalsa, whom she married in 1982.
In February 1982, at the age of forty-three, she gave birth to their daughter, Wahe Guru Kaur, at home with a midwife. After the birth of her daughter Gurmukh used her knowledge of Kundalini Yoga and her own pregnancy experiences to teach classes for expectant mothers.
This eventually led to a childbirth education program she was to call “The Khalsa Way”.
She initiated a sixty-hour Khalsa Way Teachers Training certification course for women from around the world to take to their communities. In 2003, Gurmukh published the book, Bountiful, Beautiful, Blissful: Exploring the Natural Power of Pregnancy and Birth with Kundalini Yoga and Meditation, with St. Martin’s Press.
In her life as a Kundalini Yoga teacher based in Los Angeles, Gurmukh developed a large celebrity clientele. She gave private instructions to Madonna, Courtney Love, Gwyneth Paltrow, David Duchovny, Annette Bening and Rosanna Arquette, among others.
Eventually, with the guidance of her teacher, Gurmukh gave up her private classes with stars. In 2000, she published the popular guide Eight Human Talents: The Yoga Way to Restore the Balance and Serenity Within You with Harper Collins publishers in New York. In 2002, Gurmukh co-founded with Gurutej Kaur, the Golden Bridge Yoga Center in Los Angeles. Gurmukh and her husband teach classes, and offer workshops and teacher trainings around the world
Tomorrow evening from 6:30 – 9pm, (January 27th), Shree Yoga Taos presents a very evening of Yoga with Legacy/Kundalini teacher and personal student of Yogi Bhajan, Gurmukh.
Rumi and Hafiz translations read by Daniel Ladinsky
Music by Jeremiah Glauser
Tickets for the event are $25.00 and are available at Shree Yoga Taos.
100% of proceeds will be donated to the Taos Men’s Shelter
For more information on the event and Shree Yoga Taos, please visit their site linked below.
Images of Gurmukh, stock files
