Tim is certified to teach kundalini yoga. We ran a large yoga studio in St. Petersburg, Florida for over two decades — a 105-person main studio space, plus smaller rooms and private training areas. In the early 2000s, when we first opened, we offered multiple yoga styles including kundalini yoga. Tim went through kundalini certification so he could substitute when instructors didn’t show up.
Here’s what we need you to know: We will never teach kundalini yoga again. Not at our current facility at Mount Yonah Training in Northeast Georgia, not anywhere, not ever.
This isn’t a business decision. This is a safety decision based on what we’ve witnessed over 25+ years in the yoga industry — and what we learned from some of the most respected teachers in the Ayurvedic and yogic traditions.
If you’re considering kundalini yoga, or if you’re currently practicing it, please keep reading. What we’re about to share could protect your health, your mind, and possibly your life.
What We’ve Witnessed: The Reality Behind the Practice
Over the past two decades, we’ve personally witnessed three kundalini yoga instructors develop brain cancer. Three different people, all teaching the same practice, all developing the same devastating illness.
We’ve also seen students who practiced kundalini yoga develop a range of serious issues: unexplained illnesses, mental health crises, psychological breakdowns, and physical symptoms that doctors couldn’t explain or treat. These weren’t isolated incidents. This was a pattern.
When we first started seeing these problems in the early 2000s, we didn’t make the connection. We were new to the yoga business. We didn’t understand what we were seeing. But as the years went on and the pattern became undeniable, we started asking questions — and we started learning things that fundamentally changed how we approached yoga instruction.
The Warnings We Received From the Masters
Early in our Ayurvedic studies, we learned from three of the most respected authorities in the field: Dr. David Frawley (Pandit Vamadeva Shastri), Dr. Vasant Lad (founder of the Ayurvedic Institute), and Yogi Hari (founder of Sampoorna Yoga).
All three — independently, at different times — gave us the same warning about kundalini yoga::
“You need to live in a cave, isolated from the real world, to safely practice kundalini yoga.”
Over time, as we studied the concept of kundalini energy more deeply and witnessed the consequences of kundalini yoga practice, their warning became crystal clear.
Understanding the Critical Difference: Kundalini Energy vs. Kundalini Yoga
Here’s what most people don’t understand: kundalini energy and kundalini yoga are completely different things.
Kundalini energy is a concept from ancient yogic philosophy describing the dormant spiritual energy that resides at the base of the spine. According to traditional teachings, this energy naturally awakens gradually over a lifetime of spiritual practice, meditation, and ethical living. When it rises slowly and naturally through dedicated practice over many years — or even lifetimes — it leads to expanded consciousness and spiritual awakening.
This natural awakening happens slowly. Very slowly. We’re talking years, decades, or according to traditional teachings, multiple lifetimes of dedicated spiritual practice.
Kundalini yoga, on the other hand, is a modern practice (popularized in the West in the 1960s) that uses specific breathing techniques, physical postures, and mantras designed to forcefully activate and raise kundalini energy — quickly.
That’s the problem.
Why Forcing Kundalini Awakening Is Dangerous
Think of kundalini energy as an enormous electrical current that your nervous system isn’t wired to handle. In traditional spiritual practice, you spend years — decades — strengthening your nervous system, purifying your mind, and preparing your body to handle gradually increasing amounts of this energy.
Kundalini yoga attempts to flip the switch to full power without that preparation.
Imagine trying to run 220 volts through wiring designed for 110. The system can’t handle it. Things burn out. Things break.
In the human body and mind, the consequences can be severe:
Physical symptoms: Unexplained pain, neurological issues, chronic fatigue, immune system problems — and in the cases we’ve witnessed, serious illness including cancer.
Mental and emotional symptoms: Anxiety, panic attacks, depression, dissociation, psychosis, inability to function in daily life, and what some describe as “spiritual emergency” — psychological crisis triggered by premature spiritual experiences the person isn’t prepared to integrate.
Why does this happen? You’re forcing an awakening of powerful energy through a system that hasn’t been prepared. You’re living a normal modern life — job, family, responsibilities, stress — while trying to activate an energy that traditionally required complete isolation from worldly life to handle safely.
Remember what our teachers said: “You need to live in a cave.” They weren’t being dramatic. They were being literal.
The Cave Requirement: What Safe Practice Actually Demands
Traditional kundalini practices—the ones designed to intentionally awaken this energy—were only taught to renunciates. People who had given up worldly life completely. People who lived in caves or ashrams, isolated from normal society, with no jobs, no families to care for, no bills to pay, no stress, no responsibilities beyond their spiritual practice.
Even then, these practices were taught one-on-one by a qualified guru who had completed the journey themselves and could guide the student through every stage. The student might spend years just preparing their body and mind before attempting any practices designed to raise kundalini energy.
Compare that to a modern kundalini yoga class where 20 people show up after work, practice intense breathing techniques designed to force kundalini awakening, and then drive home in traffic to deal with their jobs, relationships, and life stress.
The contrast isn’t just stark — it’s dangerous.
Your nervous system is being asked to handle an enormous energetic experience while simultaneously managing the demands of modern life. Most people’s systems simply can’t do both. Something breaks.
Why We Stopped: Our Responsibility to Students
In the early 2000s, when we first opened our large studio in St. Petersburg, we didn’t know any of this. We offered kundalini yoga because it was popular. Students wanted it. Other studios offered it. We thought we were providing a service.
As we witnessed the pattern of illness, as we studied kundalini energy more deeply, as we received repeated warnings from teachers we deeply respected, we realized: we were potentially harming people.
Even with Tim’s certification, even with proper training, we couldn’t make kundalini yoga safe for people living normal modern lives. No instructor can.
So we stopped. Completely.
When we relocated to Northeast Georgia and opened Mount Yonah Training, we made a conscious decision: we will never offer kundalini yoga again. We won’t risk our students’ health and wellbeing for the sake of offering a popular class.
The Safe Alternative: Traditional Yoga Practice
Here’s what we want you to understand: you don’t need kundalini yoga to experience the benefits of yoga and spiritual practice.
Regular yoga — physical practice, breathwork done properly and gradually, meditation, and ethical living — naturally and safely awakens kundalini energy over time. Very gradually. At a pace your system can handle. While you live your normal life.
This is how it’s supposed to work.
You practice yoga regularly. You meditate. You live with integrity. You serve others. You study your faith. Over years — many years — your consciousness expands naturally. Your energy shifts gradually. Your spiritual awareness deepens safely.
There’s no force. No rush. No trying to achieve in six months what traditionally took lifetimes.
At Mount Yonah Training, we teach functional yoga combined with Ayurvedic principles and tactical fitness. We help you build strength, mobility, and awareness safely and progressively.
Stay strong,
Tim & Vie
Mount Yonah Training | Spartan Mind Strength
Mount Yonah, Georgia
