Why I’m Transitioning from Kundalini Yoga to Laya Yoga

A Letter from My Heart as My Teaching Evolves

For more than a decade, Kundalini Yoga has been a central thread in my own practice and a powerful force in the way I’ve supported others. It gave me tools for breath, movement, discipline, and devotion. It opened doors inside me that I am forever grateful for. Many of the practices I still teach today were shaped by those early years of rising before dawn, chanting in community, and learning how breath can change a life.

And yet, like all living practices, we evolve.

Over the past few years—especially as my work deepened with somatic healing, Compassionate Inquiry, embodiment, and integration—I began to feel a quiet inner shift. My teaching was changing. My students were changing. I was changing. What was coming through me no longer fit neatly inside the name “Kundalini Yoga,” nor did it feel ethically aligned for me to use a label tied to a lineage whose structure, history, and associations I no longer resonate with.

What I was offering had become something gentler, deeper, and more organically woven: a practice centered not on activating energy, but on dissolving tension; not on pushing toward an experience, but on softening into presence; not on a hierarchical lineage, but on your own inner knowing.

As I searched for a name that expressed this shift, I found myself drawn to the word “laya.” At first it was simply intuitive — I loved the sound of it, the way it felt in the mouth and in the heart. When I looked into its meaning, I discovered that in Sanskrit, laya refers to dissolution, absorption, and the softening of tension back into stillness. Only later did I learn that in classical yoga philosophy, this term described an orientation toward melting into presence rather than striving for transcendence.

I am not claiming to teach a historical lineage called Laya Yoga. What I offer is a contemporary, somatically informed practice inspired by the spirit of laya — by the qualities of softening, unwinding, quieting the mind, and returning to what is already here.

And when I saw that this word expressed exactly what I had been teaching for years without naming it, something in me settled. It felt like coming home.

What You Can Expect in a Laya Yoga Class

Laya Yoga, as it comes through me, is breath-centered and nervous-system aware. It includes slow, rhythmic movement that unwinds tension, somatic practices that build inner safety, trauma-informed meditation and inner listening, gentle strengthening of the spine, navel, and energy body, and opportunities for deep rest, integration, and grounding.

It is simple, accessible, and deeply calming.

Many students say that it feels like coming home to themselves—not because anything dramatic happens, but because they finally have a space where their body can exhale.

Why This Transition Matters

This shift is not just a rebranding. It is a maturation of my teaching, a clarifying of my ethics, and a deep honoring of what is true for me now.

I believe in integrity. I believe in transparency. I believe in teaching what I have lived and embodied, not what I inherited.

Calling my classes Laya Yoga allows me to teach with honesty, offer practices aligned with somatic wisdom, honor where I came from without being bound to it, and evolve in a way that feels whole, grounded, and clean.

And it gives you, the student, a clear understanding of what to expect: a practice rooted in presence, breath, simplicity, and the gentle dissolution of what stands between you and your own inner knowing.

Walking Forward

If you have practiced with me for years, thank you for walking with me through this evolution. If you are new to my work, welcome. I am grateful for every person who enters this space with an open heart and a willingness to soften.

This transition feels like an important threshold not only in my teaching, but in my own inner life. It is the next weaving in a long, beautiful basket. A returning to what feels most honest, most grounded, and most true.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for letting me grow. And thank you for continuing to explore this path of embodied presence with me.

With love,