Never Heard Of Yogi Bhajan? You Will.
He died in 2004, but his legacy is about to enter your living room
The momentum is building. You can’t see it. You can’t feel it. But it’s there. And you’ll soon experience it on your TV. It’s the final reckoning of Yogi Bhajan, creator of Kundalini Yoga, who has been accused of sexual impropriety by many women as well as the usual litany of offenses associated with anyone running an abusive cult.
On April 11th, 2022, the first episode in Vice TV’s six-episode series True Believers will air, and you’ll get to hear first-hand accounts on the comfort of your living room sofa.
But wait, there’s more. HBO Max is working on a series, called Breath of Fire, that will trace Kundalini yoga from its creation by Yogi Bhajan in the 1960s to its present incarnation today.
[May, 2024 Update: The HBO show Breath Of Fire will debut at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 12th, 2024. Details here. ]
The series will focus on Guru Jagat (née Katie Griggs), a Kundalini Yoga teacher who was a “middle-class white girl born in the summer of 1979 on a Colorado farm,” according to the motivation for the series, an article in Vanity Fair magazine. The Vanity Fair article offers the perfect setup for a documentary series with quotes like this:
“Depending on whom you ask, Jagat was a bona fide spiritual leader — or a fraud; a controversial thought leader; a bigot; a feminist; a rape apologist. Now, at the age of 41, she was dead. Maybe.”
These two streaming series will no doubt jump start sales of the (at least) three memoirs, all published in the past three years, which provide first hand accounts of Yogi Bhajan’s abusive behavior:
☼ Premka: White Bird in a Golden Cage: My Life with Yogi Bhajan by Pamela Dyson
☼ The Inner Circle — Book One: My Seventeen Years in the Cult of the American Sikhs by Peter Blachly
☼ The Bone Mother: A Memoir by Rose Khalsa
It’s important to note that, although Bhajan created the brand “Kundalini Yoga,” the best research to date indicates that he merely lifted the practices from legitimate Indian gurus and rebranded them. So, although Bhajan ran an abusive cult, many of the practices of Kundalini Yoga have been quite helpful for many people.
Bhajan is nowhere near the first Indian “guru” to come to the United States, stir controversy with erratic and/or unseemly behavior, and then disappear. Most recently, Bikram Choudhury, founder of Bikram Yoga, fled the U.S. rather than appear in court to face accusations of rape and harassment. You can watch the documentary on Netflix.
You may have also seen the Netflix documentary series, Wild Wild Country, about Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (more commonly known as Osho), and the community he built in Oregon in the 1980’s. The jury is still out as to whether Osho, or his top lieutenant, is primarily to blame for their downfall, but the usual seeds of sexual largess and erratic behavior are all there.
Of all the fallen Indian “gurus,” Bhajan may easily be the worst of them simply because of the length of time and number of enablers involved. There are many allegations of rape, coercion, and manipulation, along with other actions which wildly contradict his own teachings. With two television documentaries, three memoirs, and scores of people that can detail his malfeasance, you’ll soon know the name “Yogi Bhajan” all too well.
