“Reappraising the construction of Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga”

New academic paper by Philip Deslippe. May be paywalled.

“After the publication of ‘From Maharaj to Mahan Tantric,’ I continued to conduct research on the origins of Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga. My subsequent findings supported the conclusions of the original article, but three findings in particular are significant and worth mentioning here.

First, as evidence for the influence of Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari on Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga, I noted in my original article the reworking of a chapter from Dhirendra’s 1965 book into one of Yogi Bhajan’s ‘kriyas’ a decade after. With time, I have come to see books as not just evidence of the influences on Yogi Bhajan’s system, but as a direct source in themselves. Yogi Bhajan was likely taking significant material directly from books on yoga published in India during the mid-1960s, some of which were mentioned in a posthumously published collection of photographs and poetry . These titles, alongwith other evidence, also suggest a strong influence from Swami Sivananda Saraswati of the Divine Life Society and his student Satyananda Saraswati of the Bihar School of Yoga.

Second, Swami Dev Murti, who Yogi Bhajan claimed as one of his teachers in 1970 for an article in the 3HO publication Beads of Truth, seems to be the source of many distinct exercises within Kundalini Yoga such as fist pumps, shoulder shrugs, and the sequence of exercises used to come out of savasana, and he should be considered as a significant influence on Yogi Bhajan’s system alongside Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari and Maharaj Virsa Singh.

Third, there were a number of Punjabi Sikh yoga teachers in the United States starting in the 1920s whose presence not only undercuts the idea of Yogi Bhajan as a unique Sikh pioneer who taught yoga to Americans, but provides another likely direct influence on Yogi Bhajan in the figure of Bhagwan Singh Gyanee, who as ‘Yogi Bhagvan’ taught what he called ‘Humanology’ fifty years before Yogi Bhajan used the same term and went under a similar moniker….”