Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa was born Mary Mae Gibson in rural Illinois. At 19 she left home and spent years wandering: San Francisco, Mexico, Maui and a year of daily meditation at a Zen temple.
Kundalini yoga
In 1970 she joined a kundalini yoga ashram and was given the name Gurmukh. In 1977 she moved to Los Angeles for what was meant to be a 40-day stay… and stayed.
Golden Bridge
After years teaching from home, in 1985 she opened Golden Bridge in Hollywood. She is best known for prenatal yoga and wrote Bountiful, Beautiful, Blissful on pregnancy and birth.
Her ideas
- For her, kundalini yoga is reliable and almost scientific: it works.
- Help others even when you are struggling yourself.
- A yoga studio as a space to drop outside pressures and reconnect.
Note: kundalini yoga spread in the West through Yogi Bhajan, Gurmukh’s teacher. Years after his death, several allegations of abuse against him opened an important debate in the kundalini community.
Source: Yoga International – Kundalini’s queen: Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa.
