He mentioned that I had been massaging his feet since 1971 and that he had always enjoyed this and that I had healing hands so this is what I concentrated my energies on since then. Ever since my first kundalini yoga class in Rochester, New York where I grew up with my first Kundalini Yoga Teacher, Maha Atma Singh, who is one of the greatest kundalini yoga student teachers having studied directly under the Master, I experienced both kundalini yoga and massage and it was then and there that I knew what it was that I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Teach Yoga and Massage. These two experiences were the most profound impacts on my life other than music which I had been introduced to by my parents at the age of 12 starting with the piano.
Although I never really practised Massage Therapy professionally until 1983 I continued to study and pracitise under any and all conditions and mostly on other ashram members while we worked in the first natural foods vegetarian restaurant on the east coast, The Golden Temple Conscious Cookery in Washington D.C. in 1971 where we used to put in 15 hour days constantly on our feet, cooking, serving, cleaning all day and night for years.
While practicing kundalini yoga living in an ashram community was the main focus and purpose of our being there, our livelihood was our restaurant which paid our room and board and although our yoga practise sustained us through some very heavy working conditions, massage was also a necessity to maintain focus, a positive and serviceful attitude and above all it just plain felt good and made the whole experience a whole lot easier on our physical, mental and spiritual bodies!
Since I had the blessing of massage Yogi Bhajan's feet which I just started doing out of love for him because I had seen others doing it and thought to myself, "well if they can do it, I can do it!" It was such a wonderful experience since Yogi Bhajan was always counselling his students even while getting his feet massaged! Just to be in his presence and aura was such an amazing experience as one after another of his students would come up to him for his guidance in between his lectures and classes where ever he would go all over the world.
Since I had moved to the 3HO Foundation's East Coast Regional Center in Washington D.C. from Rochester, New York for my kundalini yoga teacher training where I was supposed to only be for only 40 days before being sent to Brussels, Belgium, (I ended up being there for at least 4 months before leaving for Belgium where I was being sent to help open up another Golden Temple Consious Cookery and 3HO kundalini Yoga Ashram in 1972).
Yogi Bhajan used to travel to 3 cities a week at the height of his carreer and used to sleep only 2 hours a day, a schedule which he kept for 25 years. He felt that because he was master of kundalini yoga that he could overcome the stress of traveling but we all knew that it would catch up with him sooner or later although he really didn't care because he always said that he was just a postman who had come to deliver so many letters and then he would quit. He also used to say that he was a garbage cleaner
because he used to have to clean the garbage from everyone's subcounsious and conscious mind and that it was his karma to come to the west and teach us neurotic westerners because in his past life, he was a Hindu Brahman who refused to teach one student who came to him seeking knowledge. He used to say that when he first came to this country that everyone that he met smelled so bad from their diets of meat and what ever else junk food that he could not stand within 9 feet of anyone.
Foot Massage however became one of my specialties as I enjoyed massaging his feet so much because I could just sit in his presence and bathe in his magnetic aura which was so powerfull that once you entered within 9 feet of it you simply could not leave. At least this was my experience and I would do whatever I could just to stay at his feet massaging them as long as he would allow me to do so.
Many times he would just ask me to simply place my hands on certain areas of his head or shoulders or feet as he told me that I had healing energy and that this was all I needed to do to help him although I am sure that the foot massage that I would give him didn't hurt either. I remember for many years that I would sit there and give him as much healing energy as I could and would use as much pressure in an attempt to break up any crystals or calcification along the 72,000 nerve endings in his feet while he was either on the phone doing business or counselling students and he never even acknowledged my presence. It was like I wasn't even there because he would never even react to all the pressure that I would use.
The only reason that I could come up with that he did not react to all of the pressure that I was using was because so many of his students would also take every opportunity to massage his feet so it seemed that wherever he went teaching, lecturing, doing business that there was always someone there massaging his feet. It had become like an institution that there should always be someone there massaging his feet in between his lectures and classes during breaks. Someone would always be there with a towel and a bowl of water with lemon juice and flowers to bathe his feet in and there was never a shortage of foot cream or oil to massage him with.
It was not until a few years before his passing that one day while I was massaging his feet after so many years of never even hearing a peep out of him regarding any pain that he might be feeling in the nerve endings or reflexology points from the yogic application of foot massage using around 25 pounds of pressure; (try telling this to a western reflexologist and they will literally drop the phone as you speak of how much pressure we use in yogic foot massage) that he finally gave me a look like he was going to kick me if i didn't lighten up on the pressure that I was using. I finally realized that all of the travelling that he had been doing was starting to catch up with him. he still didn't care though. he just wanted to reach as many students in his lifetime as he could to releive their suffering.
He always used to say that his greatest strength was his compassion and that his greatest weakness was also his compassion. His ability to uplift any human being that he came in contact with was amazing. It didn't matter who they were, how much money they had, or what their social status was, he would always tell us that it was our job to be like a forklift and lift up people everywhere we went. He literally would take us from the mud and raised each one of us like his own son or daughter to prepare us to become the teachers and healers of the aquarian age.............
god bless you
sat nam
humbly yours
guru jiwan singh
