Manju is a yoga sceptic. Born in India to a Yoga teacher mother, Manju came to her Yoga practice fashionably late. Although she attended intensive Yoga classes as a child and teenager at the oldest Yoga institute in India, it was not exactly love at first sight. Manju has a long, amusing, and often fraught relationship with Yoga. She stumbled into her first Kundalini class in the United States in 2019, was hooked. Manju practices and teaches Kundalini Yoga at Lighthouse Yoga in DC.
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In 2021, Manju completed her Kundalini Yoga Level 1 Teacher Training with aspiring teachers from across the planet, the first global KRI program of its kind. Being one of three Americns within a global training program with Bangladeshi, Egyptian, Italian, Lebanese, Nicaraguan, Palestinian, Saudi Arabian, and South African colleagues heightened Manju's awareness of her own privilege, and allowed her to scrutinize her own practice through a social justice lens.
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As a Yoga teacher, Manju's practice is grounded in a desire for equity, justice, emotional and mental well-being. She believes in channeling Yoga as a tool to connect with her conscience and express gratitude for the body's ability to heal. Manju brings her spirit of play, body positivity and radical self-love to classes. Describing herself as a perpetual novice, she centers curiosity and brings her creativity as a visual artist to her practice incorporating color, naad and mantras. She resists the problematic cultural appropriation surrounding Yoga by committing to authenticity in the studio.
Manju invites you to consider Yoga as a tool to recharge, resist and rebel.
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Check out Manju's upcoming Kundalini offerings at Lighthouse Yoga.
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To schedule a private session with Manju, reach out here.
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A basic human emotion, anger is a natural and largely automatic response to pain. Related to basic survival, anger is the sympathetic nervous system ’s response, designed to spur our “fight, flight, or freeze” reflex. Anger often gets a bad rap, but it doesn't necessarily mean throwing punches. It might motivate individuals and communities to combat injustice, propelling change and designing new norms. However, prolonged release of the stress hormones that accompany anger can destroy neurons in areas of the brain associated with judgment and short-term memory , and weaken the immune system. Leveraging selected Kundalini kriyas we will examine our anger, observe where it sits in our bodies, and spark a journey of channeling this powerful emotion housed in our reptilian brain.
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The inner critic or "critical inner voice" is a psychological concept usually experienced as an inner voice attacking the self. Depending on the day, our inner critic manifests as the perfectionist, the taskmaster, the inner controller, the guilt tripper, the destroyer, the underminer, and/or the molder. In the course of this workshop, we will use Kundalini kriyas to observe our inner critic, asking if our inner voice protects us from hurt or abandonment or reinforces feelings of shame and guilt, sabotaging relationships, and leading to self-destructive behavior? We will deploy naad and pranayama in two prongs – vanquish the inner demon to silence it, and befriend the critic and transform it into a helpful ally.
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Join the Lighthouse Yoga team for an amazing day of FREE yoga and community on September 18th! We are opening our doors to our community so that you can see all that Lighthouse has to offer you. The schedule will include not one or even two but FOUR FREE yoga classes, both Kundalini and Hatha style so that you can see what we are all about. For those of us who don't or can't come in person, two of the classes will be offered online, with the other two hosted in our beautiful studio!
Our community members will be on the street in front of the studio as well as inside our space, ready to give you a tour and answer your questions about Lighthouse. And we don't want to start any rumors, but there have been hints that there will be some free snacks and swag! We'll even have virtual tours!
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