Preface
The Yoga of Niguma can bring you to the highest level of joy, bliss, and contentment. Even though this practice developed within Buddhism over hundreds of years, you don’t need to consider yourself a Buddhist to engage in it and experience its tremendous benefits; a humanistic outlook is all you need. Our body and mind typically perceive reality through the senses: hearing, smell, sight, touch, taste, and thought. If you take some distance and begin to divest from the senses—something that might seem counterintuitive—you will not lose your mind and descend into a delusional state. Instead, you will be ready to realize a lucid, blissful clarity. If Niguma yoga is practiced with proper guidance as written in this book, you will experience enhanced contentment and a peaceful attitude. Try doing these postures for a few hours—that may be all you need to get an initial taste of calmness and clarity, the subjective states we all seek and can gain through this practice. Tens of millions of people have taken up the practice of hatha yoga. To me, this demonstrates how much we all want to be elevated beyond our limitations, how much we all want to feel healthy and positive. This physical benefit and calmness and clarity is open to you in the practice of the yoga of Niguma. However, that is just the beginning. For those who are ready for dynamic change or who seek wholesale personal transformation, deeper and more subtle experiences await.
Furthermore, for those of you who engage with this practice from a Buddhist perspective, you may additionally experience a nondualistic state of mind with this yoga. Especially once mastery over the breath is gained, you eventually see that the self-existent mind is an illusion. This leads you to great awareness and the ability to make sound judgment moment to moment. The result of clean, clear awareness is the liberation from deception that leads to anger, jealousy, and ignorance. Whatever arises, you are in a position to make a skillful, conclusive decision, and you may even notice a greater degree of patience. This is not to be confused with torpor or laziness; it is a patience that embodies the intimate presence of awareness. This tends to mitigate waves of anger because you are able to find more skillful means to refine actions of your body, speech, and mind as a result of this profound awareness. This can be transformative throughout your lifetime, regardless of your religion or age.
The ancient yoga of Niguma, however, has historically been a secret tradition—and it is known to be extraordinarily transcendent. In addition to offering the many benefits one would also receive through hatha yoga, this practice cultivates the subtle channels of the inner body and refines the energetic winds that flow within them. In this way, we clear internal obstacles, restore energetic circulation, and attain health through balance. Ultimately, the practitioner restores the power of one’s most concentrated essence and gradually gains masterful yet gentle control of its internal movement. The fruits of the practice offer utmost clarity in one’s own mind and exquisite, auspicious discernment in one’s life.
"The ancient yoga of Niguma is known to be extraordinarily transcendent."
Niguma’s teachings and yogic methods are revered by the oldest traditions of many Vajrayana schools throughout the Himalayan region, and they are studied and practiced by scholars and meditators alike. Niguma was an exquisitely enlightened yogini who brought us this yogic tradition a thousand years ago. Many masters at that time acknowledged that the level of her realization was comparable to that of the Buddha himself.
Niguma asked her first student to promise not to allow her secret treasures to be shared with the public until seven generations had passed, and only then with precise and proper explanation. As per her condition, the first seven generations of practitioners carried out this tradition in strict secrecy. Then, once it became accessible, many Buddhist schools absorbed this tradition in earnest. Still, the yoga of Niguma remained closely held and only taught to dedicated monks during the latter part of a three-year secluded retreat.
Eventually, the previous Kalu Rinpoche began teaching lujong according to the lineage of Niguma—a series of yogic practices that combine movement, breathing, and awareness, the fruit of which is physical health, emotional balance, and spiritual awakening. Based on my own intense inspiration during retreat, and as a dedicated Buddhist practitioner, I was moved to follow in the footsteps of my predecessor, the previous Kalu Rinpoche, and decided to make the yoga of Niguma more accessible to the public, in large part with the many millions of hatha yoga practitioners in mind. To practice the yoga of Niguma, one is not asked to belong to any particular religion or worship any particular teacher. It is my hope and vision that this book will offer great benefit for generations to come. You, the reader, may join this living stream by taking up the practice. I wish you a very happy journey in this Niguma yoga practice. I hope our paths may cross in-person at future Niguma yoga events, wherever they may be in the world.
A Personal Journey
Childhood
As a child, I was recognized as the reincarnation of a great Buddhist teacher and given the title of “Rinpoche” by accomplished masters from different traditions: Sakya, Kagyu, Gelug, Jonang, and others. They offered me great deference as they had long held deep respect for the name of Kalu Rinpoche, as well as the teachings of Niguma and the Shangpa tradition for which my predecessor was lineage holder. Since childhood, I understood that I was expected to uphold these traditions, but I had no idea of the importance and magnitude of this responsibility.
Even though I never became a fully ordained monk with a vow of celibacy, or sexual abstinence, I have spent much of my life living in Dharma centers, monasteries, and retreat centers. At times, this was a decision made for me by my elders. However, it has also been my own choice as a human being, one that has allowed me to strengthen my study and to empower my ability to engage in extensive retreat.
When one resides in a monastery, one abides by a life that is essentially printed out for you—one must obey set rules and live by them on a daily basis. In my youth, it was not possible for me to really see anything beyond this regimen because it was before social media opened up the world, when it was uncommon to see anything on a display screen. Especially in India, the common public use of electronics came later than in Western countries. It was in that atmosphere that I went into a retreat as a youth.
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The yoga of Niguma comes to us from a secret tradition passed down over hundreds of years by Buddhist yogis in Tibet. The practice originated with the eleventh-century female yogini Niguma, who mastered and transmitted a tradition of remarkable practices that culminate in physical, spiritual, and emotional wellness. In this book, His Eminence Kalu Rinpoche, a Tibetan master who holds this lineage for today’s generation, is now opening up the practice to make its extraordinary benefits accessible to the modern yogi. The yoga of Niguma is a revered method that integrates body, mind, and breath. Dive in to discover for yourself a gradual, profound groundswell of subtle awakening.
