Guru Jagat wants to lead you on the path to long-lasting happiness.

After years of dedicated Ashtanga practice, the yogi eventually took her first Kundalini class and was amazed at the powerful shift she felt almost immediately. She had to investigate the resulting unique and revitalizing energy. So, she journeyed to New Mexico to study under Master Yogi Bhajan and learn the fascinating lineage of the Kundalini practice.

In 2013, based on that amassed knowledge, she founded the RA MA Institute for Applied Yogic Science in Venice, California, where she passes on the teachings of Yogi Bhajan and leads the Kundalini lifestyle movement and shares how to do Kundalini yoga.

Here, Jagat shares her strategies for staying grounded in Kundalini yogic principals throughout her everyday

Live The Process: What drew you to Kundalini?

Guru Jagat: It was the quickness and the efficiency. I had been practicing two hours of Astanga yoga every morning and one minute into my first Kundalini yoga class, I had more energy moving in my body than in a year of Hatha yoga practice! I then made my way out to Espanola, New Mexico to study with Yogi Bhajan while he was still alive.

LTP: How can Kundalini help people find and sustain long-lasting happiness?

GJ: Kundalini is a powerful way to upgrade your operating system.

In an increasingly complex and fast-moving world, keeping your whole system functioning optimally is becoming less a luxury and more a requirement every moment of every day. Kundalini yoga is a technology that powers up atrophied or unused parts of the brain, endocrine system and other key parts of the body-mind to create the physiological, psycho-emotional and mental foundation for lasting states of calm, focused, inspired and creative human experiences. You are wired as a human being to be happy. All you have to do is light up that innate electrical circuitry.

LTP: What inspired you to open The RA MA Institute in Venice?

GJ: My yoga and meditation practice inspired me, and my immensely powerful relationship with the lineage of the practice and my spiritual teacher. Venice is a vortex, a power spot on the planet. In past years it’s been flooded with some of the most creatively successful people on the planet—that's not a coincidence.

LTP: What personal routines and behaviors help you live by yogic principles outside the studio?

GJ: Death Training is a huge practice for me as I go through my day. I ask myself: if this was my last day, my last moment, my last gaze into the person's eyes in front of me, how would I want to show up? How would I want to love? How would I want to feel the breeze on my skin, the sun, the precious moments. This is an amazing way to get inside the moment rather than floating above or below it, always chasing the white rabbit of the next thing.

I also chant as much as I can throughout the day mentally. “Sa ta na ma” is a simple mantra, or “Victory.” This keeps my mind directed towards expansion, creativity, beauty, compassion and fearlessness.

LTP: What does happiness look like to you?

GJ: Happiness is the true experience of me in me, not just some collected nucleus of subconscious thought forms, limitations, conditions, self-sabotages and habits that I call my “personality” or “me.” Through my vow of service to all sentient beings and my meditation practice, this experience becomes more possible, with each breath and with each decision I make to give my life in a real way to the happiness, elevation and evolution of the human race.

LTP: What does it mean to you to "Live The Process" and how do you do that every day?

GJ: In this age, it's becoming more and more important that leaders acutely live by their own true spiritual and moral tenets. This is the most important thing for me: to continually cleanse my subconscious mind, my body and heart, so that I can be as clear a vessel as possible for the Creative Power or Dharma Art to be expressed through me.

Find more information about the RA MA Institute here.