How I Learned to Open My Heart Again

Govind Das and his lovely wife Jacqueline Michelle

"To know God, we have to polish the mirror of our hearts"

I walked into my first Kirtan Vinyasa Yoga class with Govind Das about 16 years ago, at Bhakti Yoga Shala in Santa Monica, CA. I was completely new to the yoga world, and this was maybe the second yoga class that I ever took. I had thought at the time, that all yoga is the same, a physical exercise. Although the class name was slightly different, Kirtan Vinyasa Yoga, I didn't think much of it. I thought it was a creative name for a yoga class, a branding thing. As long as the word yoga was there, I was in! 

To my surprise, in this specific class there was a band and live music. The teacher Govind Das, an American caucasian man, with very long blonde dreadlocks and bright blue eyes, begins to instruct us to repeat certain words after him. They weren't English words, it was a language that I wasn’t familiar with, Sanskrit, which at the time I called "Sun Skirt". He enunciated each word very carefully, and repeated the same words over and over again, until I got it. He combined the singing with the physical Yoga Asana practice, so as we are holding a Warrior One pose (Virabhadrasana 1) we were all chanting and singing at the same time. He instructed us to hold each other’s arms from both sides, in a crowded room of about 100 people, and hold Warrior 3 pose (Virabhadrasana 3), which is a pose that requires a tremendous amount of balance, as you are standing on one leg, with the other leg lifted behind. In Downward Dog Pose (Adho Mukha Shvanasana), he instructed us to lift one leg up in the air and bend at the knee (one legged Dog), and high five the person next to us with the sole of lifted foot, he called it a “Jai Five ''. But the one that really got me was he instructed us to bring our hands in prayer position (Anjali Mudra) and look in the eyes of the person next to us, a complete stranger, and say to them “I see you”, and repeat it three times. I see you, I see you, I see you…

In the middle of the class, we stoped doing the poses, and everyone just started dancing. I’m talking the type of dancing that you do when no one's watching! It wasn't a performance, it wasn't about how good you look. It was about freedom from whatever it is that's been bogging you down, it was about unshackling yourself, physically releasing tension from your body. The idea is that you chant, you chant and you chant, you dance, you dance and you dance, you breathe and you sweat until everything that is not important dissolves, and then the only thing that is left is your deepest purest essence, your truth, which is LOVE. 

Now this was my first ever Kirtan Vinyasa Yoga class, I have never seen anything like this before. Although I was pleasantly surprised, I didn't know what to do with this. My chant was more like a whisper, my dance was barely bending one knee at a time. I was hiding at the back of the room, gazing in awe at everyone else. What is this world? Everyone looks happy and free. I wish I could be more like them, I thought.

I went to work the next day, sitting in my cubicle starring at my multiple computer screens as I talk to my colleagues that are sitting at the other side of the cube walls next to mine, starting at their own multiple computer screens. They hear my voice over the cubicle walls as I tell them about my Kirtan Vinyasa Yoga experience from the day before. They said this sounds like a cult. I explained to them how kind and happy everyone seemed. “That's how they get you! Through being nice”, they responded. “Forget about this” they said, “let's go to happy hour after work and get hammered! That's how you de-stress in America” everyone laughed.

In Polyvagal Theory, Dr. Stephen W. Porges, a distinguished university neuroscientist and a professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, emphasizes that practices like chanting, dancing and play are neural exercises and modulators that stimulate the healthy functions of the vagus nerve and reset the nervous system to a more coherent and equanimous state. Making you feel safe to live in harmony with the world around you. 

In many indigenous cultures and ancient wisdom traditions, community, dance and chanting are practiced regularly and are part of the culture. Living in a metropolitan city such as Los Angeles, we lose this sense of ritual, community and connection with one another. That's why many people suffer from loneliness and isolation.

I kept going to Kirtan Vinyasa Yoga several times a week, until Bhakti Yoga Shala became my happy place, my haven, and Kirtan Vinyasa is now my sacred ritual. I ended up being the one sitting right in the middle of the studio room, chanting at the top of my lungs and dancing my heart out! I've been doing this for the last 16 years.


Just like a physical Yoga Asana practice is designed to keep your body healthy and your bones strong. Bhakti Yoga is designed to keep your heart open and filled with love. I am deeply grateful to Govind Das, his lovely wife Jacqueline Michelle and all the lovely community of Bhakti Yoga Shala for teaching me how to open my heart again. For people like me to have a place to go and practice Bhakti Yoga. In yoga philosophy Bhakti Yoga is known as the yoga of the heart.

Although Bhakti Yoga Shala permanently closed their lovely yoga studio in Santa Monica during the pandemic, they have grown into an international community! Offering online classes, yoga retreats, trainings and so much more. I just attended an incredible Kirtan event, which invlovles only chanting and music, without the Vinyasa Yoga, meaning there are no yoga poses, only singing and dancing like a yoga concert. They offer various styles of classes on a regular bases in a gorgeous outdoor space, hugged in mother nature in the heart of Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles. You can watch this video of my amazing experience here.