July 2006 - 3HO

the power of
negative thinking
Adapted from Kundalini Yoga: The Flow of Eternal Power
By Shakti Parwha Kaur Khalsa
It wasn’t a “dark and stormy night.” It was, however,
a damp and cold (for Los Angeles) rainy ‘winter’ day.
Sitting on the floor of my apartment on Preuss Road
I was doing the bookkeeping for our newly formed
3HO Foundation. In the early 1970’s the financial
department of 3HO consisted of some shoeboxes full of
receipts I kept in my closet. Working fulltime at the Beverly
Hilton, I wrote letters for Yogi Bhajan and handled the finances
for 3HO in my spare time.
That memorable day, I decided I could use a cup of hot tea.
In the kitchen, I turned up the heat on the ever-present pot of
Yogi Tea and carried a steaming cup into the living room. I set
it down carefully on the floor beside my books and papers.
My bare feet felt cold so I went into the bedroom to put on a
pair of wool socks. When I walked back into the living room, I
had forgotten the cup was there and stepped right smack into
the boiling hot tea. Talk about putting your foot into it! I let
out a yell and ran to the bathroom to get some first aid. More
accurately, I hopped on the other foot while pulling frantically
at the sock, trying to tear it off as fast as I could (since, of
course, the wet wool retained the heat of the liquid, and was
furiously adding insult to injury). I grabbed some aloe vera
from the medicine cabinet and spread it on the injured foot,
which had already turned a bright angry red.
Yogi Bhajan had just returned to L.A. from one of his
teaching tours and I knew he was just a half block away at
Guru Ram Das Ashram. I picked up the phone and called him,
assuming he would come running over immediately to comfort
and heal me. Forget it! When I told him what had happened,
he just said, “You’ll be all right. I‘m sending someone over to
take care of you.” And so he did. One of his students arrived
in just a few minutes and she helped set up a place for me to
When I told Yogi Bhajan what had
happened, he just said, “You’ll be all right.
lie down on the couch. I was in so much pain I knew I couldn’t possibly sleep in my bed. I
didn’t expect to sleep much anyway.
I phoned the hotel and told the manager I had severely burned my foot and would not be
able to come to work the next day. I lay down on the couch, closed my eyes, and settled in for
a restless night. I slept fitfully off and on, but lo and behold, when morning dawned, there
was not the slightest trace of a burn. There was no discoloration of the skin and no pain.
Amazed and thrilled, I phoned my mother. “Guess what happened…” I told her the whole
story—the hot tea, the burning sock, the amazing healing, and finished by saying, “I don’t
believe it!” I called at least four other people and repeated the story, each time ending with
the words, “I don’t believe it!” By four o’clock in the afternoon, my foot didn’t believe it
either. It was burning and aching. The redness returned in Technicolor and I spent several
uncomfortable weeks while the normal healing
process of nature took its leisurely pace.
I learned that day to be careful what I say. The
power of positive (or negative) thinking—and
speaking—is not a fantasy, it’s real. I do create—
or destroy—with every word I speak, and so do
you. Ask my foot! +
Shakti Parwha Kaur Khalsa was Yogi Bhajan’s first student
in the United States. She has been teaching Kundalini Yoga
since 1969. She was officially certified by KRI after completing
the first Masters Touch Teacher Training Course in 1996.
Author of Kundalini Yoga: The Flow of Eternal Power, Tool Kit for
Teaching Beginners, and Kundalini Postures and Poetry, Shakti
is currently working on Marriage: The Highest Yoga.
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