I'd say that my husband and I were hippies and we lived in the middle of nowhere in West Virginia. We had a band. Even though we had no electricity, we used the generator for the band. And then after two years, we decided to go on a spiritual quest, try to find a spiritual way of life. So we started looking, we went out, we were on a cross-country trip. We got to Albuquerque, New Mexico and we tried one path there and they said, no, you can't get a mantra unless you live here. And we went to the Llama Foundation in Taos and they said, we don't like visitors in the winter. So then we kept eating at this restaurant, these really friendly people running this restaurant. And so we asked them if we could come to their early morning meditations. And they said, oh, we're doing a really tough one right now. You should just come to yoga class and we said, please. So we went there early in the morning and it was just like we met our people.

It was just perfect. It was tough, but we loved it and we got very high from it. So we moved into the ashram there and then we kept hearing about Yogi Bhajan and so we said, well, we better check him out. So we came to Virginia, the famous 1972 Tantric yoga course. And the minute I saw Siri Singh Sahib, I said, oh my gosh, that's my teacher.

I recognized him. And from then on, we just, we turned our commune into an ashram in West Virginia. We were there for two years and we moved to the Washington, D.C. ashram. And then everybody started having children and we moved out to more to Virginia. But I've been teaching yoga since 1972 and never stopped.

Did you have any religion, any beliefs growing up?

I was a congregationalist. And then there was a gap, you know, during, I'd say, during the first part of college where I always felt God was my best friend, but I kind of was more into, you know, I was just getting wild. But definitely a spiritual background. My mother taught me to pray when I was really young.

I'm lucky I have a very open-minded family. My father was in the CIA. He met people from all walks of life. He didn't have a problem with it. Neither did my mother. Plus my father used to meet with Yogi Bhajan.

Guru Sangat Kaur Khalsa / Sterling, VA