Kundalini Yoga and What My Disconnection Was Showing Me

Running Toward Something I Couldn't Name

Inhale, exhale, welcome to The Imagine Podcast, a journey to your true self. This is Daniela Troconis from Imagine Yoga Academy.

It's eight in the evening in Barcelona, and I'm running. Not for fun. I'm running because my Kundalini Yoga class starts in six minutes and I am still three blocks away, still in the clothes I wore for work all day, still carrying the weight of a job that my rational mind kept telling me I was lucky to have.

The Dream Job That Wasn't

I worked in graphic design. First at a small studio, long hours, small paycheck, the kind of place you sometimes begin at when you're starting a new life in Europe. Then, later, at one of the most respected design studios in the city, right on Passeig de Gràcia. One of the most beautiful streets in Barcelona. On paper, it was the dream job, well not for me.

And I was exhausted in a way that weekends or vacations don't fix. The kind that lives in your body and in your thoughts at the same time. Crying every night when I came back home, sometimes not even knowing exactly why.

I didn't have time for myself. I barely remember what I did with my evenings that year, except for one thing, I would do whatever it took to make it to that eight o'clock class. And some mornings, before the studio even opened, I'd drag myself to sadhana, the early morning practice, half asleep, still tired from the day before.

People who knew my schedule thought I was a little intense about it. Maybe I was. But those hours on the mat were the only hours where the noise actually stopped. Where I could breathe without a deadline attached to the breath. Where I got to see the world, and myself, from somewhere other than the inside of my own exhaustion.

What I Was Actually Looking For

I remember watching the women who owned the yoga studio and thinking, almost embarrassingly clearly: I want that life.

Looking back, of course there was some idealizing in that. I didn't know what their life actually looked like behind the scenes, nobody's life is as simple as it looks from a yoga mat. But underneath the idealizing, something else was happening. I was starting to see, for the first time, what I actually wanted to be part of my life. Not achievements. Not deadlines. Values. A way of being that didn't ask me to leave myself at the door every morning.

I was tired of having to leave the emotional part outside. Be sharp. Be productive. Be the version of yourself that's useful today, and deal with the rest of you later.

Because later never comes, that's the thing. You have to make space for yourself, beyond the doing, in your own life, otherwise you will not have it.

The Age the Question Isn't Supposed to Wait For

There's a researcher named Arthur C. Brooks who's written a lot about this exact moment, the one where a person who is, by every external measure, doing well, starts asking why they're doing any of it. He talks about how this tends to happen to people around their forties. Something in the brain, in the way our sense of meaning is wired, starts asking harder questions right around then.

I was in my late twenties.

And here's what I've learned since, that question doesn't wait for the "right" age. If it shows up in you at twenty-two, or thirty, or fifty-five, it's not early and it's not late. It's your own timeline, and the more you try to ignore it, to cover it up, to keep pushing, the harder it will push back at you. That kind of disconnection doesn't dissolve with a vacation. You can't outrun it with a good weekend away. It waits for you to actually turn and look at it.

Where Do You Already Run?

So, maybe you're not in Barcelona, and maybe your version of that story is an office, a hospital, a classroom, a company you built yourself. But if some part of you has started asking what is this actually for, and is this the life I want, or the life I fell into, I want you to know that question is not a crisis. It's a doorway.

It doesn't mean you have to burn everything down tomorrow. It usually starts much smaller than that. It starts with noticing where you already, instinctively, run toward relief, the way I ran toward that eight o'clock class. Where do you go, even exhausted, even inconvenienced, because something there guides you back to yourself?

That's not a small clue. That's the beginning of an answer.

The Practice Was Never the Goal

This is really what Kundalini Yoga has always been, underneath the poses and the breath and the mantras we use, it was never the goal itself. It was never about becoming excellent at the practice for its own sake. You were always the goal, not the yoga. The practice was the tool that kept guiding me back to myself, to a moment of connection, night after night.

We all need to prioritise having and nurturing the relationship with ourselves. Who you are beyond all the doing? Because the tendency is to attend everything else and leave that relationship for later. You are the sustainer of your own life, but you can only really be there for yourself if you dedicate time and attention to nurture yourself.

Something Small to Sit With

So here's something small to sit with this week, nothing to fix, nothing to solve. Just notice, what you already do, or where do you already go, without being told to, to feel more at peace, more like yourself? What in your life is nurturing that connection. A walk you take. A meditation you do. A room you go quiet in. Don't judge it, don't make it a five-year plan. Just notice it. That's the whole practice for now.

More than twenty years later, Kundalini Yoga still gives me that, those spaces of deep connection. And the beautiful part is, I don't need hours to get there anymore. Sometimes it's just stopping. Breathing. Moving. Sometimes just chanting for a few minutes. It's like my system already knows I'm opening that door.

That's why I keep sharing this work. Because these are spaces we need to keep cultivating, for as long as we're alive. And I still get emotional every time I see what's possible when someone commits to cultivating that connection with themselves.

If this landed somewhere in you, share it with someone who might need to hear it today, not because I'm asking you to, but because some of these questions are easier to sit with when you know someone else is asking them too. And if you'd like more of this, more real questions, more coming back, subscribe, and I'll be here next time.

With love, from here. Sat Nam.