3HO/Sikh Dharma Brotherhood

Modern religious organization founded
by Yogi Bhajan; the movement’s two
names reflect differing emphases in the
phases in Yogi Bhajan’s teaching. His initial teachings were the traditional disciplines of hatha yoga and kundalini
yoga, with his followers organized into a
group known as the Happy, Healthy,
Holy Organization (3HO). Hatha yoga is a
system of religious discipline (yoga)
based on a series of bodily postures
known as asanas; this practice is widely
believed to provide various physical
benefits, including increased bodily
flexibility and the ability to heal chronic
ailments. Kundalini yoga is the religious
discipline whose primary focus is awakening the kundalini, the latent spiritual
force that exists in every person in the
subtle body. The kundalini is awakened
through a combination of yoga practice
and ritual action and is believed to bring
further spiritual capacities and final liberation (moksha) of the soul.
These two disciplines remain an
important part of Yogi Bhajan’s teachings, for he claims to be a master of
tantra, a secret, ritually based religious
practice. In the 1970s his teaching
widened to include traditional Sikh
teachings and symbols. The most
prominent of these symbols are the “five
695
3HO/Sikh Dharma Brotherhood
K’s” that all Sikhs are supposed to wear,
so called because each of them begins
with the letter k: uncut hair (kesh), a
comb (kangha), a bangle on the right
wrist (kara), shorts (kacch), and a ceremonial sword (kirpan). Many of Yogi
Bhajan’s followers keep the Sikh symbols
far more strictly than most people born
as Sikhs, but the movement has two
important divergences with the traditional Sikh community. One of these is
its emphasis on tantra, which has little
importance in the Sikh community. The
most significant difference, however, is
the religious authority that Yogi Bhajan
holds over his followers, which is very
different from the decentralized, essentially democratic form of the traditional
Sikh community.