WHO'S GURU FATHA SINGH?
Guru Fatha Singh Khalsa is an insightful and inspiring teacher of Kundalini Yoga, and one of the world's leading authorities on the teachings of Yogi Bhajan. Guru Fatha has written several authoritative books and published a number of historic transcripts and recordings of these empowering teachings. He is an outspoken advocate for human rights, peace, and a healthy environment. Guru Fatha Singh is also involved in ground-breaking research into the transformative effects of Kundalini Yoga on practioners' health and well-being.
1970s & 1980s
Guru Fatha began his study with Yogi Bhajan in 1972 when he was eighteen years old. That is when he began to teach yoga classes. The next year, when Yogi Bhajan visited Toronto he was given his name, meaning “the lion who is the being of victory of the Guru.” Their relationship continued through more than three decades of his Master's teaching and travels. During a visit of Yogi Bhajan to Toronto in 1983, he tasked Guru Fatha with writing “Messenger from the Guru's House,” a biography of his teacher. This marked the beginning of decades of intensive research of his Master's life and teachings.
In this time, Guru Fatha Singh also served numerous roles in the burgeoning Toronto Kundalini Yoga community. For a time, he was its representative on the board of Yoga Ontario. As a new member of the small Sikh community of that time, he took up two successful human rights cases, the first to join the Canadian Armed Forces, and the second to be permitted to drive a taxicab with his turban and beard uncut.
Having dropped out of high school to pursue his spiritual quest, Guru Fatha Singh entered the University of Toronto and earned a degree in religious studies, then started a business selling health foods he imported from yogi friends who manufactured them in California. For a while, Guru Fatha served as the Kundalini Yoga community organizer in Toronto, facilitating meetings and events. It was also his job to gently wake everyone in the ashram on Palmerston Boulevard for 4 a.m. yoga each day, a job he loved to do. In 1987, he and his wife, Gurufateh Kaur were blessed with a shining son named Himmat Singh, “Brave Lion” (now long grown up and serving as a Mukhia Jathedar at Miri Piri Academy in India).
Writings
In the 1990s, Guru Fatha Singh wound down his business and, in 1994, submitted the first draft of the biography to his teacher for his review. He also submitted to the editors in New Mexico a manuscript on Yogi Bhajan's core teaching, the daily practice of yoga and meditation in the pre-dawn hours. Though the Master would approvingly have selections of that biography read to an audience of thousands at a Summer Solstice gather in New Mexico five years later, it would be the fate of that work to languish in editorial limbo even beyond his passing in 2004. The other manuscript was simply lost without a trace.
Blessed to be able to visit the Sikh homeland of India for six months in 1995, Guru Fatha Singh took the opportunity to inquire about the history of that land under British rule. His study resulted in a short study called Badges of Bondage: Conquest of the Sikh Mind [1847-1947] (1998). At this time, he also submitted dozens of articles and poems to The Sikh Review in Calcutta for publication. Bearing in mind Yogi Bhajan's instruction that he wanted his students to learn to communicate in Punjabi, Guru Fatha Singh used his recent experience to write a Punjabi primer for English speakers, The Punjabi I Know (1999).
Still awaiting word from the editorial group that had been given the biography of Yogi Bhajan, Guru Fatha went on to research and write a defining work on the unusual stance of his Master, as Kundalini Yogi and Sikh Master called The Essential Gursikh Yogi: The Yoga and Yogis in the Past, Present, and Future of Sikh Dharma (2003). Thanks to the gracious hospitality of the congregation at Nanaksar Thath, Mississauga, Guru Fatha Singh was able to take up his most ambitious project yet, an exploration of the Yogi Bhajan's teachings in the context of the Sikh tradition and the global evolution of culture and science in the past several centuries, Five Paragons of Peace: Magic and Magnificence in the Guru's Way (2007). Several hundred copies of this book have been sold worldwide.
In answer to the lack of literature for Sikh girls, Guru Fatha Singh wrote Women of Grace and Power: Stories for Girls and Women of All Ages (2013). It is an inspiring collection of accounts of the lives of great Sikh and nonSikh women, historical and still living.
With the able assistance of illustrator Siri Kartar Kaur of Rome/Los Angeles, the biography of Yogi Bhajan, titled Messenger from the Guru's House (2018) finally was published, though Guru Fatha Singh continues to collect anecdotes about the Master for future editions.
With pandemic isolation, 2021 has been a fruitful year. January saw the publication of a 2nd, illustrated edition of Badges of Bondage. In March, Guru Fatha Singh published BHAI SAHIB: The Life of Bhai Sahib Dayal Singh (1955-1975) - Saint, Teacher and Gentle Warrior. Then in August, it was time for an expanded edition of Women of Grace and Power with eleven new stories. All the year's books are available in eBook and Paperback format at amazon.com.
Videos
Starting in 2013, Guru Fatha Singh began posting short educational videos online. His most-seen video is his lucid explanation of Yogi Bhajan's essential teaching, the Adi Shakti Mantra which has been seen nearly 4,000 times. In 2015, Guru Fatha added to these a new series of Kundalini Yoga videos, including Kundalini Yoga and Islam, Kundalini Yoga and Buddhism, Kundalini Yoga and Children, plus two English/Mandarin videos and a captioned video, Kundalini Yoga and the Deaf. His holistic take on Kundalini Yoga and Islam has attracted viewers from all over the world, numbering over 10,000 and making this Guru Fatha's most popular video to date. In 2020, hosted a number of webinars with teachers of Kundalini Yoga around the world on the positive life and legacy of Yogi Bhajan.
Research
Sometimes a teacher is lucky to have an exceptionally hard-working and dedicated student. In Farah Jindani, Guru Fatha Singh found a gifted collaborator who helped him put together the first-ever (2011) global survey of practitioners of Yogi Bhajan's teachings. Then, in 2012, Farah conducted a large study of eighty sufferers of post-traumatic stress in a six-week Kundalini Yoga program. That study earned Farah her Doctorate in Psychology at the University of Toronto. It also resulted in the publication of scientific papers in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine (2015), Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine (2015), and the Journal of Religion & Spirituality in Social Work (2015).
Teaching
From his first classes at a converted synagogue on Darcy Street in Toronto's Chinatown to classes at the European Yoga Festival, in the Himalayan foothills, in the Andean jungle, and at 3HO Summer and Winter Solstices in the USA, Guru Fatha Singh is a legacy teacher dedicated to the progress of his students. Still based in Toronto, he gives occasional workshops and trainings. In Spring 2017, he travelled to Frankfurt, Germany to provide a training for caregivers from across Europe in the use of Kundalini Yoga as a therapy for sufferers of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Currently, Guru Fatha teaches weekly classes for children, sufferers of posttraumatic stress, University of Toronto students, advanced practitioners, and just regular people who want to deepen their life experience. After a successful trial class in fall 2016, he began to give classes at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health with funding from the Junior League of Toronto.
Climate Activism
In the light of the current crisis of climate change, Guru Fatha Singh has been actively engaged. His first venture was an article entitled "Eco Yoga" published in Vitality Magazine in 1993 offering simple yogic pointers for managing the first ecology, the ecology of one's body. In September 2014, Guru Fatha took part in the historic People's Climate March in New York City, called to convince legislators around the world to enact progressive environmental legislation. Since the fall of 2018, Guru Fatha Singh has been educating and organizing students and friends to combat global warming as the most serious of the climate crises. Since spring of 2020, he has been collaborating with producer Thomas Barquee to create an anthem to inspire people everywhere to engage in fighting our climate emergency. By the fall of 2021, it seems to have neared completion. Stay tuned.
It is my great good fortune to share the techniques of Kundalini Yoga with people of all cultures, ages and abilities. I humbly dedicate myself to the progress of all my students and my yoga family everywhere. Wherever we are, I pray that we might each of us in our unique way contribute to peace, kindness, and harmony on this fragile planet. Sat Nam.
With my student hosts in Quito, Ecuador.