Jaskaram Kaur Khalsa
Jaskaram Kaur Khalsa wears her new identity on her
sleeve, literally. She was born Mehgan Sepanik and raised
Catholic by her Irish/German mother and Italian/Polish
father in Elgin, Illinois. Once an adult, Khalsa’s struggle to
find inner peace led her on a journey toward Sikhism that
would change everything – her manner of dress, her name,
and, most importantly, her psyche.
“2009 should have been a year I felt great and full of joy,
but I found myself in a very low place,” says Khalsa, who
completed her BA at Antioch University Los Angeles that
year. “I said to the universe, ‘I am done playing with you.
I am tired, and I don’t know what to do anymore.’ Then a
beautiful friend of mine gave me a stack of Kundalini yoga
mantras. I listened to them day and night: the most beautiful
sounds I had heard. They touched the core of me. They
became a life raft.”
Khalsa began studying Kundalini yoga with a teacher
who was Sikh. She found herself drawn to the 500-year-old
egalitarian religion, which Yogi Bhanjan introduced to the
U.S. – along with Kundalini yoga – in the late 1960s. Soon
Khalsa was devoting herself entirely to Sikhism, despite fears
that friends, family, and colleagues might not accept her.
“When I started wearing a turban outside of the Kundalini
yoga and Sikh community, the reaction was uncomfortable,”
Khalsa acknowledges. “When I decided to own it and decided
that this is who I am – a servant of the Guru – people responded
“When I started wearing a
turban outside of the Kundalini
yoga and Sikh community, the
reaction was uncomfortable.”
very positively and respectfully.”
As part of her transformation, she took the name Jaskaram
Kaur Khalsa and is in the process of legalizing this change.
Jaskaram means “destiny of grace shining with God’s glory,”
Kaur means “princess or lioness of God,” and Khalsa is a name
typically given when a person is baptized as a Sikh.
The reaction to her new identity by the AULA community
has been particularly warm, reports Khalsa, who now works
as a staff associate in the Registrar’s Office and recently began
teaching Kundalini yoga to other employees. “I remember the
first time I wore white to work,” she says. “Oh my goodness,
people loved it. This is when I understood the power and value
of the dress and how it [can have] a positive effect on all those
that see it.” -KF
Photo by Mikel Healy
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