Krishna Kaur Khalsa

Krishna Kaur Khalsa
Born
Thelma Oliver

(1939-05-16) May 16, 1939
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation(s)Film actress, yoga instructor
Years active1958–1970

Krishna Kaur Khalsa (born Thelma Oliver, May 16 1939) is an American teacher of Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan. She began her career as an actress in film and theater before turning to yoga instruction in 1970. [1]

Early years

Khalsa, formerly known as Thelma Oliver, was born on May 6, 1939, in Los Angeles, California. Her father, Cappy Oliver, played the trumpet with Lionel Hampton's band. Khalsa studied dance at a school run by Jeni Le Gon, then later majored in Drama and Theatre Arts at University of California, Los Angeles.[2]

Performing career

Oliver left school in 1961 and moved east. Her off-Broadway stage debut was in the play The Blacks by French dramatist Jean Genet, where she played Virtue alongside Louis Gossett Jr. Oliver also performed in the musicals Fly Blackbird and Cindy and the revue The Living Premise, where she replaced Diana Sands for two months in 1963.[2]

Oliver also took several film roles beginning in 1958 with a part as a "Negro woman" in the film adaptation of the musical South Pacific. Her contribution to the 1961 swashbuckler Pirates of Tortuga is not credited. In Black Like Me, released in 1964, Oliver played the role of Georgie. She performed the role of "Ortiz's girl" in Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker. The cast included Rod Steiger, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and Brock Peters.[3] Oliver's key scene with Rod Steiger near the film's end drew controversy when Oliver exposed her breasts. The film was among the first American movies to feature nudity[4] while the Motion Picture Production Code was enforced and was the first film featuring bare breasts to receive Production Code approval. Although it was officially presented as a special exception, the controversy marked one of the first significant challenges to the Code, which eventually contributed to its discontinuation.

Thelma Oliver landed the role of "Helene" in the Broadway musical Sweet Charity with Gwen Verdon. Sweet Charity played at the Palace Theatre from January 1966 to July 1967, with 608 performances, garnering twelve Tony Award nominations, including an award for its choreography.[5]

Turn to Yoga

While a 1966 Ebony magazine profile mentions Oliver's study of "yoga philosophy and breathing," [6] yoga became a central focus of her life four years later when she met Yogi Bhajan. Yogi Bhajan renamed her "Krishna Kaur," meaning Divine Princess. According to Shanti Kaur Khalsa, she was given permission by Yogi Bhajan to teach yoga specifically within the Black community. Krishna Kaur established a yoga community in the neighborhood of Watts, Los Angeles, including a live-in center, a children's school, a daycare, a twice-weekly free kitchen, and "Sat Nam Street Players" who aimed to bring music and inspiration to marginalized communities in the area.[7]

Krishna Kaur described her philosophy regarding her yoga mission: "The revolution is really one of the mind. Blacks have got to realize where the power really is. The struggle is not on a physical level. It is on the level of the mind."[8]

Krishna Kaur traveled to Harimandir Sahib, or the Golden Temple, in December 1970. Shanti Kaur Khalsa documents that in August 1980, Krishna Kaur was the first woman recorded singing Sikh hymns inside the Golden Temple complex.[9]

In the 1990s, Krishna Kaur was involved in founding the International Black Yoga Teachers Association. She founded Yoga for Youth, a program intended to support young individuals involved in the U.S. criminal justice system. Krishna Kaur is currently the chairman of the Yoga for Youth board.[10]

In the 1970s, she toured and recorded with a group called "Sat Nam West."[11] In 2014, she released an album, One Creator.[12]

Filmography

See also

References

  1. ^ "Minister in the Spotlight: MSS Krishna Kaur Khalsa | Sikh Dharma Ministry". Retrieved 2025-05-20.
  2. ^ a b Ebony. Johnson Publishing Company.
  3. ^ Internet Movie Database https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0647014
  4. ^ "How The Pawnbroker changed film censorship". BFI. 2021-08-27. Retrieved 2025-03-12.
  5. ^ Green, Stanley, Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre, Boston, MA: Da Capo Press, 1980, p. 409.
  6. ^ "New Girl on Broadway," Ebony magazine, October 1966, p. 57.
  7. ^ Shanti Kaur Khalsa (1995), The History of Sikh Dharma in the Western Hemisphere, Espanola, NM: Sikh Dharma International, p. 29. ISBN 0-8263-1576-3
  8. ^ "Yoga: Something for Everyone, Ebony magazine, September 1975, p. 102. https://books.google.com/books?id=iVx7JXZQWgEC&dq=thelma+oliver+krishna+kaur+kundalini+yoga+Ramdas&pg=PA102
  9. ^ Shanti Kaur Khalsa, The History of Sikh Dharma in the Western Hemisphere, Espanola, NM: Sikh Dharma International, pp. 13–15, 38. ISBN 0-8263-1576-3
  10. ^ Stephanie Renfrow Hamilton, "Yoga in Black and White," Yoga Journal, September–October 2000, pp. 104–105.
  11. ^ Gurubanda Singh Khalsa, (1979). "Music the Companion That Soothes Us and Moves Us," in Khalsa, Sardarni Premka Kaur; Khalsa, Sat Kirpal Kaur. The Man Called Siri Singh Sahib. Los Angeles: Sikh Dharma.
  12. ^ "Krishna Kaur".
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