About Us
As with most things in life, there is a story behind Kriya Yoga Encinitas and its face, Chris Knuth.
In 2019, Chris Knuth discovered Paramahansa Yogananda and began practicing Kriya Yoga. After committing to daily meditation, he found answers to lifelong spiritual questions, prompting him to study sacred texts like the Bhagavad Gita and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. Chris was certified as a Kriya Yoga Meditation Facilitator in 2024.
Professionally, Chris has operated a business for over 16 years and founded a nonprofit that assists veterans, formerly incarcerated, and those in recovery. He also initiated a computer skills program in Uganda.
Through his work, Chris helps small business owners and entrepreneurs achieve personal and professional growth by integrating spiritual principles to overcome limiting beliefs.
Chris' experience and personal transformation through practicing Kriya Yoga
In the spring of 2018, I hit a spiritual plateau. I knew there was another level, but I didn’t know how to access it.
I was listening to a talk given by Mark Houston on the 11th step in the 12-step program on prayer and meditation. He recounted a time when someone approached him, saying that meditation didn’t work for them. Mark then asked this person how long they’d been meditating. After hearing they had only been trying meditation for a couple of weeks, he said, “If you haven’t been meditating every day for at least six months, you aren’t entitled to have an opinion of whether or not it works.” I thought that was a very bold statement. Then I said to myself, “Challenge accepted!”
I fumbled around for a while, keeping the promise I made to myself to keep going, but I was surely not getting the breakthrough I was looking for until I heard one of my friends say, “Yogananda and the Great Ones.”
After my friends left, I typed "Yogananda and the Great Ones" into Google and discovered Yogananda was Parahamansa Yogananda, and his Self Realization Fellowship was here in town where I live and had been visiting the meditation gardens for years! I immediately read his book Autobiography of a Yogi, and my life was changed forever. Every question I ever had about religion that I never received a satisfactory answer to was fulfilled. I could feel the Truth in his words. I knew I needed to learn Kriya Yoga.
I spent the next two years studying Yogananda’s work reading his books and practicing his meditation techniques. Now I was getting somewhere. For the first time in my life, I felt stable, peaceful, content, inspired, and joyful. I knew I could handle anything life threw my way. It felt absolutely amazing. I felt my soul.
I kept applying the ideas and principles I was learning about in the writings of the teachers in our lineage as well as the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and my transformation kept getting deeper and more profound. In 2023 my teacher, Ryan Kurczak asked me to write my own commentary on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, a project that took over two years to complete. What an incredible experience.
Now, I teach classes to Kriya Yoga students across the US and worldwide, lead a weekly online meditation every Wednesday, and use these principles to help small business owners realize the freedom of entrepreneurship and live peaceful and fulfilling lives.