To a few million people, kriya yoga is primarily the series of techniques which involve directing life force, or prana, up and down specific passages in the spine until body, mind, and emotions are so calm and pure that higher consciousness can be perceived and entered into. Or, more appropriately, that the higher consciousness may descend throughout the individual’s faculties without being blocked, distorted, or limited.

The term kriya yoga is also popularly used in ways that will seem so bizarre as to make you laugh, or in other ways so strange as to raise eyebrows in perplexity.

Since the word kriya comes from the Sanskrit root word meaning action, many teachers feel free to call any actions they dream up, kriya yoga, or "kriya kriya," or "kriya-robics."