Krishna Kaur Khalsa

Krishna Kaur Khalsa is an African-American teacher of Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan. Born Thelma Oliver, she pursued a career in films and theater before in 1970 dedicating herself to empowering others through the practice of yoga.

Khalsa was born Thelma Oliver in Los Angeles, California on May 6, 1941. Her father, Cappy Oliver played trumpet with Lionel Hampton's band and her mother tried her hand at roller skating, wrestling, and singing before settling down to raise five children. She studied dance at a school run by Jeni Le Gon before majoring in Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of California in Los Angeles UCLA.

Oliver dropped out of school in 1961 and went East to pursue her calling as a performer. Her off-Broadway stage debut was in The Blacks (play) by French dramatist Jean Genet, where she performed the role of Virtue along with Louis Gossett, Jr.. Oliver also performed in the musicals Fly Blackbird and Cindy, and the revue The Living Premise, where in 1963 she replaced Diana Sands for two months.

Oliver also took a number of film roles beginning with a part as a "Negro woman" in the hit South Pacific (1958 film). Her contribution to the 1961 swashbuckler Pirates of Tortuga is not credited. In Black Like Me (film), 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, Brock Peters, and Morgan Freeman. It was Oliver's pivotal scene with Rod Steiger near the film's end, that drew controversy at the time, when Oliver exposed her breasts. The film was among the first American movies to feature nudity during the Production Code, and was the first film featuring bare breasts to receive Production Code approval. Although it was publicly announced to be a special exception, the controversy proved to be first of similar major challenges to the Code that ultimately led to its abandonment.

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