With kundalini, you soon see how everything is connected. You feel it. You might even feel yourself becoming it. The physical body is caught up in this trans-formative process, and there are some very physical things you can do to make its presence in your body easier to deal with.
I think that it depends on where you are in your process. I lived with kundalini for about four years before things began to get difficult. I certainly had some difficulty before then, but nothing compared to when I began to question my experience, which led to a deepening of the energy within me and this highlighted the issues within that had lain more dormant as the energy seemed to have a place to reside, but was, I think, coming up against strong internal resistance on my part, albeit subconscious in many ways, against its going deeper. When I began to work on loosening blocks in a much more conscious way, life became very difficult because the inrush of kundalini through all these knots made things very painful. I think its possible to live with kundalini but have its energy only go so far. Its as though it wont go where it is not welcomed, and while some would see the coming of kundalini as nothing they ever asked for, it is my feeling that on a deeper level it was most certainly bidden. I know that when I ask the energy to come on stronger in order to do some work, it does. Sometimes it feels like it is kicking my behind, but I know that this pain or difficulty is merely lack of alignment to its perfect energy. I know that I did not have the trouble with adrenaline until I began working to remove blocks. Only then did adrenaline rev up like nobodies business. The effect that this has on the adrenals and kidneys is very real. Some can suffer adrenal burn-out, and having adrenaline pumping through you in this way can be very wearing on the body. This can be part of the trial by “fire” that many talk about.
To this end, there are things you can do to help support your body during this time. One of these is simple, but very useful. Its exercise. During some of the hardest times with this, I had a bicycle that I would ride. My bike is a mountain bike, so I took it off-road and rode up and down grassy hills around parks and in natural locations. Instead of feeling totally jazzed, I felt a measure of peace after these rides.
One thing that was pointed out to me by a friend who had lived with kundalini her whole life and who was educated in eastern practices, was how the eastern cultures tend to have an alkalizing diet. It is in these cultures that there seems to be the greatest awareness off and perhaps incidence of awakenings. Is it possible that the by products of adrenaline,the fight or flight end of our experience, creates compounds in the body that serve to keep it in a frightened state? A kind of chemical reminder that we are still very much swimming in the chemical soup of fear and the shadow side of ourselves? Alkalizing the body serves to actually change the body from acid to alkaline. Its totally unintuitive, but the results are that it does. One way that I introduced this into my day to day regimen was to put two teaspoons of organic apple cider vinegar in water. I eventually got to a place where I would just quaff a tablespoon of it straight with a good dose of water to chase it down. I tried to do this twice a day. Another way would be to use lemon juice. You can also make sure that you eat salads that have vinegar in them as well. One things you will need to watch is how it might effect your digestion. Normally stomach acid is very strong, but in some people who have problems with acid reflux, making sure you don’t aggravate your condition with the addition of more acid could be something worth considering. The other side of this was how to help the kidneys, because it is the kidneys that are involved in the production of adrenaline. One very good tonic is organic wild cherry juice. It can be had as a concentrate added in the same way to water as the vinegar. Take a few times each week, it is supposed to help support the kidneys. At the core of this, though, is learning how to deal with adrenaline.
I am of the opinion that the reason why the adrenaline is there in the first place is because of an unresolved issue concerning fear. Kundalini highlights this and builds on it in a kind of unmerciful way where everything is put under the spot light so WE SEE IT instead of just shoving it down. We may not even know WHY we are shuddering from the adrenaline and having such a hard time of it, but I do believe that the whole purpose of the adrenaline syndrome is to learn how to transform or transmute it in the body. This is huge. HUGE. Being able to figure out intuitively how to change this set up in your body, this end of the chemistry is a form of spiritual alchemy. We can analyze it all we want, but ultimately it requires an ability to gain some control over our bodies and how they react to this chemistry. Adrenaline, I suspect, is only part of the story. In fact, I believe that my bliss is not simply a dopamine/serotonin cycle but a cycle of adrenaline as well. Adrenaline mixed with dopamine gives me the “high” that feels perfect with kundalini. I also suspect that most addictions to opiates (which are dopamine mimics) and to speedy drugs like cocaine and amphetamines (which mimics the adrenaline) are the inner yearnings we have towards trying to find a balance of them in our bodies, a subconscious effort to bring about a balancing of them, and thus a craving for them. I think this MIGHT work in the beginning of using such outside forms of the chemistry, but it quickly devolves as it almost always does with addiction into something that wrecks health and life. We recognize this chemistry, but learning how to foster it in our bodies is the trick. Its very much like learning how to ride a surf board. Not too much forward, not too much back. You have to be in balance on this mighty wave. Its a kind of way, very hard at first, for finding that balance point where through feeling (feelings are the catalyst for all our chemistry internally I feel), we are able to steer our own vessels into waters that were entirely unknown before all of this took place.
So exercise. In my case, I tried to really get my heart rate up. It felt good to do this. It has a way of washing away all of my concerns and plants me in the moment. Its also very good for you!
Movement is something I am dealing with in my book that has the same title as this blog, and in it I have observed through numerous traditions that movement, even ecstatic movement, serves an important function in the physiological connection to the effects that trauma has on the body. As you awaken, I am sure you have discovered a whole new sense of sensing energy. Things are much more apparent in this way, and you feel through the energy body to the point where you can feel others around you energetically. You feel patterns of past trauma in others as energetic patterns that can be translated into etheric pain that gets referred to the body as well. This is where extreme stomach tightness can occur, headaches, and pain in the heart or just about any other part of the body. As a result, you can become more acutely aware of those issues you have in your own etheric body and which have become lodged also in your physical body since the etheric and physical feed perfectly into one another. When I say “etheric” I mean energetic….and not simply the physical mirrors of this energy that express as our physical chemistry which I believe are themselves mirror of how we feel and are inside. But since all of this is connected, the body follows in lock step with the rest of the systems that its a part of. Emotions certainly are lodged in certain energetic crossroads or funnels for cosmic energy. We call these chakras. In each of these there is a slightly different expression of energy, much like how a rainbow is the result of all colors in visible light scattered through the use of a prism.
When I first began to do more conscious energy work, I was told that there was someone in my community who was an expert in his field that would be able to help me with my energetic blocks. This was suggested to me by the gifted intuitive Alison Neville whose ability to “cold read” is amazing for how accurate she is in her work. She told me as she read all of this that there was someone I needed to look for, she could read his energy but she explained it could be either male or female. I would be looking for someone who had, as she explained “old man” energy. This could have been a woman who had this kind of energy, but it could also be a man. Whoever it was, this person was close and would be of help.
The very next day I was talking to a client who was having me make a hanging device for a piece of glass I had made that she bought out of a show I had had the year previous. As we talked about this, she mentioned how she was doing energy work. My ears pricked up, but knowing this lady, there wasn’t much about her that seemed masculine. She had had a life changing event in her life that moved her towards doing body work, massage, and even hypnosis. I would come to find much later that this event was a kundalini awakening. At the time, though, she said nothing about this and then went on to mention as a final note to our conversation that she was attending a local Qi Gung (also spelled Qi Gong) class that was held just a block or two from my home. She explained it was being taught by a fabulous guy who was a Naturopath, who had written one of the most complete and authoritative text books on the subject, and as part of his knowledge, had also gone to China to study Qi Gung as well. As I listened, more and more, this “little man” who was middle aged but still fairly young, was sounding more and more like a possibility.
When I went to the next class that was held, I saw a little man who had a calmness and quiet to his demeanor. If there was a guy who fit the bill, this was it! I followed along as we went through a whole series of moves in that first class. For those unfamiliar with the discipline, Qi Gung is a form of movement that is a little like Thai Chi, but is a little more physical. It means “energy work” and while very low impact, it does work the body but does so in order to not expend too much energy, but to help move and tone the energy body. When in that first class, Robin, the teacher, explained how this type of work could be used to remove old knots and blocks. A light went off in my head.
Following the class something unexpected happened. I thought maybe I might feel lighter, or some hitherto as yet known state of being might emerge. I actually began to feel a greater sense of anxiety, a blanket of dis-ease came on, and I felt myself getting clammy. I could feel a pressure in my head. I didn’t feel all here. I wondered if what I was doing was even good for me. Alison would later explain that this is not to be unexpected. This only meant that the movement was working, but I had a backlog of material that was being moved and this was creating some anxiety. This only meant it was working in a powerful way.
I continued dutifully going to Qi Gong class. I felt like all kinds of muck was being stirred up. Adrenaline began to move very powerfully at a later stage in all of this, and I felt a little out of kilter sometimes. My sense was that it WAS working, and it was during this time that I had some of the greatest changes in the way I felt. I felt that this was the cure that would stir a feeling of sickness before the troubled energy would loosen within me. Over time I found myself feeling much better, and through a series of events that took place that involved inner guidance, I had even greater movements of junk out of me. One of these involved what I know to be an ancient angelic being who told me his name and explained he was a “seraphim” which I later learned through research, was a type of old Judaic angel. Reaching into my heart center, he pulled something out of me that resulted in my feeling completely different. in an odd turn of events, I would stumble across a nearly identical account by an early Christian saint from Europe. All of this is described in the book and helps to underline the nature of energy as seemingly not solid but containing a very real, almost “concrete” identity. Some of these patterns can remain in our bodies long past their due date. Having them removed seems to be something that we are not adept at doing ourselves, but that through such methods as Qi Gung and ecstatic movement, can help stir the pot and allow these things to fall away naturally.
The now long lost Shakers who were a branch of the Quakers, learned to reach ecstatic states through a particular type of movement. Animals utilize movement in response to trauma, and there are cases where before someone is healed of an old trauma, they go into a shaking fit. I have been very lucky to have literally stumbled across incidents in books I was drawn to but didn’t know why. In them, in an isolated paragraph not having anything to do with the role of movement in healing would be an account that the author felt he needed to share about how someone was healed of some past trauma from childhood. Even the author himself didn’t make the connection, but the universe certainly made sure I saw the connection by bringing the very page I needed to see one night as I flipped through the book and opened it to the very page which I am relating to you now. Interesting, too, since I was going to take the book back to the library because it hadn’t contained the information that I thought it might have, another “oops” in the life of someone lifting books from shelves in a somewhat random way. While it all seems accidental, I have had so many of these accidents that I know that it has been an extremely effective way for me to do research, albeit one where I do not have to pour through books in order to find a given passage. I just flip through, not realizing what is about to come.
And this, for as anecdotal as it might seem, helps to underscore a phenomenon many who are having awakenings will experience, and its something that you can utilize in your own life if you are willing to be open to the possibility, which is that the universe will bring you what you need. A gifted intuitive might tell you about someone you have to find in your community in order to begin doing this important work only to have a friend call about something not even related and wind up talking about the very person who was mentioned just the day before. You might begin to wonder how YOU can move through some aspect of this experience that might be causing your trouble only to chance upon a blog, or book, or a random conversation that leads to a friend giving you the phone number of someone who is suppose to be putting you in touch with a business resource, say, but who, in talking to them, happens to mention something that puts you in touch with a resource you might not have otherwise found that helps you with kundalini. Or even some other aspect of your life…..
I am a firm experiencer of "as you seek, so shall you find." Doors will be opened to you as you ask for them in the right way. Believing in the possibility but not dwelling on it or anticipating their happening has always been the best key to their happening. In this way, they feel entirely effortless, and this is I think the whole point. Things can be much easier if you let them. If something is tripping you up, maybe some pain in your field is resulting in fear or hurt. Maybe through movement or a simple act of forgiveness, you allow some long lost issue to simply drop away, one that had gone past its due date. And as it does, the hurt resolves into its opposite, which is joy. And love. Being able to do this kind of work for ourselves is a profound act of love towards the self, the soul. it seeks to make YOU right before trying to make the world right. Since the world IS inside of you, getting better inside you is a fabulous and very healthy way to find authentic happiness and fulfillment.
I hope you find the magic that is your own soul peering back at you through these marvelous events that are great gifts!
I think that it depends on where you are in your process. I lived with kundalini for about four years before things began to get difficult. I certainly had some difficulty before then, but nothing compared to when I began to question my experience, which led to a deepening of the energy within me and this highlighted the issues within that had lain more dormant as the energy seemed to have a place to reside, but was, I think, coming up against strong internal resistance on my part, albeit subconscious in many ways, against its going deeper. When I began to work on loosening blocks in a much more conscious way, life became very difficult because the inrush of kundalini through all these knots made things very painful. I think its possible to live with kundalini but have its energy only go so far. Its as though it wont go where it is not welcomed, and while some would see the coming of kundalini as nothing they ever asked for, it is my feeling that on a deeper level it was most certainly bidden. I know that when I ask the energy to come on stronger in order to do some work, it does. Sometimes it feels like it is kicking my behind, but I know that this pain or difficulty is merely lack of alignment to its perfect energy. I know that I did not have the trouble with adrenaline until I began working to remove blocks. Only then did adrenaline rev up like nobodies business. The effect that this has on the adrenals and kidneys is very real. Some can suffer adrenal burn-out, and having adrenaline pumping through you in this way can be very wearing on the body. This can be part of the trial by “fire” that many talk about.
To this end, there are things you can do to help support your body during this time. One of these is simple, but very useful. Its exercise. During some of the hardest times with this, I had a bicycle that I would ride. My bike is a mountain bike, so I took it off-road and rode up and down grassy hills around parks and in natural locations. Instead of feeling totally jazzed, I felt a measure of peace after these rides.
One thing that was pointed out to me by a friend who had lived with kundalini her whole life and who was educated in eastern practices, was how the eastern cultures tend to have an alkalizing diet. It is in these cultures that there seems to be the greatest awareness off and perhaps incidence of awakenings. Is it possible that the by products of adrenaline,the fight or flight end of our experience, creates compounds in the body that serve to keep it in a frightened state? A kind of chemical reminder that we are still very much swimming in the chemical soup of fear and the shadow side of ourselves? Alkalizing the body serves to actually change the body from acid to alkaline. Its totally unintuitive, but the results are that it does. One way that I introduced this into my day to day regimen was to put two teaspoons of organic apple cider vinegar in water. I eventually got to a place where I would just quaff a tablespoon of it straight with a good dose of water to chase it down. I tried to do this twice a day. Another way would be to use lemon juice. You can also make sure that you eat salads that have vinegar in them as well. One things you will need to watch is how it might effect your digestion. Normally stomach acid is very strong, but in some people who have problems with acid reflux, making sure you don’t aggravate your condition with the addition of more acid could be something worth considering. The other side of this was how to help the kidneys, because it is the kidneys that are involved in the production of adrenaline. One very good tonic is organic wild cherry juice. It can be had as a concentrate added in the same way to water as the vinegar. Take a few times each week, it is supposed to help support the kidneys. At the core of this, though, is learning how to deal with adrenaline.
I am of the opinion that the reason why the adrenaline is there in the first place is because of an unresolved issue concerning fear. Kundalini highlights this and builds on it in a kind of unmerciful way where everything is put under the spot light so WE SEE IT instead of just shoving it down. We may not even know WHY we are shuddering from the adrenaline and having such a hard time of it, but I do believe that the whole purpose of the adrenaline syndrome is to learn how to transform or transmute it in the body. This is huge. HUGE. Being able to figure out intuitively how to change this set up in your body, this end of the chemistry is a form of spiritual alchemy. We can analyze it all we want, but ultimately it requires an ability to gain some control over our bodies and how they react to this chemistry. Adrenaline, I suspect, is only part of the story. In fact, I believe that my bliss is not simply a dopamine/serotonin cycle but a cycle of adrenaline as well. Adrenaline mixed with dopamine gives me the “high” that feels perfect with kundalini. I also suspect that most addictions to opiates (which are dopamine mimics) and to speedy drugs like cocaine and amphetamines (which mimics the adrenaline) are the inner yearnings we have towards trying to find a balance of them in our bodies, a subconscious effort to bring about a balancing of them, and thus a craving for them. I think this MIGHT work in the beginning of using such outside forms of the chemistry, but it quickly devolves as it almost always does with addiction into something that wrecks health and life. We recognize this chemistry, but learning how to foster it in our bodies is the trick. Its very much like learning how to ride a surf board. Not too much forward, not too much back. You have to be in balance on this mighty wave. Its a kind of way, very hard at first, for finding that balance point where through feeling (feelings are the catalyst for all our chemistry internally I feel), we are able to steer our own vessels into waters that were entirely unknown before all of this took place.
So exercise. In my case, I tried to really get my heart rate up. It felt good to do this. It has a way of washing away all of my concerns and plants me in the moment. Its also very good for you!
Movement is something I am dealing with in my book that has the same title as this blog, and in it I have observed through numerous traditions that movement, even ecstatic movement, serves an important function in the physiological connection to the effects that trauma has on the body. As you awaken, I am sure you have discovered a whole new sense of sensing energy. Things are much more apparent in this way, and you feel through the energy body to the point where you can feel others around you energetically. You feel patterns of past trauma in others as energetic patterns that can be translated into etheric pain that gets referred to the body as well. This is where extreme stomach tightness can occur, headaches, and pain in the heart or just about any other part of the body. As a result, you can become more acutely aware of those issues you have in your own etheric body and which have become lodged also in your physical body since the etheric and physical feed perfectly into one another. When I say “etheric” I mean energetic….and not simply the physical mirrors of this energy that express as our physical chemistry which I believe are themselves mirror of how we feel and are inside. But since all of this is connected, the body follows in lock step with the rest of the systems that its a part of. Emotions certainly are lodged in certain energetic crossroads or funnels for cosmic energy. We call these chakras. In each of these there is a slightly different expression of energy, much like how a rainbow is the result of all colors in visible light scattered through the use of a prism.
When I first began to do more conscious energy work, I was told that there was someone in my community who was an expert in his field that would be able to help me with my energetic blocks. This was suggested to me by the gifted intuitive Alison Neville whose ability to “cold read” is amazing for how accurate she is in her work. She told me as she read all of this that there was someone I needed to look for, she could read his energy but she explained it could be either male or female. I would be looking for someone who had, as she explained “old man” energy. This could have been a woman who had this kind of energy, but it could also be a man. Whoever it was, this person was close and would be of help.
The very next day I was talking to a client who was having me make a hanging device for a piece of glass I had made that she bought out of a show I had had the year previous. As we talked about this, she mentioned how she was doing energy work. My ears pricked up, but knowing this lady, there wasn’t much about her that seemed masculine. She had had a life changing event in her life that moved her towards doing body work, massage, and even hypnosis. I would come to find much later that this event was a kundalini awakening. At the time, though, she said nothing about this and then went on to mention as a final note to our conversation that she was attending a local Qi Gung (also spelled Qi Gong) class that was held just a block or two from my home. She explained it was being taught by a fabulous guy who was a Naturopath, who had written one of the most complete and authoritative text books on the subject, and as part of his knowledge, had also gone to China to study Qi Gung as well. As I listened, more and more, this “little man” who was middle aged but still fairly young, was sounding more and more like a possibility.
When I went to the next class that was held, I saw a little man who had a calmness and quiet to his demeanor. If there was a guy who fit the bill, this was it! I followed along as we went through a whole series of moves in that first class. For those unfamiliar with the discipline, Qi Gung is a form of movement that is a little like Thai Chi, but is a little more physical. It means “energy work” and while very low impact, it does work the body but does so in order to not expend too much energy, but to help move and tone the energy body. When in that first class, Robin, the teacher, explained how this type of work could be used to remove old knots and blocks. A light went off in my head.
Following the class something unexpected happened. I thought maybe I might feel lighter, or some hitherto as yet known state of being might emerge. I actually began to feel a greater sense of anxiety, a blanket of dis-ease came on, and I felt myself getting clammy. I could feel a pressure in my head. I didn’t feel all here. I wondered if what I was doing was even good for me. Alison would later explain that this is not to be unexpected. This only meant that the movement was working, but I had a backlog of material that was being moved and this was creating some anxiety. This only meant it was working in a powerful way.
I continued dutifully going to Qi Gong class. I felt like all kinds of muck was being stirred up. Adrenaline began to move very powerfully at a later stage in all of this, and I felt a little out of kilter sometimes. My sense was that it WAS working, and it was during this time that I had some of the greatest changes in the way I felt. I felt that this was the cure that would stir a feeling of sickness before the troubled energy would loosen within me. Over time I found myself feeling much better, and through a series of events that took place that involved inner guidance, I had even greater movements of junk out of me. One of these involved what I know to be an ancient angelic being who told me his name and explained he was a “seraphim” which I later learned through research, was a type of old Judaic angel. Reaching into my heart center, he pulled something out of me that resulted in my feeling completely different. in an odd turn of events, I would stumble across a nearly identical account by an early Christian saint from Europe. All of this is described in the book and helps to underline the nature of energy as seemingly not solid but containing a very real, almost “concrete” identity. Some of these patterns can remain in our bodies long past their due date. Having them removed seems to be something that we are not adept at doing ourselves, but that through such methods as Qi Gung and ecstatic movement, can help stir the pot and allow these things to fall away naturally.
The now long lost Shakers who were a branch of the Quakers, learned to reach ecstatic states through a particular type of movement. Animals utilize movement in response to trauma, and there are cases where before someone is healed of an old trauma, they go into a shaking fit. I have been very lucky to have literally stumbled across incidents in books I was drawn to but didn’t know why. In them, in an isolated paragraph not having anything to do with the role of movement in healing would be an account that the author felt he needed to share about how someone was healed of some past trauma from childhood. Even the author himself didn’t make the connection, but the universe certainly made sure I saw the connection by bringing the very page I needed to see one night as I flipped through the book and opened it to the very page which I am relating to you now. Interesting, too, since I was going to take the book back to the library because it hadn’t contained the information that I thought it might have, another “oops” in the life of someone lifting books from shelves in a somewhat random way. While it all seems accidental, I have had so many of these accidents that I know that it has been an extremely effective way for me to do research, albeit one where I do not have to pour through books in order to find a given passage. I just flip through, not realizing what is about to come.
And this, for as anecdotal as it might seem, helps to underscore a phenomenon many who are having awakenings will experience, and its something that you can utilize in your own life if you are willing to be open to the possibility, which is that the universe will bring you what you need. A gifted intuitive might tell you about someone you have to find in your community in order to begin doing this important work only to have a friend call about something not even related and wind up talking about the very person who was mentioned just the day before. You might begin to wonder how YOU can move through some aspect of this experience that might be causing your trouble only to chance upon a blog, or book, or a random conversation that leads to a friend giving you the phone number of someone who is suppose to be putting you in touch with a business resource, say, but who, in talking to them, happens to mention something that puts you in touch with a resource you might not have otherwise found that helps you with kundalini. Or even some other aspect of your life…..
I am a firm experiencer of "as you seek, so shall you find." Doors will be opened to you as you ask for them in the right way. Believing in the possibility but not dwelling on it or anticipating their happening has always been the best key to their happening. In this way, they feel entirely effortless, and this is I think the whole point. Things can be much easier if you let them. If something is tripping you up, maybe some pain in your field is resulting in fear or hurt. Maybe through movement or a simple act of forgiveness, you allow some long lost issue to simply drop away, one that had gone past its due date. And as it does, the hurt resolves into its opposite, which is joy. And love. Being able to do this kind of work for ourselves is a profound act of love towards the self, the soul. it seeks to make YOU right before trying to make the world right. Since the world IS inside of you, getting better inside you is a fabulous and very healthy way to find authentic happiness and fulfillment.
I hope you find the magic that is your own soul peering back at you through these marvelous events that are great gifts!
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