Kundalini Awakening Symptoms
Symptoms of Kundalini Awakening
Real Life Experiences & Descriptions of Kundalini Rising
Are you going through a kundalini awakening episode or experience? Let’s find out…
Kundalini awakening symptoms are truly a very intriguing subject. Really there is no correct answer to the question, “What are the symptoms of Kundalini Rising?”, as thankfully, each of us is absolutely unique and thus, on a unique trajectory on the path to Kundalini Awakening. That said, there are some common kundalini experiences that are often reported, which I would like to share with you in this article.
Although we can draw up endless lists of symptoms from third party accounts, I would like to instead make this series about kundalini symptoms that you or I have actually experienced. In this article, I will give a recent account from one of my students about what she experienced shortly after class, and then I will add my own kundalini experiences and observations as well.
In the comments section, I encourage you to add any kundalini awakening experiences or symptoms you have felt, so others can better understand what they might be going through. Here is the recent email I received from my student, Aida:
Aida’s Experience of Kundalini Awakening:
I am a student of the “Gentle Kundalini Class”. I just finished taking a series of exercise specifically for the spine.
As I left the class I felt energized as I usually feel after each class, but this time it was a little different, I was feeling extra aware of my surrounding. Like a light turned on. My back was so straight. It lasted all day.If I could go to class every morning I would go. It makes my day start right in every way. And there are times when I am not feeling like going to class and I push myself to go and do not regret it.Thank you for being my teacher.Aida D.
For those interested, here is a link to the Spinal Warmup Kundalini Yoga Kriya we did in class that day. Thank you Aida, for sharing your personal experiences with us.
This particular experience of kundalini is very interesting and significant. This is because it is the common experience of advanced meditation and of kundalini yoga. In the article, Powerful Kundalini Yoga Battles Profound Zen Meditation, I described my own such experience with kundalini awakening, but not from doing kundalini yoga, but instead from doing Silent Mind Meditation!
Aida’s experience points at the two things that all yoga and meditation boils down to. Energy and Awareness.
My favorite description of Kundalini Yoga is, “The Yoga of Awareness,” and as you see from her account, she felt more aware, as the energy of kundalini had risen up her spine. In meditation, it is the same. The demand for intense awareness, in order to comprehend the thought process via direct perception, leads to energy (kundalini) rising up and elongating the spine. Awareness then follows.
Jiddu Krishnamurti describes this experience of kundlaini energy flowing up the spine as “The rush of water filling up and thus causing a pipe to stand erect.”
When we insist that the spine be straight during meditation, it is simply to facilitate this awakening and thus, to assist in being more aware. I have experienced kundalini rising and puling up with such force, during meditation, that it sometimes make me feel as if I am going to be launched right off the ground or as if it’s going to pull my head off and up into the sky.
Symptoms of Kundalini Awakening:
I am going to describe some of the physical symptoms my students or I have felt due to kundalini awakening. I know there are many emotional and mental symptoms as well, and you are welcome to share those with us in the comments section below. I am grouping the experiences into 3 categories, common, uncommon and rare, according to what I have observed.
Common Kundalini Awakening Symptoms:
- Tingling in the body and brain region. Also sometimes described as ants walking, tickling energy or flushes of energy. The brain being flushed with energy is quite pleasant :-).
- Heat or cold in the system, or running along various channels and chakra centers.
- Fluttering or twitching of muscles.
- Pinching or burning in various regions of the body or brain.
Uncommon Kundalini Awakening Symptoms:
- Pressure in the Third Eye Region (Ajna Chakra). This is pressure, tingling or other sensation in the center of the forehead. Can go on for years (14 years and counting so far for me). Caution: If the pressure, due to certain practices, intensifies to uncomfortable levels you feel are “immense”, you should cease that practice and consult a competent kundalini yoga teacher.
- Sudden bursts of energy anywhere in the body. These are almost always short lived, from a few seconds to a few minutes.
- Spontaneous yoga asans or kundalini yoga movements. They may come on spontaneously, or they may take over, as if on auto-pilot when one is practicing Kundalini Yoga Kriyas or Exercises (For an example see article: Explosive Kundalini Rising in Class Today).
- Kundalini Shakti rising up and elongating the spine.
- Incredible feeling of love and desire for your partner (not ordinary lust, alcohol induced or otherwise :-). Usually comes upon you spontaneously, deep in the night. Sex feels like it’s the first such experience and the intense feelings of attraction emanate from somewhere beyond yourself.
- Unfortunately, pain in the lower back, back of the neck and headaches.
Rare Kundalini Awakening Symptoms:
- Experience of divine light within. Very intense light, usually pure white and incredibly beautiful. I call it the Radiation of the Lord.
- Tremendous vibratory energy (sometimes feels like it’s coming from the inner ears). Very blissful, but can intensify to the point where it would completely overwhelm your consciousness if you let it.
- Spontaneous bliss, intensely pleasurable.
- This one is a bit scary. Complete paralysis of the body. Complete immobility and rigidity takes place. As with the all consuming vibratory energy, it requires some courage to allow.
- This one is exceedingly rare. I have experienced it only once in my life, and have only ever read about it being experienced by one other – the master of awareness, G. I. Gurdjieff. The arms and legs churn like that of a baby. It happens naturally and cannot be simulated. It is also intensely pleasurable and quite a remarkable experience.
There are of course a wide range of transcendental experiences, some of which you will find described in the category Spiritual Enlightenment Experiences. Above, I have provide those that are more commonly associated with kundalini awakening, although many would argue, including Swami Vivekananda, that all enlightenment experiences have to do with kundalini entering the brain region in some capacity.
So if you have experienced some kundalini symptoms as well, please do share them with us below. I think it will benefit others identify if what they are going through is actually symptoms of the ever mysterious kundalini awakening.
it okay your kundalini awakening and you feel # Tingling in the body and brain region. Also sometimes described as ants walking, tickling energy or flushes of energy. The brain being flushed with energy is quite pleasant :-).
# Heat or cold in the system, or running along various channels and chakra centers.
# Fluttering or twitching of muscles.
# Pinching or burning in various regions of the body or brain.
is it happen every time it awake or only once ?
well i feel in hand and top of my head everytime i meditate.
can you tell me why ?
Best method for slowing the aging process.
Not botox, wonder cream, cosmetics or vitamins. Dump the emotional baggage, it will age you faster than toxins, bad food, actual age or miserable people. Emotional baggage is a weight on your back. Look at the people slumped over, bent, slow walk, eyes cast down. Conversely see those with smile, bright eyes, youth in their step. Age has nothing to do with either one, but how we carry the world does.
Some carry it cement in their feet, bricks on their back, led in their belly. Others have only feathers in their backpack. They have the attitude of a sleepy child, do it anywhere. Their worth is not based on money, looks, gold stars or cultural agreement. Their value is in their ability to perceive the beauty that surrounds them, their view is from the inside out, not the outside in.
The light of heart have cultivated their internal garden weeded out emotional crab grass, worthless beliefs meant to control given by the feeble of heart, fearful minded and those who use your anxiety to gather money. Get rid of the garbage mental downloads into your field of Golden Corn.
OK, OK so what now, how do I do it?
Plow your garden, dig it up throw out useless, valueless beliefs, idea’s and attitudes. Deeply held religious downloads are a good place to start, guilt being the primary one, shame the next, and also the pesticide of fear. Hey I didn’t say this was easy, just worth it. Plowing a field is work. So don’t believe all the hoop da la about the Secret, yes what they say is true, but the gathering of just stuff is not the cultivation of a life. Cultivation comes first harvest comes later. Another is cultural attitudes of self worth, if its based on money, stuff, trophy houses if so you will always be short changed, weather you have these things or not. And by the way I am not against money or nice things, but lets put them in their place.
Is the mystical still alive in you, can you see the miracle in a blade of grass, the smile on a coyotes face, the mystery and wonder in a thunder storm.
Do you meditate not to be holly, but to be quiet so that you can become aware of the awareness. Meditate so your body and mind can heal from self imposed stress and anxious attitudes of those afraid of death. Or is it still a quick pill fix that slowly takes your life inch by inch then yard by yard.
Have you had a message lately or are you afraid of being touched. Touch is the hand of God on your body with a smile. Touch is the knowing of acceptance.Touch is love made bread in the oven of life. Touch is your Cat rubbing against your leg or your dog licking your face.
Meditate………….Exercise…………….Attitude Gratitude
Do these three and much of rest will fall into place including the vitality of youth. Take care…..Love life Dino
Opened up to this force over forty years ago, 84 to 1992 mostly in depression clearing out the ravages of childhood abuse. Kundalini brings unity, ends dichotomy, rearranges the mind, makes one acknowledge the dark as well as the light. Back in the seventies spent a month one time in bliss to much bliss, spaced like a drunken monk. Slept a lot, headaches, precognitive dreams, dreamed 911 before it happened. It removes the normal aging process, now I usually only sleep 5 to 6 hours a night. Opened the barn door of creativity, poetry, photography, art. I would release all the animals from their jail house zoo if I could. None of this is religious, it belongs to no one, but imagined holly men and women try to claim it, can’t be claimed it is a wild ride and unbroken horse, unwilling to bend or bow. Pays no tribute to political worship, acknowledges the light in all. Would I do it again or turn away, yes. No never. Now after all these years, yes, I cannot imagine going back to the emotional prison that I lived in, the emotional hi-jacking of religion and culture, the white wash of positive thinking, it it worth the ride, the death of a thousand beliefs. You can read more of of my experience at http://www.dino-coolzenhealing.blogspot.com or http://www.coolzenhealing.com If we are of one mind we will hear the cry of the wolf, a dual mind wishes to silence it. Dino D
Hello,
My name is David and I am a Christian male, age 39. In 1994, I was in seminary and took special interest in Christian meditation practices. I started meditating without a guide. I was 24 years old.
I started having involuntary spasms during the night that would wake me up — shuddering that ran up my spine from bottom to the top, which often ended in violent uncontrollable thrashing. During the day, I continued to meditate and have strange experiences, shudders, and rushes of light.
One night I had a terrifying vision during a fit of full-body paralysis. It was horrible and felt so real that I considered checking myself into some kind of pyscho-therapy. I had never heard of kundalini, but stumbled on it during some of research. I spent the next two years trying to make it go away, learning how to use nicotine to quell the rising. It wasn’t an ideal trade off, but smokeless tobacco became sort of a “drug” that enabled me to shut off the experiences, which had become much to intense for me.
Funny thing is I never did any yoga. I can’t even touch my toes. But I had an experience that I couldn’t quantify, nor fit anywhere into any theology that I’d learned over the years. My IQ jumped from 119 to 165 in five short years. I was able to read and comprehend what I read at a rate that surprised me and seemed illogical.
Long story short, my experience with kundalini wasn’t sought after, and if I am to be truly honest, I never would have wanted it. I’ve come to realize over time that I went someplace I shouldn’t have gone without a guide.
Still don’t know what to make of it all. But I know it’s real. I know my experience was real, and I know that I don’t ever want to have the kinds of visions I had ever again.
I have a question. I had been associated with yoga for the last 19 years. After my marriage I have seen that my power of retention in sex have increased to such an extent that I can do it for more than 5 to 6 hours at a stretch with out any discrage.I have shown doctors for this but no body could come up with any result whatsoever. Some time for me to discharge it takes weeks and months and I dont feel satisfied. Is this any problem with kundalini?
Dear Dancer,
Your experience is very much in line with an awakening, although it has of course components that are unique to you. Such an intense experience to “get things started” is no at all unusual. The fundamental aspects of pure love, white light, out of body, energy, vibration, etc are all consistent with kundalini awakening (or spiritual awakenings).
Your experiences afterwords, especially the electromagnetic kind are of particular interest to me and reflect energy moving though the 10 bodies of light, particularly the Auric Body.
Perhaps a daily journal will be very helpful to you. This is a nice tool with which to gain insight into what might be happening. Try that.
Keep us posted with your progress and thanks for sharing your fascinating experiences with us.
All Good Wishes,
Anmol
My symptoms? I don’t know if they are symptoms but I can tell you how my life has changed over time. 1. I’ve had to isolate myself because I am too sensitive to other people’s emotions. Good or bad…I seem to zoom right in. It goes way beyond empathy. I was able to sense other’s emotions before my experience but now I feel like a sponge. 2. I don’t get more than 3 or 4 hours sleep a night. A full restful 4 hours without waking up is a good night’s sleep for me. At first it was exhausting. Now I’m very used to it. 3. Before my experience, I would feel what I can only describe as electricity in my hands when I prayed. That feeling now extends to my full body. 4. For the past year and a half I have had a skin problem, little patches of itching. It is now full blown intense itching all over my body. I’ve been to the dermatologist and allergist. No explanation. No relief. 5. I actually thought for a while that I had a poltergeist in the house. Don’t laugh. I moved from the house where I had “my experience” because I was seeing things. In this new house a bottle of hand cream flew off the counter while I was showering. Nothing else around it was disturbed. There was no one else in the room! When I become anxious, light bulbs blow out. The microwave ventilation fan starts by itself as I’ve walked by. At work, the server and computers go down whenever I am under severe stress. These examples are the patterns that I’ve noticed. There’s so much more happening. Are these symptoms? I don’t know. I was hoping that perhaps by sharing my experience I could get some guidance or insight as to what is happening to me. Sometimes I do feel as If I’m losing my mind.
Dear Dancer
Well that is a quite unusual experience..I am curious to know whether that is the only experience before two years which you had or after this you experienced any change in body, or any other change. What I mean to say if two years before it was a Kundalini experience…than in my opinon.. it should have been followed by some other symptoms.
Anmol will tell more.
I found this website quite by accident. Just skimming through the comments I knew I found the right place to find some answers. Approximately 2 years ago I was using a guided prayer meditation cd that I had used several times before. During this meditation the following happened: my body began to vibrate uncontrollably and I felt myself burst out of my body. It was quite a jolt of energy. I immediately saw myself as a circle of intense white light dancing around in what I can only describe as a black background similar to the night sky. I sensed a larger circle of intense white light next to me and in my curiosity I danced over to it. This larger white circle of light seem to be behind what resembled some sort of transparent divider. I peeked behind the divider and as I looked at the larger circle of white light I was flooded with a feeling of pure love and quiet peace. Words cannot relate the beauty or the intensity of the love I felt coming from the larger circle of light. When I came out of this very unusual meditation I had a very hard time focusing and later on in the day I fainted and felt as if I was caught in a tunnel. I was completely aware of what was happening to me but had to relax and ride it out until I regained conciousness. Can someone please explain to me what I experienced.
Dear Ra,
The breath is called Sheetali Pranayama. Here is the link to the details…
Sheetali Pranayama – The Cooling Breath
God Bless You,
Anmol
Dear Anmol Ji
There is a breath that is used to cool the heat from Kriyas. I read your suggestion to a student to use it but lost the location of your reply. What is the name of it, or how might i find it? The tongue is curled-in from the sides and then it protrudes from the lips, so the breath can create a cooling effect.
I am trying to start it as close to the (past) new moon as i can, so, if you have a moment, could you tell me as soon as possible?
As always,
Blessings and thank you SO SO much for everything!
Ra
Hi Bindu–
Sounds like your kundalini went up your charkra system, from the base to the crown. When it starts hitting the crown you may get flashes of intense white light.
I wrote to this list several months back and now I am 100% sure I am going though kundalini awakening.
The intense pressure is less and the energy purrs through the body now.
Sometimes if I am standing near another person a wave of energy washes through me and I can feel the quality of their emotions.
The energy channels are open and I have learned to basically move things out the bottoms of my feet –any blockages of energy, by conscious intention, move out and I make sure as they are exiting to bind them from any harm and send them back to the creative power. I think of it like a tree taking C02 out of the atmosphere and changing it to 02. And I’m okay with filtering the environment which is what this energy is doing through my body.
Also I have once seen the chakras that exist above the crown, into the crown chakra and the ecstacy was not an emotion I have felt before and it was difficult to retain consciousness. I have been in heights of consciousness, up into the stars even, and felt the binding love of all things. At times it is like the energy field starts enveloping creating itself, and the feeling is one of holding wihin loving consciousness, all life.
This is the power of enlightenment. Flashes and then I come down. Sometimes now the feeling in the body is so ecstatic it is beyond anything one could achieve though sex or drugs and I am in no way advocating either method for enlightenment. I am simply saying the emotional state defies all others. Amazing and I am sure this is not the full state.
I have been told by spiritual masters to not attach to the state of ecstacy. So I see it as part of the body’s reaction to enligthenment. And the goal now is purification, transfiguration if you will. To empty out all that is not benevolent, empty out all that is not here to help.
I had the good fortune of meeting a wonderful shaman recently who gave me a heart charkra meditation.
She gave me a few to pick from and I picked this one, “Our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name.”
You meditate breathe in slowly and extinguish the breath and hold the word as a picture in the front of your forehead, “our” see the word, say it in your mind and then say “aaaaaa” and extinguish the breath. aaaaa helps with the vibration of the heart. Then let the thought fall down into what is like a ditch and then be in nothing. Then go do the next word, hold it in the front of your forehead, say the word, and say “aaaa” until the breath is extinguished, let the though drop into the ditch…
It settles the mind.
Another way to get into the heart, curious way….
It is a technique used in the art world where people are blindfolded and a friend leads them around and has them touch different things, ususally objects, tree bark…interesting textures in the environment.
If you do this for 30 minutes- an hour, it has an ability to bring you back into your body, into memories and the basic state of being, like you where when you were a child. We feel first then see.
–very amazing. After doing this you may find yourself centered in your heart. You may also remember your state of childhood.
:)
Thanks Anmol ! It’s only 2 days back that i found ur site by chance.And i’m glad n feel lucky.One day during meditation the very 1st day while i was concentrating on breathing i felt very fast jurks in my body without any effort on my part and was over in 5 min. Since then during meditation i see various colors like red, yellow, orange, purple and golden. What does it mean? Can u please explain me?
Thanks for your reply Anmolji. I don’t know why it started for my that early as your saying “over the time”, however, I am doing pranyams since last year only. I will try to keep the things under control.
Once again thanks for your help.
Hi Asha,
I would like you to move forward slowly and steadily, since you already have difficult symptoms. It is better to build the physical body and internal systems first, so you have confidence and are better able to handle the energy released by higher practices.
I suggest starting with the free online classes here on the website. Begin with the following…
Beginner’s Yoga Class
Let me know your progress.
Best,
Anmol
Hi Addy,
Over time the pressure often becomes 24/7 (mine is), and intense when one concentrates or brings attention to the Third Eye region or increases spiritual practice.
Only concern is if it becomes excessively intense (enormous unearthly pressure), in which case you need to back off from the practice.
All Good Wishes,
Anmol
Hi Anmolji,
Thank you for the reply I’ll get it done right away.I just have one more question how do I increase my kundalini and what yoga asana’s would you suggest.Will it improve my memory and my 6th sense. Many thanks.
Hello Anmolji
I want to ask whether one feels pressure in head, nerve currents in brain, especially in third eye which sometimes give feeling of pressure, always or only at the time of meditation or spiritual practice. Because with me, I can feel them around 24 X 7, but they become intense when I am concentrated or trying to focus on my work or study and need less to say, they are maximum at the time of meditation and pranayam.
Hi David,
Thanks for sharing you experiences with us, and glad you have accepted the invitation from within to intensify your journey back to Source.
Love and Light,
Anmol