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.
I am practicing that yoga and the teacher says that the Jogui Baham Kundalini Yoga is prepeared to develop the spirituality healthy and without negative experiences like for example the ones you are commenting here.
So I would like to check if this is true by asking a question to anybody:
Some of you practices Kundalini Yoga by Jogui Bhajam method and you had any unconfortable (negative) experience rising the kundalini?
Please answer only if your answer is “Yes I had a bad experience of Kundalini rising” or you know of somebody who had it.
Best regards,
Pablo.-
All the information above is great. Im glad I can relate to everybdoy. However, I am confident when I say that the evil world is fighting for me just as much as the good world. The good spirits in me and around me are winning, but I dont want the other side to win. For example. What if Hitler went through this and the evil side won the fight and took him in a whole different direction? I think I need a masters help.
On Nov 4th I became aware. There is a chain of events that happened that is too long to explain. I am so very aware that I almost lost myself. In fact, I probably lost myself and now I am found. My mind is running so fast, but I realize that it is so powerful that I can also stop it. However, since my mind is jumping all over the place and I see it doing it, I am afraid it will cross to another level. I am avoiding the doctor because they will classify this as some type of disorder when it is not. For example, right now I am sane and I see everybody else is crazy. The crazy people see me as crazy too if they were to hear this. If you go to Google and type in “awareness test” click the link that says Awareness Test for Developing Your Spiritual Mind. It will bring you to this website but under another article. Everything in there is what is happening to me this moment.
Any suggestions before I loose my mind and never get it back? I’m actually controlling it as I write this. Amazing!
Whatever is happening is so powerful that I feel good and evil fighting to win me over. When I realized this awareness in my head, I suddenly felt sensations around me. Maybe it was angels or demons fighting for me. I am fighting the evil away by trying to remain in the present. The most amazing part of this is that I haven’t been to Church in so many years. When somebody asked me what my religion is I tell them I was born Catholic. That was the truth. I’m not saying I found god. What I am saying is that I now believe in Everything. The universe, god, god is the universe, the universe is god. I believe in Plato, Aristotle, and Einstein. I believe in Buddhism. It’s really great. I read a book a year ago that did not make any sense. It was called the Power of Insecurity. Now it makes complete sense!
What now? How do I control it more? Is everything in this website? Patience is so very good. These videos on this website would have been very helpful I am sure, but my computer doesn’t allow them to be played.
I posted this under a different article but this one is exactly what I was looking for.
Hi Martin,
Thanks for sharing. Yes you are certainly going through a spiritual / Kundalini awakening and yes, your intuition that you have experienced some of this in your sleep already is probably very true.
Let us know how it goes.
Best,
Anmol
Hi,
I think I just experienced it, thats why I looked up for some info in internet and found your site. I will share my experience :) I have been meditating twice a day for some 3 weeks or so, actually I first did it 10 years ago, but there was a long pause. I don’t really know why, but I let it all go naturally. So it was, I was meditating in my bedroom with candles lit up, and sending all the good thoughts and gratitude to my relatives, to all saints I know (Sai Baba, Jesus, Buddah, etc), and then it was some kind of imaginary flight through space and stars, after which it was complete stillness in mind, my mind was like dissolving, and as I went deeper in this feeling (it was not easy to keep my thoughts absolutely quiet, but as I did I went deeper), it felt the same electric tickling throughout the body you guys are mentioning. I was a bit worried, my heart started pumping, my back was straighter than ever, and a bit scared I opened my eyes and this new kind of feeling continued for some minutes, I felt very energized though it was 11pm already.. And also this pressure in 3rd eye region, it had shown up a week ago, now it is more intense again. I think I recognize this awaking feeling from my dreams, I am pretty sure I have experienced it during sleep. I wonder will it happen again during my meditations? I am not that experienced, so I would like to know what effects does kundalini awaking have on people. Ok, let’s see what tomorrow brings!
Namaste!
hi
i have been doing kundalini meditation for the past two years, but not so regularly over the past 6 months. i have never had any feeling like that of energy flowing up the spine or any of the symptoms mentioned in the category of common and uncommon symptoms. i have experienced and still experience some of the symptoms listed under the rare category. i have also noticed that as soon as i sit down in the position for meditation i feel vibrations in my head and as if my head is rotating as if earth around the sun. in all this time i have been doing this meditation i have never tried to invoke the kundalini or force it to rise. but ever since i have started doing meditation my life has changed for the better. i feel as if i understand things better than i did before and i have started to control my emotions better, and i understand myself better and can find solutions to any problems i have by asking my inner self and i get a lot of guidance on what to do and how to go about doing it, i kind of know what is going to happen to me next and i can prepare myself for it. but initially when i started doing this meditation i had a lot of visions and dreams when i slept. the but in none of these visions and dreams have i been alone. with me in all these visions and dreams is this girl who is my classmate, but we never talked to each other a lot and don’t know each other well. the thing about all these dreams and visions is that they are all positive and make me feel happier and help me understand myself better. these days i feel very happy being with myself and i prefer to discuss my problems with my inner self and i get solutions to them immediately and i get these answers in the voice of that girl and i see her face when i close my eyes. i’m not sure if this can be called kundalini awakening but all this has happened only since i started doing kundalini yoga. i have not described the dreams and visions in detail because there are a good number of them and it would take very long to write them down.
kartik
I have done very mild practice, both kundalini yoga and Qi gong – and I was quite comfortable with the pleasurable waves up the spin into back of neck.
And then some pressure in top of head with a meditation specifically focussing awareness on pineal gland.
Then came some more difficult pressure in third eye, and lately I’ve had bad headaches that could be related to my teeth, having a wisdom tooth break off. Yet the pain is not constant and I can often lessen it by meditating it throughout the rest of my body – but I wondered if it was kundalini and not just tooth decay, for now I have the symptom of SWEET SALIVA.
Has anyone heard of this happening?
Thank you Anmol for everything you do here. You are an inspiring example of the thoughtful worker and provider of care.
Peace
Joel
Dear Anmol,
I have been visiting your blog for over a month and want to congratulate you for creating an awesome resource for kundalini meditation.
I got attracted to meditation after reading Oshos’s book (Book of secrets) and started to practise his dynamic meditation technique. I got hooked to the technique as very first day my body started to whirl after 10 mins of fast chaotic breathing. Since then I practiced this technique and after 10 days my body just used drop down while whirling and would like to stay there lying through the period of 30 mins of fast breathing.
Slowly I started to do the chaotic breathing just lying down and at present am doing it siting in cressed leg position as it is feeling more comfortable.
I started to feel vibrations of my arms and my head initially and after few days I started feeling my navel, heart, throught and most recently my rectum. I think its activation of the chakras ( I am not sure though, but feel great).
One evening during my after my chaotic breathing exercise and during the rest period I started to feel warm breath at my right nose, it was more like warm, smooth fire than breath. IT was subtle and gentle, it was flowing only through my right nostril and I was feeling it only going in and not going out. and as my breath started to change from right to left nostril the warm fire too started to change accordingly. As far my knowledge is concerned I guess it was the PRANA that we talk about. It happened thrice till now and it lasts for almost 10 mins.
Now I have started to add more pranayam techniques in my practice, now I do 5 mis of Anuloma Viloma, 5 mins of sudarshan chakra kriya (intermediate version), 20 minutes of fast chaotic breating finally 10 minutes of Kirtana Kriya.
As expected my third eye is getting a lot of attention and as a result my awarness has increased a bit , I am able to watch my thoughts lot more easily now.I also feel pressure and sometimes tingling in both of my ears and vibration in feet and thighs while mediating.
I also try and watch my thoughts when I drive to my office (which is 2hrs to and fro). In fact this is the first practice of meditation I started before starting the dynamic meditation.I use it a scale to test the awareness that I attain.
My questions to you are
1.Is my current practice of pranayams and krtan kriya is proper way of meditating?
2.Is the vibration of arms, head, navel etc is the sign of kundalini being activated?
3.Why do my arm( especially palm) and feet vibrate first even though I haven’t heard of any chakras related to that part of the body.
4. Taking into consideration of my experience so far, what do you think is the pace of my progress(I started the dynamic meditation 2 months before so its a total of 2 moths of meditation experience)
5.Do you suggest any alternative practice for me.
I hope my long mail doesn’t bore you, but I am eagerly awaiting your reply.
Regards,
Selvan
I don’t know if my experience is a Kundalini experience but here it is: I was trying to go to sleep one afternoon and at one moment just looked up, at a fixed point for about half a minute, the I closed my eyes. I began not knowing where my body was positioned and then i felt like a wave, an echo sensation from somewere deep… It gradually and slowely intensified. It started to reach the surface. In the exact moment that the echo reached the surface i slightly moved my right arm. I belive that every move we make comes with that echo, that wave. It was very intresting.
Hi Ranjan,
Yes the sensation can vary. It is usually closer to the eyebrows than higher though, as you have pointed out. Also, it can be maneuvered as well after enough practice.
Best,
Anmol
I hope you can help. I don’t even know what I believe anymore. When I had this experience, I didn’t even know what it was, had never practiced yoga and experienced it with another person who seemed to be experiencing the same symptoms.
It happened more than once with this person. I also had experienced an astral sexual experience with this same person.
All of this happened in 2003. It took me several years of journeying to attach names or words to associate to what happened to us.
My journey led me to the term twin soul. This provided quite a few support groups with 100s of members, each describing the same synchronistic, crazy-making, consuming, OCD like experiences.
I found one article that said that when twin souls meet, they often experience a kundalini rising. When I learned a bit about this term, I realized the symptoms matched what I felt; ringing in the ears that sounding like an earthquake in my head, foggy, immobility and my desire to speak – what I don’t know to the other person – but the inability to speak, intensity. And after all these years, the other person and I are still unable to talk about what happened.
What an agonizing journey. Lot’s of growth and spiritual awareness. But the separation in this physical life from the other person causes me such pain. Physical, emotional and spiritual.
I’ve tried everything. Cutting ties. Emersion in a loving relationship. But everything is about “not thinking about her.” She’s always there. The psychic connection is always there.
It has been 7 years.
I began Yoga practice a month back. Nothing significant, just basic asthanga yoga stuff. I don’t have a teacher but I follow David Swenson’s techniques and other varieties of stuff I find online that seem to make sense to me.
So after practicing a few asans, I wind up with kapalbhati first and intense ujjayi breathing after that – both with my eyes closed and my mind blank (takes a while).
After kapalbhati, I feel a hint of vibrating sensation in between my chin and lip area. I take a minute of break, eyes still closed, focusing on nothing, mind blank, and begin my intense ujjayi breathing.
After about 4 minutes, from the tips of all my fingers in both hands, a vibrating sensation starts. Within seconds a similar vibrating sensation happens on my abdomenal muscles. Both senssations move up towards the arms and shoulders (from the fingers) and towards my neck from the abdomen. It feels as if something is gripping me – I’m very much aware what is going on all the while – when the “grip” is increases, I relax my breathing, and the vibrations gradually subside. The feeling that follows is pure bliss. I feel something running up and down my body for the next 5 or so minutes. I just close my eyes and take in all of that. I’m not focusing on anything, everything is blank but I feel that “high’ and when I eventually open my eyes, I regret it that I did. All in all, I’m in the eyes-closed state beginning from kapalbhati for about 45 minutes but if I didn’t have to do anything during the day, I would be in meditation for much longer. So after I open my eyes, I don’t feel like talking, or doing anything for that matter – not because I’m angry or anything but because of no reason. The quietude is serene and the peace I feel is unmatched. Of couse, I have to eventually speak when I get to work.
So, I have one major question: when those vibrations start and they start gripping me, should I keep going with ujjayi breathing?? Not sure what that feeling is – after reading some about Kundalini, I wouldn’t call it Kundalini because nothing arises from the tail bone. These vibrations start from the tip of my fingers and abdomen.
Your thoughts.
Hi Anmol,
In my experience, concentrating on the third eye region leads to a pressure not at the center of the forehead as you have said multiple times, but actually midway between the eyebrows (just at the root of the nose). Is that incorrect?
Is it dangerous to have a kundalini awakening if you have a long history of drugs? I stopped doing the heavy drugs about 3-4 years ago (I was on them from 14 years old to 18 years old) and I have been taking a synthetic opiate on and off for about 2 years called suboxone. I started meditating a couple months ago and I want to start kundalini yoga but I heard when you take drugs it crystallizes your astral body and the kundalini is so potent that it will shatter your astral body and this causes psychosis. Any advice for me?
Naman, in the case of nightfall, sarvangasana (shoulder stand) and Paschimottasana (sitting forward bend) helped me a lot.
hi,
if u remember i shared one of my problem to u months ago.It was regarding nightfall due to increase in spiritual energy, so u told me that it is due to the fact that i m unable to utilize this energy. so i wish u tell me some of the ways which help me make this energy go up i.e. to utilize em. plz tell me about some asans also that could help me….
I dont practice any specific yoga method but Im always curious to try new things. I do have a few experiences to share. One day I suddenly woke up and I was in a different level of consciousness. Strangely for me, as I took a breath, a huge flow of blood moved through my neck up to the back of my head, while my eyes seemed to profoundly focus a point between them. Meanwhile, a huge burst of energy pumped from my feet up to the whole body, and I felt like I was a vibrating device. This whole process striked me for less than a minute but the mental state of hightened awareness stayed for quite some time. That experience sort of freaked me out , as it was totally unexpected and uncontrolled ( the huge energy burst especially).
Other remarkable experience for me happened while I was meditating. After quite some time doing it, I felt like I barely blinked my eyes anymore and an aura of energy (it felt so comfortable) was surrounding my body. Again I felt for a couple of times the blood pumping through the neck up to the back of the head. This time, however, it was a lot more gentle and controllable.I also felt like I was slightly separating myself from my body.That mix of sensations gave me incredible peace, serenity and awareness.
Another sensation that happens to me recurrently is an overwhelming love that rises from the region of the heart. It happens often right before I go to bed.Sometimes I cant help but give up from sleeping and write down poems so I can let it go.
After meditating I also feel my spine straightened but I happen to have some pain in the neck.Sometimes I as well make some yoga movements spontaneously, mainly nauli (since I was a kid) and energy flowing.
Are there techniques to control these things? Im somewhat lost as to what direction to take and common yoga classes dont teach how to manipulate my own energy ( which is something i feel capable of doing most of times).
Im glad I found this site that shows many other people have similar experiences.
Sincerely,
Mll
Hi,
I practice sudarshana kriya daily taught by Sri Sri Ravi shankar and I experience the fewer symptoms which you have mentioned above. I would like to know if Kundalini yoga and sudarshana kriya are same or different
Hi wuz up
I dont know if you could call my experience a kundi awakening but I really feel compeled to share.when i do zazen and I really get into it where my mind almost automatically follows the breath i feel this indiscribable feeling ,like i am inhaling weird air ,like metal air or abrasive metalish air ,once it felt like the centre of my body was a colourless vacum void or something.the feeling i usally get is that my body or certain parts of my body would feel HUGe.
Not sure what you will make of this experience: a few years ago I decided to attend a Kundalini Yoga class offered by my yoga teacher. During the class we focused on breathing exercises and ended up by medicating on a light candle flame – I am a strong christian and used the opportunity to medicate on Jesus Christ, the awesomeness of God with thoghts of worship and praise. All in all it was wonderful and I left the class feeling both energized and full of the joy of the Lord. The next two days were a night mare. I woke up the next morning feeling very angry. For no reason I started to become very critical of my two young children and as the days progressed my tongue became almost venemous. I wrote an email to a close friend that I didn’t know what what going on with my mouth and my anger all of a sudden; that I felt like I had unleashed a cold, coiling serpant in my belly. This ugly, venemous feeling kept getting worse and worse, until the morning of the 3rd day I was leaning against my sink getting ready for work, and cried out to the Lord to help me. In that instant I realized that I was under demonic attack. I immediately cast out what ever it was by using the power of the cross, and immediately felt better. That night I went to my regular yoga class, and the teacher shared that the night we had done kundalina yoga one of the students had shared that she had had a visitation from yogi ‘mundi’ (not sure if the spelling is correct). Up until this point I had not connected the kundalini yoga activities to what had happened to me. However, once she shared about the visitation I realized that the attack on me was very specific – I had invaded the turff so to speak of this yogi mundi. I had been protected during the session because I had been focused on God, but I had certainly angered him, and hense the attack on me the next day. I am not normally into these ‘wierd” experiences and am not one of those hysterical christians who feels there is a demon around every corner. But I cannot deny the event and how it was resolved. It has taken me a very long time to get back to going to yoga, and I am very careful in my practices now to focus on the physical and not the spiritual practices of yoga. I do have a difficult time reconciling east and west as I know that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, yet I know that God is light and that there is much more to Him then we can read on the surface of the bible. Christianity is very restrictive and narrow in it’s belief of the supernatural yet new age philosophy goes way over the top to the “I am God’ stuff. Somewhere in all of this there is truth.