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.
Hii there, I just had a reiki treatment and feltpressure on the middle of my forehead, it felt like a balloon, it wasnot painful, but as this happened I saw a beautiful white smoke almost ghostly coming out of my hands, what does it mean for me now that I have had this experience
Hi Anmol,
I wrote my experience earlier this year in september and kept checking this page for the response. I am posting the same experience again as i am still in need of an answer.
I am 28 years old, experiencing strange things since i was in 10th standard.And all this happens only when i am asleep. I have gone through all the articles published by various people here but some have written about there experience while being awake or doing meditation so i am confused if whatever i experience has something to do with Kundalini awakening or not. To list a few things i things i experience, whenever i am in deep sleep i feel vibration in my entire body and my body becomes stiff or in other words paralysis as i try to move my hand but i am unable to and if i try i feel immense pain. i feel so scared that i start chanting gayatri mantra at that time. At times whenever this happens i feel i am flying not very high but just a little above my bed where i am lying and then slowly back. i get scared as if my soul is out or some other foreign body is trying to enter my body and take possession of me. since i am scared i don’t open my eyes to while feeling this vibration and out of body experience, but at times when i have i at times see a coil as if lot of hair entangled together. The next thing that i experience is that when i am awake and lying down, watching television, as if something crawling on my leg and specially left foot and leg, The way heart beats, i feel something similar, a beating feeling below my foot, on my leg, hands, few parts of my body. i don’t know what exactly is happening and this has been happening since i was a teenager. Its really disturbing me and my family life as i recently got married and i am not able to have a healthy sexual life because of the fear that there is some other entity keeping an eye on me and surrounds me where ever i go. Are these symptoms related to kundalini, if yes how do i stop them from happening.
Please throw some light if anyone can tell me what am i experiencing.
I’d like to share my experience and I’d like to hear if anyone is experiencing something similar. It all started when I was 18. I was smoking cannabis and I had an experience which was an awakening. A voice from deep within told me my life purpose and I was transferred into a blissful state which lasted months before slowly subsiding.
Over the following years the power of that experience stayed with me but the bliss didn’t. I fell into a depression and it has took me a decade to recover from this, which I did by changing my lifestyle step by step to a healthier way of life. I am now 34 and live a much healthier life than i did as a teenager.
6 months ago I decided to re-try meditation which I had previously tried several years ago. To my amazement my body began automatically rotating when i sat to practice my meditation. This movement felt ‘right’ even though it didn’t feel like I was the one making the movements happen. After about a month of upper body rotations and swaying, the movements then focused on my head and neck and for a further month when I stood or sat still my body would automatically stretch and work the muscles of that area. This progressed to shoulder stretches, lower back stretching and basically every area of my body. Occasionally I would go into tai chi style movements and yoga asanas. One position resulted in very strong electrical type nerve feeling running up my spine, this would shake my whole body quite violently, it was an uncofertable and quite scary experience. Over the last month, my hands have been automatically resting over my chakras in various orders and frequency and it seems my chakras have been getting balanced and cleared. This is ongoing at the moment.
Luckily these movements only happen when I stay still therefore I can go about life as normal and allow an hour or two of this activity each day.
I’d like to know if anyone has had the same thing? I seem to be systematically being cleansed by a force which I assume is Kundalini (after much google searching). I’m not sure what steps I can expect next or how long this will last and I’d like to hear from anyone who has been through this process.
I have to say the effects of this on my life have been entirely positive so far, physically I feel much better than I have for a long time. I’ve had serious back pain which seems to have been healed significantly. I feel more confident than I have done in years, my outlook seems to be very positive and I now enjoy social situations that I used to fear. This is an amazing thing which is happening to me, the hardest thing is to keep this secret from the mainstream, who wouldn’t understand.
I think my experience at 18 and the movements are linked, and my ‘depression’ may well have been due to an accidental awakening and the fallout of dealing with this in the following years but I’d like to hear others views on this please.
many thanks for reading!
Hi all,
I found this site while browsing the internet-some truly amazing experiences on here!
I’d like to share something quite embarrassing, something that has been terrifying and causing much discomfort.
For the past year I have done swami ramdevs pranayam. I have done kapalbhati and anulomvilom for about 10-15 min each everyday. I found that they gave me much energy and helped me with knee, shoulder and neck pain which I have had for about seven years. I stopped these practices in June, but I started them up again abt a few days ago.
When I was doing this pranayam during the year, I was avoiding masturbation/sex, because I had read masturbation and pranayam together can be quite harmful. While I would do these practices, I would feel a surge of pressure in my genital regions and it was almost pleasurable, and I found that this would last throughout the day. This was especially true after kapalbhati. The reason I mention this is because when I started up again a week ago, of course, the same sensation came to me. Unfortunately, and this is embarrassing-I spend a significant amount of time watching pornography that day and I masturbated once as well. Since that day,(about a few days ago), I have noticed that the joint pains which Ive always had, have increased significantly, I feel EXHAUSTED, and I have a cramping sensation right below my navel.
I read somewhere that masturbation after yoga can permanently waste energy permanently–did I build up some energy and waste it? I am absolutely terrified and I feel about 20 years older than I am.
Is there anything I can do to correct this? Will it fix itself over time?
Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks very much
P
Dear Guro ji
I started some of exercise from your site few days ago. I perform sodharshan chakra kriya, breath of fire, anuloma viloma paranyama every day. I also do meditation alongwith these exercises. On the sixth day I felt a heat in my back. In the next day I feel heat and energy rising from the base of spinal chord and reached to the shoulder hieght. Now I feel this energy every time I concentrate on my back. Is this Kundalini. What should I do next.
I haven´t practiced yoga intentionally but im looking up how to awaken the kundalini and am interested about it.
done some research about it and read that some have a better connection with the topic than the others..
and some “symptoms” are a match.
for example the strong pain in lower back or in the head that the doctors can not explain.. its rare for me to feel that.. but its not from training or cold or working too hard etc.. its different.
the rising sensation etc.
the unusually strong loving sensation towards someone.
or seeing something in the mind that you shouldnt.. a number or an object perhaps.. which is somehow something that someone is thinking about .. or asking a question and thinking on the answer…
anyways.. interested to know more about it.
so .. how to awaken =)
im not looking for a class.. just a guide howto awaken it on my own.. i´ve read its not hard.. so i know i can manage it with good guidelines =)
indreksalumae@hot.ee
thanks
Hi anmol, how are you doing? I posted a message some time ago. I write again to tell you I’m doing really great with my energy.
I also post this to make some questions to you and everyone else who might know.. First: I have the problem that in the right side of my head, I feel something like a little sharp pain or a stab pain. I feel these helps me to correct bad things inside me, but I don’t know how to stop it or pause it, it’s working all the time and some times my head hurts. I don’t know if it is normal. I believe it is the Mayordomo (steward – higer emotional center) that is mentioned in gurdjieff’s books, would it be posible?. Second: in the book “Tales from belzebu to his grandson”, gurdjieff says that organ “Kunda-buffer” is not something good, and says that its name change later to “Kundalini”. Can you post something about it? Last One: Could you please post the name of the book in which it’s mention gurdjieff’s kundalini awakening ?, I would like to read about his experience and that “baby” position.
Thank you very much for your help, and greetings to everyone.
Amit,
The following link on How to Analyze and Heal Your Chakras will help;
https://anmolmehta.com/2008/11/03/chakra-heal-analyze-balancing-chakra-centers/
All the best,
Trupti
Amit,
These symptoms are consistent with spiritual evolution. Just remain a witness to them, enjoy the experience and keep going…
Trupti
Hi Anmol,
How do we come to know that how many chakras are activated. Symptoms of all chakras activation?
Thanks Anmol,
A very nice page and a lot of thoughts.
Anmol, do you also have a list of living gurus for Kundalini awakening :-)
Cheers!
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Books that I am reading:
1) Yoga and Kriya: A Systematic Course in the Ancient Tantric Techniques by Swami Satyananda Saraswati
Books that I have read:
1) Kundalini Tantra: 1 by Swami Satyananda Saraswati
Hi anmol,
I am regular visitor of your website. I started zazen meditation around two months back. from last 15-20 days i find pressure at my ajana chakra durig diffrent hours of day. generally in the afternoon. when i meditate i feel total flow of energy in my whole body. i do meditate for 40-45 mins. but i dont feel like to open my eyes even after that. it gives me imense pleasure. normally every time i feel little shivering or flow of energy in my whole body. even while driving i have pressure in the centre of forehead. my head feels like as it is rotating and all the hairs are standing straight and there is some energy around it. it feels good to me. but i am bit confused what it is or it is good or bad?
PPPS: Ah, and there’s something I should remark: The visits began to happen. Firstly I started to see all those teachers and sages of mankind appearing to me, and then the animals. Pigeons and other kinds of birds, dogs, cats, bats, lizards, all of them began to visit me. Even today my bedroom is surrounded by animals, and they deal in a funny way with me, they feel and understand the raw manifestation of life force here, and they know it will never harm them, they know that this raving mad here would never harm anybody. And, the most impressive, in my own opinion, was not the visions, the sages, avatars and all those who began to appear, no. What I find most impressive is an event that took place one day when I was performing bhajans, it was after the event, I was recovering and had not dropped all the practices yet (in fact, I never did, they ceased by themselves later when it dawned completely) , when suddenly I felt something and went to my bedroom’s window, when there was a lizard, a beige lizard, in decades living here I had never saw a lizard around, and there was a lizard, a beige and kind of smiling one, I’m not kidding, the lizard was smiling, and, the most impressive thing I experienced in all my life then happened: the friendly lizard, smiling, came closer to me, and with his two front paws he performed the namaste gesture, as if bowing to me, and I greeted him, very happy, and he then went away, and I never saw him anymore. Some Jains told me it’s because of the ‘clouds of ego’ are absent in me, they feel it and want to come closer to me. I don’t know… But I’ll never forget these fellows visiting me. I’m a vegetarian and animal protector from the age of 5 to 6, I’m considered the ET of the family – everybody catholic, carnivorous, and then, suddenly, a kid rise, a kid who spontaneously gives up those things, become a veggie and protector of those and starts his search for God, enlightenment, Kingdom of Heaven or whatever it was. I thank my parents and brother for the support, without their efforts it would be incomparably harder.
PPS: Sorry for any possible errors, I have no time to review it.
It happened to me, sir. Despite the fact that my English is not that good, I’ll try to briefly describe it.
After 25 years of a life fully dedicated to the ‘search’ (I was really mad for God, no words can describe this), and some years of very intense sadhana, including Kriya Hatha Yoga of Babaji, one fine day I had finished performing some asanas and went to the backyard to take a rest sitting there looking at the landscape, when it happened. My body was getting hotter and hotter those days, I had to drink loads of water, and had to walk almost naked. But I never could imagine what was going to happen. It was very very strong, with very physical consequences, and then I was finished forever and ever.
I felt that cobra effect of the neck puffing out, as it have always happened to me since I was a kid, but then more and more intense, and that time it was once and for all, it exploded, like a cannon from the basis of the spine to above my head and beyond, as if infinitely, and then everything disappeared, and suddenly I experienced a kind of infinite ocean of pink/purple and silvered clouds, with that constant sound, as if it were millions of waterfalls, and that bright light, and it was that, as if I was the whole, the absolute, that ocean itself.
But, then, I thought occurred: “What about the body? And the life there? Am I finished forever? What about the body and my life? Am I dead?”, and then that shock made the body appear again, but in a sharply way, it harmed the body, fried my legs, literally, the tremendous energy which have entered the body after the explosion only heaven knows how strong it is, my neck and brain were damaged a little too, I couldn’t breath and had no glue about the speaking mechanism.
I firstly realised that this ‘reality’ is nothing but a kind of hologram, I saw the landscape, the houses and nature around, animals and all that, it was clearly a kind of one-without-a-second image, a hologram, this was very clear, and another thing I realised it was that there was no ‘me’, no ‘phantom in the machine’. Somehow, the ‘me’ was finished after that event, and the life force itself, without being overshadowed by thought from then on, took the absolute control of the body.
Then, back to experience things from the perspective of the body, it was not the same anymore, the sight was then perceived as a kind of camera, mechanical, and the rest of thought, operating only in the background, running the machine, was sort of asking itself “what happened? What is this?”, and I had no glue about anything anymore. I was finished forever.
A kind of panic arose, but I had no glue about anything, I say now it was panic due to the knowledge I have as a background to make communication possible, otherwise I couldn’t function in the world anymore, but at the time it happened I had no glue not even that it was a kind of panic taking place. Then I firstly had to recover the mechanism of speaking, it may have passed some 10 or 15 minutes till I remember the way to activate the mouth and speak, and then I had to remember what to make with that mechanism, as if I were a formatted computer, restarting from the zero, as a child. Then the first thing I remember was my mother, and the word came together – “mother” (“mãe” in Portuguese, I’m Brazilian) -, and then I called my mother, desperate, and then she and my dad came and took care of me. I was finished, I could not even know how to walk right, I was like a kind of zombie, recently back from death, having to ask anything: “What is it that?”. A tree, a wall, an animal, a plant, everything, I had to recognize everything again.
That week was very strange, I remember all that now, but when it was happening I was lost, had no way to experience it, only to live through it. The body suffered an alteration, all the senses, organs, the whole functioning, and all the glands corresponding to the chakras was reactivated, the life force took the control of the body by means of them. The gland corresponding to the so-called ‘third eye’, the pituitary body, the pineal gland, is what controls this now. A protuberance appeared on my forehead, and it increases when it’s full moon. Many other things happened, but I had to write a book about them, it’s not easy to remember and put them all together here.
Then it was 3 years more till the consequences of that event could be circumvented. Even today the legs have the same burned skin, some pros and cons, I’m 31 now but I look younger, people usually think I’m 18, 20 etc, and that event finished me forever.
I have realised by myself, for myself, that there’s no self to realise. The whole idea of separation and attainment (of the ‘goal’) is over here. And I know that it was in spite of the search and not due to it that that event occurred, acausaly. The search, in fact, is what prevent it to prevail. And it’s not something that you can transmit, it just dawns on you, and it’s no way manipulable by any means.
In that sense, there’s no ‘enlightenment’ in the way it’s spread, and it’s not something blissful as they say, as we can see, and this natural state is not different of the state in which all beings are already. Those ‘sages’, ‘saints’ and all of those bastards told about it as if they were in a state different of you all, they fooled themselves and fooled everybody, and all those practices and the whole mumbo-jumbo they created is what is preventing it to prevail. The search is making you run far from it, because you’re already in this state, and making you believe that you’re not in it and that you should look for it is what is taking you away from it. It’s something as silly as trying to sell you a ticket to New York City, for example, when you’re already in NYC. This is what all those gurus and related are selling to you, something that doesn’t exist.
And even if it was something possible to be attained, why the hell would you want this? If you really knew about this, you would never want this anymore! It’s like a lightening hitting you, and you’re finished once and for all. It’s really an annihilation, but not in that mystically masked way those ‘sages’ told you, it’s annihilation for real! Then you’re dead, and what will happen then, only God knows… You may be back or not, I don’t know. But, you see, it’s not something that we can have in an assembly line, it happens to one in a billion, and it’s clear why it’s so.
Now they called me an ‘enlightened’ man, a liberated one, a sage etc, and I really don’t like those terms… Because they’re not honest, those terms are not really expressing the terrible calamity that it is for those who have been waiting for something ‘blissful’, ‘extraordinary’, ‘peaceful’, ‘heavenly’ or what you prefer. What happened is that this machine is now functioning in a way so perfect, so natural, that it has no conflict with the environment anymore. And the certainty that there’s nothing to understand because there’s no one to understand anything is crystal clear here. Some powers manifest, but they’re not so useful, and I never played with them. They just manifest when it happens, but I never make any use of them. You see, it’s not what you’ve been waiting for. But, for those interested in going till the end, I encourage you. But I make it clear that all things you do in order to reach it won’t work either. It’s impossible. But if you still want it, good luck. You don’t have to accept my opinion, but I’m just maintaining my opinion that you’re already there and is the very search itself that is preventing it to prevail.
Samuel Pelegrini
PS: Feel free to contact me if you want. I just don’t know if there’s something useful that I could share.
samuelpelegrini@hotmail.com
Sat Nam
I want to share my experience which might be Kundalini rising as it started from the beginning I started the Kundalini Yoga teacher training course.
At first it was 3 days that I started spinning in my head and lost complete balance and could not do anything than lie in bed, I could not eat, I had to crawl everywhere. I was purging a lot and had a complete colon release the first day. The next 2 days I could eat a bit and the sickness was gone but I kept spinning even lying down. It was very strong.
Then it happened a few times but for shorter periods, a couple of hours to a day and each time I just laid down and slept until it was gone.
After finishing one of my days course for the training about 3 weeks ago now it started again and it has not stopped just gone a bit less.
I laid in bed for 3 days spinning without being able to do anything. It was really strong for the next 2 weeks following but I tried to ignore it and get on with life as I have to work. At this moment it is still not gone and sometimes it is little and sometimes strong again but without sickness.
I must say I have a diet of raw living foods since 7-8 years now and wonder if that has got influence on it too.
My teacher says to not make a drama of it which I totally understand but it would be nice to know if anyone has experienced anything like this too?
I trust the process and know the Kundalini Yoga is transforming me a lot so I just Keep UP !!!
I am grateful to have come across your blog as I am experiencing some really crazy stuff this last week. I am in touch with my spiritual side but have never tried to awaking kundalini energy. What I have been experiencing is a feeling that my mind consciousness is gone passed out of my head and my mind feels so sharp when im walking down the street i don’t feel like im in my body and this concerns me it makes me feel anxious. I then have waves of paranoia that life is not real and this becomes to much for me I look at my surroundings and even though what i see looks solid i have a strong sensation that its an illusion and all that there really is is a vast open space of nothingness i feel quite anxious its like i want to come back down to how i used to feel but i cant i feel very emotional confused and scared at the moment am i loosing my mind???
Anuj,
Thank you for sharing.
All the best,
Trupti