A Slow and Steady Kundalini Awakening
Alan K, 49, Male, White Plains, New York
My kundalini awakening experience began about 12 years ago at age 37. I had been meditating for around 3 years, and on this particular day, I was doing a standing meditation called Zhan Zhuang, when I suddenly noticed my left arm twitching and my left wrist rotating. It was involuntary, though I could stop it if I wanted. I remember thinking “What the heck is going on?” This twitching and jerking continued over subsequent weeks and months when I meditated, and at some point, online research led me to understand that these were kundalini kriyas.
These kundalini kriyas have continued unabated for the last 12 years. The energies have been working through my system, more or less chakra by chakra. I understand it to be a classic slow and steady, bottom-up kundalini awakening. At times, the kriyas led me to classic yoga postures and mudras, but most of the time, my body just jerked around and contorted in ways that would have been frightening to anyone watching. I tried to be discrete about it in public, but at home with my wife and children, I may allow a relatively tame kriya to play itself out. My teenage son would just say “Energy, Dad?” and laugh in the same way he might if I had just let out a loud burp.
The experiences in my life have mirrored the parts of me that were being cleared out. For example, a twin flame experience came along as a culminating test of sorts, putting an exclamation mark on work that was being done on my heart and throat chakra. Along the way, I have also been aided by plant medicine. During an ayahuasca ceremony, the medicine seemed to work in tandem with kundalini, performing a kind of “surgery” on me, releasing negative energy from emotional trauma that was stored in a misaligned jaw. As my jaw was being twisted and contorted, the physical pain was so intense I briefly lost consciousness.
At the time of this writing, the kundalini energy is working on my crown and third eye. Anytime I let go, the energies quickly rise and put pressure on the top of my head, as if wanting to be released toward the heavens, but held back by some kind of blockage that it is burrowing through. The energies often circulate back toward my heart as well, where it seems to encourage me to open up and become more loving toward a world which was challenging and cruel in my childhood.
I have been told to be grateful for the relatively gentle nature of my kundalini awakening. I have kept my job, my family, my sanity, all while growing and becoming a kinder, wiser human being. I understand that having this be a smooth process is the exception to the rule. I have had several mystical experiences, but overall, not many fireworks. The absence of a single, paradigm shattering experience of unity consciousness has been frustrating, but if nothing else, has been a test of faith. I get it – little me is not in control and the universe has a plan.
Yet, I often struggle to understand what is happening. If belief creates reality, have I made up this whole kundalini thing, and filled my life with corroborating experiences? It is all so confusing. What is real? Agonizing, really. WHAT IS REAL?
Slowly but surely, I am learning to let go of trying to intellectualize the whole thing; my brain just doesn’t seem fit for the task and I end up spinning my wheels in futility. And so, increasingly, when I sit to meditate, I let go and ask the universe for help. Perhaps the best advice I was ever given was by a teacher who recently told me I can’t actually surrender. What I can do is lovingly hold space for the one that is being surrendered.