Clinging to the Earth: My Journey Through Kundalini Awakening

Carissa, 34, Female, Olympia, Washington

Initiation

If you would have asked me 10 years ago, “Where is the least sacred place on Earth?”

I likely would have answered, “Los Angeles”.

“And what is the least sacred food on Earth?”

To which I would have confidently replied, “Tortino’s pizza” followed by a rant about the length of ingredients.

If you would have then proceeded to ask me, ” And what is a Kundalini Awakening?” I would shrugged and likely and maybe made some mention of glowing monks high up in a monastery in land far away.

Yet it was on a very random trip, in very random circumstances, at an unsuspecting North Hollywood apartment, with an odd assortment of acquaintances that those seemingly unrelated themes would coalesce and mark a pivotal point for me on the path of spiritual transformation.

It was 2014, I was fresh out of inpatient eating disorder treatment when the opportunity for an all expenses paid, spur of the moment, trip appeared. Details changed last minute, my planned accommodations fell through, leaving me in my worst nightmare: broke and stranded in the land of Lost Souls. I called upon my former roommate, a very eccentric dark sorceress type friend, from my former life living on the Sunset Strip.

She and her boyfriend agreed to take me in for a couple of days but since no one had planned for me to be there – there was no place for me to sleep. And although I pretty much never smoke marijuana since I was already in such strange circumstances, I accepted a hit in hopes it would me help me pass out on the couch. Well, it turned out this was something called “dabs” and rather than making me sleeply it made me very, very high.

My heart began racing. I felt a panic attack coming on. My well-meaning friends tried to help calm me down by offering Tortino’s pizza and Kraft mac n’ cheese which are simultaneously staples from my childhood and also top fear foods for my disordered eating self. The nostalgic smell of those processed food-like items transported me back to my childhood, filled me with nausea, and caused me to accidentally puke on a stranger who happened to be a famous old school thrash metal guitarist (this was Hollywood after all).

Repressed memories came pouring through, I wrote them down as fast as I could. I made the brilliant decision to call all of my immediate family members at 3 am to tell them about my traumatic epiphanies. My obliques ached, my hands pulsed, I rocked back and forth. My bewildered hosts placed a rose quartz crystal in each of my hands in an attempt to calm me down.

What happened next is something I later learned is called a “spontaneous kriya”. My arms involuntarily lifted up and away from me into a T and my head tilted back and up to the sky. Energy flooded me as I felt my spirit lift up and away from my body, time stood still while I was in this “other place” and heard “other beings” speak to me. When I landed back into my body, I proclaimed to everyone that I had been “saved”.

The next day rather than being embarrassed about my massive L.A. faux pas (rule number one: no spiritual awakenings at metal parties), I instead felt deep stillness and unshakeable peace within.

I have now come to understand that this was the moment that the dormant kundalini energy within me spontaneously awakened.

Kundalini also known as Shakti is described by eastern mystics as the raw life force energy dormant at the base of the spine. The symbol often used to represent this energy is a serpent as she is said to be coiled three times until her awakening when the process of spiritual transformation begins. Shakti is our creative life force, the divine feminine, and some believe the essence of Christ Consciousness. She is the embodied energetic catalyst for our spiritual evolution.

I did not have to sit and chant alone for hours high up on a mountain to have this experience (although this does sound very appealing to me now). Rather, it just took me saying yes to synchronicity, entering directly into the belly of my particular beast, and ok yes, a little bit of weed, in order to be catapulted into my journey of awakening.

Preparation

The energy that shook my world that night went mostly dormant for the decade that followed. I was fundamentally changed from the experience but I did not know what had happened or how to integrate it into my life. Surprisingly, I was also never invited back by my hosts again…

Flash forward to May 2023, I had just emerged from 2 years of recurrent medical trauma with my youngest son. I had CPTSD from the many traumatic episodes of waking up to him not breathing during the night. I was hypervigilant, highly anxious, and scared all of the time. With his health finally stabilized, I decided something had to change and hired a coach to help me rebalance my nervous system.

My first line item was to commit to a consistent meditation practice. I had a long standing and strong relationship with the physical practice of yoga but had not been successful with consistently meditating until now.

Oftentimes I would have my children climbing all over me, asking me for a million things, and creating a rather un-zen environment to meditate in, but still I went outside each morning and sat. I simply showed up everyday and did my best to follow the prompts of Sam Harris and Joe Dispenza.

I began noticing positive effects, I felt more relaxed and at peace throughout the day which positively impacted my relationships and brought me closer with my partner. With less radio interference we were able to actually begin to connect in a way that we hadn’t done the previous 7 years.

Intensification

With fewer thoughts of worry filling my head, I had more space to reconnect with my actual interests and began diving back into the teachings of Tantra. One night, about two months after I committed to my meditation practice, my partner and I had gotten onto the topic of a Tantra retreat I had attended prior to knowing him. I had never told him much about it but I took a leap and vulnerably opened up about one of the sexual practices I had enjoyed learning there. Gasp!

I remember that moment so well, the lighting, his response, and the potency of the moment. I was shaking opening up about a topic that was not easy for me to talk about or even acknowledge: my sexuality. A warmth I had never encountered filled my whole pelvis. We said goodnight and I went to bed.

It sounds so innocent now, like of course I should share what excites me with my life partner openly proclaim that I was a sexual being was a complete breakthrough.

The next week was blissfully bizarre. That heat in my pelvis intensified and persisted into intense and all consuming arousal that lasted for almost a week straight. My ability to sleep went out the window as my sexual energy burst forth from its long slumber with a ferocity I did not know was possible.

That moment of vulnerability sparked a raging fire that burnt down any of the walls that were still standing between him and I. Our hearts burst open in the following weeks as we talked and talked working through all of our past barriers uncovering the intimacy we were capable of. I fell head over heels for him all over again. All consuming feelings of love and rapture came in waves of a week at a time. It felt as though we were in an accelerated healing portal opening that was bringing everything to the surface in order to open our hearts and bring us closer.

I remember calling my childhood best friend while lying on my bed in the middle of the day with no idea of what was happening. I hadn’t touched drugs since that wild night in LA and yet here I was worried that my heart might somehow beat out of my chest from the intensity of all. this. love.

Creativity waterfalled over me compelling me to write, dance, and create. Downloads streamed in, mystical visions, transmissions, and realizations. I felt fully embodied and alive for maybe the first time in my whole life and it was just so damn beautiful.

Purification

Now if things would have stayed in the blissed out intensification stage, I would be running around shouting from the rooftops, “Hey everyone! You gotta awaken your Kundalini! It’s freaking awesome!” (Although, at this point I still didn’t have the language for what was happening.)

One of the main purposes of Kundalini is to purify you in order to create space for your higher self to fully inhabit your body and life. Which makes sense why the next phase of this process was, let’s say, less than pleasant.

The purification process first reached my enmeshed relationship with my mother by swiftly eradicating it from my life. I suddenly no longer had the ability to tolerate our lifelong dysfunctional patterns. My childhood rage surfaced in a pivotal conflict that led to the first real period of space that we had ever taken from one another.

With my mom out of the picture, space was created for repressed memories and embedded belief systems to surface and dissolve. Including the dissociative episode inducing realization that I had been subconsciously suppressing my sexuality and femininity because it reminded me of her.

In the midst of all of this healing around my femininity, I began to have recurrent ovary infections that left me feverish, nauseous, and doubled over in pain. The western medical system was not much help at this time and equally bewildered by my symptoms.

Later my schedule was purified when my vocal cords went on strike for an inordinate amount of time and my day job became impossible to do.

Tribulation

This is the hardest stage for me to write about as I don’t actually know if I am out of it yet but it is a very common theme in kundalini awakening stories. Three months into this journey everything came crashing down when I sustained a traumatic throat injury. It was a freak accident that shifted everything in an instant.

It was like in the movies where someone pulls the master control center lever. All the sounds and lights power down one at a time until the screen goes dark and silent. The bliss was gone, the love was gone, the arousal was gone. All of the fire and heat in my body vanished and all I felt left with was pain. So. much. pain.

I shut down into a freeze state and did not know how to get out. After a month of feeling a bit dead inside, I sought the help of a teacher. My soul settled when he helped me to see that I was having a dark night of the soul and instead of believing that something had gone drastically wrong, I opened up to the possibility that I was exactly where I was meant to be.

My throat has yet to fully heal and continues to be my greatest teacher.

Ascension

At this point, I started feeling stoned. For days! With no drugs! I was falling into deep meditative states at random times throughout the day. The pull to meditate was so strong that I felt as though I could spend an entire day sitting in trance-like states.

Three big things began happening at this point:

My body began to move without me moving it during meditation. At first just gentle swaying, then my head began to tilt up to the sky and move all around. I could stop the movements if I tried but it took physical effort to do so and felt much more natural to just allow it. Psychedelic imagery also began to appear while mediating. Ultraviolet purple pulsing through the center of the outline of an eye.

The other huge shift that took place was that I began to feel streams of energy shooting down from the top of my head down the center of my body over and over. The only way I can really describe it is: shoom shoom shoom. I can feel this when I am just going about my day, not even meditating. If I just pause I can feel the movement of this bright white energy sometimes circling around my heart, sometimes streaming perpendicular to my body and circling back up to my head.

The spontaneous movements and psychedelic colors and shapes while meditating felt bewildering, but this? This new ability to feel energy moving throughout my body all day long was bizarre enough for me to begin to look for answers, “Dear Google, why are streams of energy shooting down my body over and over”?

This is when I finally found the language for all the mystical, bizarre, intense experiences I had been going through: I am having a kundalini awakening.

Isolation

Now I know what many of you may be thinking, “I don’t know Carissa, a lot of this sounds like a bipolar episode or a psychotic break.” To which I say, “Been there, done that.” I have extensive experience with mental illness so I know what it feels like to fall apart in that way and when to seek help.

I now look back at my mental health journey in my 20’s from a completely different lens. I came close to not surviving my battle with an eating disorder and am so grateful for the medical treatment I received when I had actually lost my mind.

But I wonder what would have gone differently if I would have been raised in a culture that supports spiritual awakening. Maybe rather than misdirecting my life force energy into food and body image neurosis; I could learned how to harness and use it instead.

Spiritual awakening is not only not supported or discussed in the West but is instead actively pathologized. This means that people going through this process likely won’t speak up out of fear of being institutionalized which means they won’t get the vital tools and support needed to ride the waves of intensity.

The process of kundalini awakening is happening to more and more people all around the world. It is no longer reserved for the select few on the mountains of India. Which is why I feel urgency around speaking up about my experiences to hopefully help people get the support they need to navigate this very disorienting process.

Grounding

Being what I would consider a relatively normal human most of my life, I had no idea how to deal with all these new sensations, senses, and experiences. After I began feeling the streams of energy moving through me all throughout the day, I also became highly sensitive to lights and sounds. The visions I would receive as downloads were on rare occasion disconcerting. I was very easily overstimulated and did not know how to handle all the new energy moving through my body. On more than one occasion I found myself quietly weeping through yoga class wishing I had my old nervous system back.

As a mother of young children, it became imperative that I adapt to my heightened sensitivity to still be able to parent my two loud little beings. The best tools I found for when I felt as though I was clinging to the earth: time in nature, eating a grounding diet, earthing, Jihva banda (basically a cool yoga pose for your tongue), cutting back on meditation, cold plunging, working with my hands, co-regulating with my grounded husband, talking to people about regular life, and dance.

I learned to use these grounding tools to navigate other uncomfortable seasons of this journey like the sensation of lava in my lower back, periods of trembling and shaking, the ongoing excruciating pain in my throat, and losing my beloved voice for an indeterminate amount of time.

I now understand why this all began with the purifying and healing of my relationship with my husband. He provides the container of safety and grounding that my nervous system needs to be able to take on this level intensity of energetic transformation. A soul sister of mine has also been indispensable to the journey by being completely unfazed, unyieldingly supportive, and medicinally hilarious about the whole thing.

Surrender

The end goal of kundalini awakening is union or enlightenment. I have learned a lot going through this process and I can bring you to the anticlimax now to let you know that I am unfortunately not enlightened.

What I am though is a completely different person than who I was before this all began. I do have more space from my ego than ever before (though that sounds like something my ego might say) and I do think I am beginning to understand the process of awakening.

“It is the inherent nature of reality to awaken all of itself to itself. That is its nature. That is what it is doing.” – Adyashanti

Although I have not completed this process (and may not do so in this lifetime), I do have trust in it now. I know deep in my being that everything is for the highest good. I do secretly hope though that by beginning to speak my truth Shakti may loosen her loving, motherly, serpentine grip around my throat but in the meantime I will just continue to attempt to soften my grip around everything. Surrendering fully into the flow.