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This article is a further accompaniment to our series on Kundalini awakening and looks at some of the specific hardships, challenges and difficult areas of navigating Kundalini and staying afloat whilst highlighting many of the things you need to be aware of in order to successfully survive and get through Kundalini awakening in a way that is far less confusing, harsh or traumatic. I cover food, diet and nutrition, sleep problems, subtle energy, kriyas, hearing voices, perceiving entities, spiritual testing, mental health, purification and where you can go to seek further help.
Food, diet and nutrition
At times during your Kundalini awakening, you may find yourself too unwell or too weak to be able to cook and prepare normal meals. However, you may benefit from either pre-freezing meals that are easy to prepare when they’re needed or having access to foods that don’t require much preparation or cooking such as containers of raw fruit, nuts or vegetables or access to tins of soup. You may find yourself bedridden for days or weeks at a time and during these periods you’ll be thankful for having access to a readily accessible and relatively easy source of food.
Part of a Kundalini awakening is about helping the person to address the needs of their body, for example, it’s possible someone may be missing something important from their diet and someone may be called to consume certain foods in order to get the necessary minerals or nutrients from these foods. At other times a person may be excessively consuming something leading to harm, commonly this concerns alcohol, wheat-based foods such as bread, cakes or biscuits or excessive consumption of red meat, sugar, salt and caffeine.
A person may also be addicted to certain foods and will be required or encouraged to reduce or abstain from eating them in order to address psychological attachment and biological withdrawal from being addicted to something. During Kundalini one may also learn about how white flour has been contaminated, why drinking from public water sources during times of social unrest is not wise and receive information about which foods contain harmful chemicals or dangerous levels of salt or sugar.
Sleep related problems
There are numerous elements of a Kundalini awakening that can make sleeping difficult. Intense reservoirs of potent energy being activated from the tailbone, root or sacral chakras can make the body feel too energised to feel calm or relaxed enough to sleep. If a person also begins to suffer from fear or anxiety, pelvic and thigh muscles may begin to burn under contractions and friction which feel like rubbing pieces of sandpaper together. One of the yoga positions that can help to alleviate some of these unpleasant sensations of anxiety is the child’s pose and the happy baby position. Please also refer to the next section on feeling the energy to learn about the Five Tibetans for moving stuck energy up the body.
Negative ambient and emotional energies can hinder sleep by making conditions too uncomfortable, these energies are usually harsh or abrasive to both skin and the surrounding energy field, these tend to hang in the air and feel much like static electricity. When in contact with them, they cling to hair, skin, clothing and bedding. To resolve this, if possible, you can take a shower or a bath with salts added to the water, being sure to wash and rinse all hair in the water and salt solution. Changing clothing regularly if needed, washing the days worn or contaminated clothing and bedding. It’s possible to clear the ambient energy in the air using space clearing methods using sound vibrations from instruments such as an Asian gong or Balinese bell, additionally misting the air and fabrics with essential oils and water can be optional.
It is common for spiritual entities to begin to interact with people during sleep and in altered states of consciousness such as meditation or contemplative states, some are positive and may begin to relay desirable dream experiences, some offer spiritual teachings, negative entities may also replay past karmic experiences or misinform someone and a person needs to be careful about what information to accept and what to discard; past karmic experiences can be very disturbing to witness.
Whilst there are prescription drugs that can help someone sleep, the sleep tends not to be restful sleep and there may be undesirable side effects. I experimented with natural sleep remedies that contained natural valerian root and used essential oil scents to help relax my mind and body. I also tried listening to music and hypnotherapy tracks using headphones.
Thinking about sex prior to or when you’re about to sleep is not a good idea because even the mind on its own is capable of stimulating the body to generate sexual energy, which then has nowhere to go leading to feeling over-energised and this will make sleep extremely difficult. Masturbation can have both positive and negative effects, whilst it can release tension and anxiety, it also results in a depletion of energy. If having sex with a partner, energy may not be depleted, however, it’s important to be aware of any hypersexual arousal triggered by the Kundalini energy moving around the lower chakras and pelvis, the libido with Kundalini can be much higher and cause a significant behavioural change towards things or choices one wouldn’t ordinarily consider.
Feeling subtle energy
A person who has become disconnected for a prolonged period of time may not know what energy feels like and this may even be an alien concept. Kundalini is a potent form of energy, however, energy also exists in the form of Chi or Prana, other’s mental, emotional or sexual energies and love. It’s important to be able to discern between true Kundalini and another person’s sexual energy, they may sound similar when reading about them, however, if or when connected to another person, not recognising that it is their energy they are sharing with you could have harmful consequences as usually, this entails a degree of sharing minds and surrendering personal will and when things go wrong, sustaining trauma is normal. Many phantom Kundalini awakenings are really when a person is receiving someone else’s energy at the root chakra rather than the true Kundalini unwinding from the tailbone.
Kundalini energy is thick in texture and feels a bit like honey or treacle, this energy moves more slowly but can increase in power over time. In addition to this refined energy, some energies can feel and move more like lightning. I once experienced an electrical discharge from my tailbone whilst holding a hero’s yoga position pose, this discharge moved upwards through the body towards a kidney, however, I was unable to gleam if this was a random arch or whether it had some sort of purpose. This energy was intense and was certainly unlike ordinary energy that the nervous system might use.
On a different occasion I was doing pranic breathing exercises, a ball of plasma formed in the lower part of my back, this travelled upwards along the spine and disappeared under my neck before reaching my brainstem and discharging as electrical energy across my brain. This was later said to be required in order to unblock neural pathways. Had I not later properly understood what was happening here, this may have been enough to put me off the Kundalini process as it was very abrupt and I might have mistaken it as having been dangerous.
The Five Tibetans as they’re known as can be performed in order to help Kundalini energy rise up the spine, it is common for it to become stuck and may cause distress when pressure builds up, however ultimately, many blockages can resolve themselves on their own, however, yoga positions will facilitate this process and may make it less painful or uncomfortable.
Knowing about grounding energy is important to understand in order to manage energy during times when becoming energetically ungrounded or when suffering under the burden of excess energy being channelled through the body. Methods can include intent-based visualisations, asking for adjustments to be made to your grounding cord, connecting with the earth and/or a real tree or an object made of wood to release emotional energy.
My own awakening lasted for roughly 8 years, at different points I experienced energy pushing its way further up my spine like mercury rising in a thermometer, this always felt scary and disconcerting as it suggested a loss of control. Towards the end of the awakening, the energy had reached my neck and finally to the top of my head, but it was not as wild or out of control as I’ve heard others speak about.
The advice I have is to do your best to allow this to happen, work with any kriyas as necessary and use the Tibetans to help the energy rise on its own. If you feel confident and can handle the changes to your mind and consciousness, you can try the alternate nostril breathing to stimulate the Ida and Pingala to rise, in my case, this only occurred through consciously choosing to do this exercise and didn’t happen either on its own or with the main Kundalini.
Kriyas and spontaneous body movements
Kriyas are usually experienced as a series of spontaneous and automatic body movements that seek to place the body in particular yogic positions. When the body moves on its own spontaneously, this can be very scary to experience, it may even shock one, however, surrendering part of the personal will and allowing the body to be moved in this way ensures you can learn to perform the necessary kryia to receive its benefits. Some kriyas may facilitate unblocking energy channels in the body, whereas others seem to enable a person to begin to process sources of fear or to release trauma more readily.
The main kryia I experienced was very sudden and unexpected, it placed my legs into a diamond position whilst I was laying on the floor resting. I have also experienced during meditation the 2nd, 3rd and 4th fingers being fully extended and locked in place seemingly all on their own.
What can explain this phenomenon? I personally believe that at a particular stage of awakening a more evolved guide versed in Kundalini begins to interface with the body through the mind in order to intelligently instruct the body into moving into certain positions, resulting in performing a kryia. I do not believe kriyas can occur when it would be too dangerous, for example driving a car. I believe it’s important that kriyas are allowed to happen and that they’re not mistakenly misinterpreted as demonic possessions or resisted due to fear.
Hearing voices phenomena
Prior to Kundalini, most inner voices come in the form of the mind’s own ego-personality and mental interactions with other people either within your family or circle of friends with whom one is bonded. Later on, the mind’s capacity to hear from an array of different and expanded sources of voices occurs and it may become possible to hear from spiritual entities, guides or angelic beings as well as the god of other people in addition.
At one point I heard my name clearly spoken out loud whilst I was in my flat alone, I later read at the time that this was also normal. This soon expanded my understanding of reality outside of consensus physical reality as it suggested there were people and forms of intelligence capable of seeing, observing and interacting with us.
There are also darker and more demonic beings, which can sound very evil or sinister. In my experience, these can impede progress by triggering the fear response or creating conditions similar to psychosis or schizophrenia. Sometimes it is necessary to process the meaning of lessons being offered from inner voices. It’s not possible to simply wish these sinister voices away, it becomes necessary to remove any toxic or evil influences from your own life, personality and inner being so that you no longer resonate with their energy, desire to feed parasitically from your own energy or emotions and their purpose for existing.
Spiritual testing phase
During later stages of the awakening, the Kundalini initiate will be expected to undergo a series of spiritual tests and trials during dreaming in order to prepare them for a more evolved existence from the higher astral planes. In both spirituality and in religious terms, this is known as the ascension process and before the person can transform from base lead into spiritual gold, they must be purified of all ego, evil, perversions and vices in order to leave behind only that which is good or an expression of love and wholeness.
If you’re familiar with Christianity, hearing an evil inner voice that represents the entity known as Satan could be the being responsible for providing the progressing Kundalini initiate with spiritual tests that they must successfully pass before they can progress onto higher frequencies where harmful thoughts and practices are disallowed. For a number of weeks, I had to listen to the phrase “Let me test him” going around my head, this was quite frightening and caused a lot of mental distress, it later disappeared after a series of unpleasant dreams over a period of several weeks and after this, my awakening advanced onto more emerged and enlightened stages.
Only after this process was complete, did I learn that Satan is merely a disguise that teachers use to mask their identity whilst gruelling and very horrible temptations are presented in order to see how the mind, soul, god and consciousness each respond to different scenarios. Only when each aspect is capable of rejecting the negative choices and behaviours authentically can the person be allowed to pass. One may witness the same dream scenario being played out multiple times as it works on a different aspect of the whole self and this process may be seen as dark, evil or tormenting.
During this time I found it useful to keep a Kundalini journal that noted what dreams I was having in order to record my progress and deficiencies and I later went on to write the article on Spiritual Tests and Trials.
Seeing, perceiving and interacting with entities
Entities can be a very confusing topic due to the many ways in which the term “entity” is used or applied. For example, spirit entities typically look like small coloured orbs or sparks of bright light or dark orbs that may appear to blink around a person from time to time when they want to interact with your mental self. These are usually visible to psychics and clairvoyants, however, once the necessary parts of the brain are awakened so can others begin to see them.
These little entities carry and express some of the mind and consciousness in a mobile form that can move between dimensions, realities and domains, they also have personality and may interact with us as other people do. An entity may represent another person or even a god or deity. Someone with Kundalini may even get to experience being their own entity and be able to witness how consciousness can see and perceive even without physical eyes.
An entity may also refer to a category of spiritual being that you may encounter during your Kundalini awakening such as demonic beings like the incubus or succubus demon, reptillian beings, in fact, there are many different entities of this sort. Some have independent will and consciousness of their own whereas others are psychic projections that are purely within the realm of a spiritual hallucination intended to provide lessons, such as seeing a demon run across the bed.
The former aforementioned type however may be considered real, they have an energy signature, consciousness and intelligence of their own. Both groups can represent something that is sinister or threatening and some of them may even pose a risk to mental or psychological health depending on how well they are handled or understood. A person with basic knowledge of religion may instantly understand the purpose of a demon, whereas the atheist might have a hard time processing this with their present belief system and either become psychotic or deem to judge someone else experiencing such things as psychotic.
Spiritual beings, gods, and deities are also sometimes labelled as an entity, for example, Shakti or Shiva or Egyptian gods such as Anubis or oriental gods like Quan Yin. This category of spiritual being is best treated and respected as you would a diety, they have distinct personalities, unlike the lifeless psychically projected entities that can augment internal reality and they usually interact with humanity through their own humanoid light bodies.
Lastly, the term “entity attachment”, can refer to small orbs that can be made to stick to the body, they can also be released and seen to flee once they’re no longer required, often they produce unwanted and irritating recurrent thoughts but can be released during meditation. Sometimes entity attachment is mistakenly used to refer to astral implants, these are used to perform tasks such as notifying others of one’s whereabouts on the astral plane, occasionally people with paranoia may mistakenly believe they’ve been implanted with one.
Purifying the body
Eventually, it will become necessary for the body to purge itself of toxins, chemicals and biological waste, this is usually excreted as a sort of ‘sticky goo’ from the anus along with other digestive waste along the intestines, however, the residue it leaves behind is very toxic and will burn the skin and requires additional cleansing with soap and water, toilet tissue on its own is not adequate to clean away this substance and if not cleaned properly it will cause extreme irritation leading to soreness. This aforementioned process seems to occur during Kundalini and does not seem to require one to have been doing yoga, meditation or drinking cleansing teas.
Some of the best ways to cleanse the body energetically are through yoga and meditation, both can assist in removing tension blocks, fears and assist in the process of dissolving harmful internal energies such as the pain-body, ego energy, impurities within the chakras and dark energies or demons sitting within the astral body. Using a soft brush to brush in the direction of body hair will assist in releasing fears and trauma in conjunction with massage. Without releasing these contracted muscles and releasing fear blockages the physical body becomes very uncomfortable to live in and people begin to suffer from chronic pain and stress.
Most demons can be worked off, especially if you can identify the originating cause, many are attributable to a type of spiritual corruption, for example, lust or sexual perversions, other common ones are things like greed, violent and threatening intentions towards other people, lying, cheating or stealing etc. Some of the physical things that may accompany a demon are schizophrenia, cancers, tightened tendons and changes to the voice and expression.
Demons can also be resolved during meditation or extradited through attempting exorcism rites, however, these are not necessarily guaranteed to remove one as they serve and exist for a purpose similar to tagging or identifying someone who has committed a crime. Demons are for spiritual crimes, acts of sin and spiritual transgressions against others, once they are removed, any corrupted or sinister facial expressions and changes to the eyes and face are reverted back to normal.
Understanding spiritual psychosis
Spiritual psychosis can be triggered by many things, such as hearing inner voices, seeing spiritual entities, interacting with gods or deities or processing information from the mind or an astral plane, often things that one could not see or ordinarily sense before, all things which can be troubling or even traumatic.
Unsuccessful awakenings can lead to prolonged schizophrenia and other mental health problems, and if deliberately ignoring the spiritual elements of Kundalini due to incompatible beliefs, one can completely miss the teachings and information this important evolutionary process imparts. This attitude makes it much more difficult to evolve into higher consciousness or to allow the body to be transformed and upgraded as it requires.
Many of these things challenge, alter or can even collapse a belief system very quickly, leading to possible mental instability. Psychosis can also be triggered by feeling surges of energy within the body, unusual movements from within the body such as an oscillating tailbone, something that is intended to generate and stimulate the Kundalini energy or when coming into tactile contact with ambient energies, these can all create quite intense fear and have someone scrambling to attach meaning and understanding to them and on more than once occasion I personally experienced being overwhelmed and blacking out.
Psychosis is sometimes attributable to religious experiences, such as encountering demons either as a spiritual entity that can externally interact with you from the mind like a holographic experience or with a dark energy counterpart that clings to the astral body interpenetrating the physical body. Both can be scary to encounter and allude to different types of spiritual corruption and spiritual learning. In my experience, these are merely to help someone understand their current situation or predicament.
One of the main goals of Kundalini is reconnection with something called the divine, however before this can occur someone may need to ascend through or transcend the lower levels first, which are generally unpleasant and full of dense fear vibrations. The individual recognises these levels as part of their internal reality and subjective experience, these are not readily available for other people to be able to observe, witness or discern, and on the outside, a person may look “crazy” even if they are not, but confusion during such periods is normal and expected.
Doctors, Friends and Family
It can be difficult to discuss or raise the topic of Kundalini with people who operate outside of spirituality, including friends, family members, colleagues and even medical doctors because many of the things that Kundalini include are strange, frightening, bewildering and don’t easily fit into the scientific paradigm. Even people with an active interest in spirituality will find some of the things someone may want to discuss difficult due to not being able to directly relate to the Kundalini awakening, which occurs quite rarely by comparison to the rest of the population.
Some doctors may recognise “Kundalini syndrome”, however many won’t and are likely to see symptoms as signs of mental illness. Trying to force the topic on friends and family members often backfires and lead to the sort of alienation that can harm relationships, likewise discussing this with a boss or colleagues can jeopardise a job or career. It’s important to be discerning with who you choose to share your information, stories or experiences, as it isn’t always going to be productive and may actually harm the other person as well.
It’s also important that a person undergoing Kundalini doesn’t allow superiority or a false sense of enlightenment to take over, this can lead to guru complexes and then someone is more likely to attract followers than genuine friendships.
Minimising psychological distress
There are organisations such as the Spiritual Crisis Network who operate from London in the United Kingdom who can listen to some of your concerns (albeit, only by email) and then signpost those with Kundalini, awakening symptoms or those with spiritual woes or troubles to relevant resources and other specialists such as counsellors, yoga or meditation teachers and psychotherapists to explore their experiences and seek solutions to problems.
