Hi Bruno,

I was just reading the 'Kundalini and the Chakras' thread that you had contributed to and was intrigued by what was discussed. I wonder if you wouldn't mind answering a couple more questions regarding your experience?

Did you only use the "Spinal Breathing Pranayama" method to awaken your Kundalini?

If so, for how long did you practice this method before achieving this result?

I hope you don't mind me hassling you about this subject after your previous excellent answers but I was quite excited about trying this practice for myself.

Keep up the good work!

Chris

Hi Chris,

Kundalini awoke after I got stream entry using the Mahasi-style noting form of pure insight practice. The day after I got stream entry, I realised that there was a very strong tension in the base of the spine. I focused on this area with the intent of dissolving this tension. When it finally released, I got a huge surge of energy from the base of the spine up to the crown chakra, ending in fruition, and an incredible outflow of energy in the chakras.

Spinal breathing pranayama is a way to clear up the spine and increase the flow of kundalini. I personally couldn't do it for quite a while since it was too intense (too much ecstasy). Maybe I'll go back to it sometime.

I suggest that if you try the practice, don't overdo it. I mean, don't go and do spinal breathing 1h a day or something like that, just add 5-10 minutes before each meditation session.

Bruno

Thanks for the reply Bruno.

Very interesting!

http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?/topic/13799-awakening-kundalini-101/

THis is a rather simple way to do it which has worked for many. I guess it awakens faster if one does more or all of the kundalini awakening process level 1 practices. THose other practices are also what makes KAP very balanced and grounded so taking KAP 1 instead of just doing this seems like a good option to stay within the safety zone.

There is a video on facebook by Tao Semko, a KAP teacher, where he talks about factors usually needed for awakening kundalini. I think intense emotions, a very high build up of your general energy level (especially in the abdomen) and something that makes your energy go into the central channel and having these factors be present repeatedly over the course of several days minimum usually a lot more. THen there are factors that keep the process safe such as keeping the energy circulating, knowing how to run cold energy to balance the heat, knowing how to ground the energy, being able to surrender to the process, having a reasonable balance in ones emotional life, a fairly straight and healthy spine, reasonable body alignment and physical fitness, fairly open energy channels etc.

Thanks for the info.

I've become very interested in this subject now and have contacted a local Kundalini Yoga group. I've also being doing some web based research and have found all these horror stories about people who have seriously fucked themselves up through awakening their Kundalini. There are whole websites dedicated to these horrific stories but on the flip side of all this there are just as many stories and other sites saying how wonderful it all is. I really dont know what to think now. I cant quite work out if the people who has such bad experiences did something wrong or whether this is a risk for anyone.

Anyone here got any thoughts on this?

Meditation can fuck you up. Since one is going deep into the psyche and looking at all one's shit in the face, we may very well get scared, and react badly, causing some permanent delusion/malfunctioning. This is true even if one is not specifically stimulating kundalini. With kundalini added to the mix, it can make for a very dangerous combo.

I personally have decided to do away with every kundalini stimulating activity for at least a year, and maybe until arhatship. It is still there, though, whenever I look at the base of the spine, pulsating.

I personally would recommend that you purify your energy body very well before getting into kundalini.

Wow! Thanks for the info.
I'm sorry to keep quizzing you but as you can tell I'm new to all this. How would I go about 'purify my energy body'? Is this a practice I can do or would I need to visit a specialist of some kind?

To do that, you could for instance to Tai Chi as a daily practice for a year or two, as well as working with the microcosmic orbit until you can get "energy" to flow there with no problem. Also, cleaning the energy body is the sole purpose of doing yoga asanas. This should be done with some care, since both these things by themselves can awake kundalini.

And don't take my word as if I was an expert or anything, I'm talking half out of experience, half out of my ass. I put emphasis on getting some purification simply because I didn't get the chance to do so and I paid the price dearly. Doing the microcosmic orbit (and other stuff) has helped a whole lot with the energetic symptoms.

I will start Tai Chi myself in september, and I'll let you know how that goes

Yeah, that sounds good advice. Maybe I should exercise a little patience before rushing head first into the Kundalini thing.

Cheers Bruno,

Good luck with the Tai Chi!

Asana (as right posture) has three benefits: your body becomes steady, pleasent and relaxed. It's a great achievement and condition for concentration. You could see nervousness manifesting as permanent little movements and tension or pain in the body as blockages or impurities, yeah, and you have to deal with them to achieve asana. But they are bodily symtoms, and the cause can be emotional or mental. Honestly, if you are a beginner who does not percieve anything pranic or energetic, I'd view this process as psychological work and purification. When you percieve prana well, it'll be a reflection of your whole psyche, your body, emotions and mind, and help you integrate it.
When you're strong enough that new stuff and stories from your life don't upset you too much anymore and sorted out a little so that you don't have major issues with yourself and your past, you're already quite a bit "pure". The more you can remain steady, at ease and relaxed (it's not only physical), the more you've achieved asana in the yogic sense, the "purer" you / your energy body have become.

Through asana practice (movements) you can become strong enought to remain in your meditative asana (that means you remain steady, at ease and relaxed) for a long time (two-four hours). Haven't done this, guess you'd need at least an hour of daily asana practice for this.


I've done the spinal breathing for five weeks, only once daily, 10 minutes. The root of the spine gained quite a bit of plasticity (and bubbliness) and there comes some excitement from the perineum, it's easier to trace the spine, and ajna has become even more penetrant. No unbearable bliss, if you want it, maybe twice a day would really be worth it. I stopped it last week.
I'll keep Yogani's advice to do something before each sit, but return to the microcosmic orbit, 15 minutes a day. So far, the last three days, it seems as if it (like a full-body circuit à la NEW) has benefitted from the spinal breathing (or maybe my perception has gained sharpness, it's hard to tell), but the MO is definitely more chilled out. And it's a lot better to detect disturbances and connections between emotions and thoughts and energetic contractions / tensions. Only sensed these tensions in the perineum so far, but the last few days were promising. I'll keep you posted when I finished 5 weeks with this practice.


Edit: If you ask me, we could start a new thread about purification and for contrasting different practices. Definitely interesting topic, and we don't have much data yet. By far the most spectacular results I got from kundalini yoga, a nut-sized chakra (wheel) in my lower abdomen, as stronlgy felt as if you have a fast spinning gyroscope in your hand. But I cannot write about it in general as I only did one single practice (with different static asanas, partly with hyperventilation, 20-25minutes) for six weeks.

Like Bruno suggested doing asana, tai chi qigong, and or various meditations will give the basic purification needed. My understanding is that when kundalini awakens it rushes through the channels and if one has already done some energywork that has cleaned those channels a bit in a gradual way then the shock is not so graet when kundalini starts purging everything it finds in its way.

It is also important to have the main passagesways opened so that it will naturally go where it is supposed. That means special focus on the spine, front channel and central channel/sushumna. Especially the front channel is important as the energy will usually make it up the back once it has awakened but it might get stuck in the head and not go down the front. So opening the orbit is probably THE most important prep for kundalini and will help you avoid most of the problems you have read about online.

THe orbit also has the benefit of cooling the energy. Kundalini is VERY hot and depending on how much obstruction there is on its way and if you can mix in cool energy you might feel like you were physically burnt on the inside. LIke falling a sleep on the beach without sunscreen and waking up after three hours red as a lobster, only the burn is on the inside. THe back channel is yang and hot and connected to doing and action. The front is yin and cool and connected to receptivity and emotion. So running it down the front makes it more cool and reduces the burning. It also balances you out in the sense that the the yang/doing aspects of your chakras gets too strong in relation to the more receptive yin aspects. Also because the front is connected to emotions the more you are out of touch with your emotions and the more psychosomatic tension you have stored the more difficult it is to open the front. Hence men in general have more trouble with it than women.

Another factor is your physical alignment/posture. If you have structural problems in in your spine such as your lower back being hunched in etc. then the passage for kundalini is not optimal and it can easily be a worse experience. The spine does not have to be perfect but you will have a better time going through it and probably an easier time awakening it if you have structural problems. As for the rest of your body the more balanced and correct it is the easier energy travels through it and the more harmonious your flow of chi is through the meridians. Having this reasonably in order has quite large energetic consequences for any person and more so for someone undergoing kundalini. There is a reason the body is taken well care of in initial stages of qigong and yoga through movement practices and why not just meditation and breathing is the sole focus. All of this does not mean you have to become super fit. Just getting the basics in order is the most important. Some sort of movement practice that creates good overall posture is good. It does not have to be yoga or qigong but that ads more energetic benefit so they are good choices.

Another crucial factor in managing kundalini well is grounding/rooting. Most of the horror stories you read probably involves people who had weak root chakras and few tools to get energy down. Walks in nature and physical labour and eating meat is often emphasized as it helps in grounding. These are good practices but they are very weak compared to a powerful energetic grounding technique such as standing meditation. Standing meditation builds a very powerful root first and then does more work for other chakras later on and can be used to get your energy down in a powerful way. Once you are already in energetic trouble even standing meditation can sometimes also make things worse as it creates more energy also but still works for most that are undergoing energy crisis and should create no problems if you do it before kundalini has awoken and will the serve as a way to keep you grounded throughout the kundalini process.

Standing meditation is itself a very good practice. You don`t get as deep as quick as in eyes closed sitting meditation but is creates much more energy and feels like it gives more health benefits in a very physical way. It also has the advantage that as you just stand in a Zhan ZHuang (standing meditation) posture and relax your body will naturally start to self correct and make micro adjustments that leads to gradual increases in posture that eventually perfects your whole body structure. Especially the fascia in gets harmonized and this is very beneficial as it is key for energyflow and many beilive the meridians run in the fascia mostly. Standing meditation also eventually opens the orbit without concious effort on your part. Just focus on the breath, dan tien or bottom of the feet and eventually it gets going. Still you may benefit in opening the orbit before this happens by itself. If you want to do that then springforestqigongs cd for opening the orbit, which I think is called small heavenly orbit, has gotten much good feedback as a safe and efficient way of doing it.

ONce you have built a strong root through standing meditation or some other powerfull grounding practice you don`t need to do it much to maintain the general strenght of your root. Over time your connection downwards becomes so powerfull that if you in a sitting meditation loose it then only a few minutes of standing meditation can get you down. So you see this as something you do for a period of time to help lay a foundation and then only do when you feel the need or for a minute or two after each sitting. Of course it is by itself a great practice and can be used as a basis for shamatha and vipassana or mostly as an energy practice but just for getting access concentration of jhana sitting is probably quicker.

At the biologyofkundalini.com site there is a lot of good info on nutrition and kundalini that can probably help you go through it as well. Susan Carlson, an expert in kundalini matters, says that it can be very harsh on the adrenal glands for some time. Drinking lots of water and a couple of supplement suposedly helps with that.

Another factor that is supposed to be important is positive emotions. In the kundalini awakening process system they use the secret smile meditation to awaken kundalini but also to balance it out. The meditation involves generating the feelings of confidence, happiness, relaxation and love and running them through the body even down to the toes and legs and then combining them with the memory of the best orgasm you ever had (you generate it til you can feel it as it starts to happen now but don`t ejaculate only stay on the edge), mixing them all into one powerful state of bliss and then running that everywhere throughout your body and storing it in the dan tien. Eventually you get such a good control over this that you can manifest this state or any of the emotions any time at will in just a few seconds or a minute and you start running it in the background while doing other stuff. THey use it as a prep for meditation and often to finish it as well. Supposedly this does a lot to smooth out the process of kundalini awakneing. Mantak Chias the inner smile is somewhat similar but still different and adds another positive dimension for smoothing out kundalini. It too can be mastered so you generate a powerful inner smile state at will as well. So after an initial phase of mastering these to they don`t require you to use much time. If you have access concentration then "mastering" these two should be quite quick.

Beyond all this the better your energy body is purified and the better all your energy centers are balanced the smoother it goes but this is not necessary for a fairly smooth ride relatively speaking. An open orbit, a good ability to ground at will and to generate a strong secret smile and preferably also an inner smile together with ok physical alignment, not smoking and reasonable diet should, from what I understand, be enough to run the process quite well. But anyone will go through some rough stuff apparently. So the way I see it is that one should actually take care in learning these things, or something else that has similar effects, in the begining and then reduce the focus on them and amp up insight practice.

THe KAP course which I plan on taking at some point includes all these excpet chias inner smile but also has a lot more stuff in it that helps in keeping the process smooth. NOt everyone has found the course useful but most people find that the course is VERY effective in terms of generating energy opening kundalini, keeping it balanced, keeping you grounded and connected to real life and has the benefit of practices that are easy to integrate into daily life so you can get extra practice time while doing other stuff. You can do five point breathing while you wait for the buss or hair and skin breathing while you play playstation etc. So the course seems to be a very good way to ensure good energy management for someone doing Vipassana or zen or similar stuff and I believe it can speed up the process a lot and make things much easier, especially making the dark night much less problematic as I believe correct energy work can prevent a lot of it. In general I think that the course or any other system that does something similar can make the insight cycles much smoother. My own Vipassana teacher says he does not experience the cycle problems often talked about on this page and thinks a lot the reason is a very balanced practice of qigong and some taoist meditations. THe whole KAP course can be focused on for some time until the kundalini is up and running and has found its initial place fairly well, then one can reduce it and do more insight practice but keep some of it for balance.

THe KAP course and its teachers are controversial and very disliked by some but has a very strong following that is very happy. Personally I find that most of the critique is baseless and and mostly centers around a distaste for the teachers as they come of online and the eclectic nature of the course (mixes taoist, yoga, sufi practices etc.). As good as everyone who has taken the course really like the teachers and for the purpose of raising kundalini and keeping things balanced it is obvious it works well. THe objection that I have myself is a lack of an insight meditation/wisdom component but as long as one practices vipassana or something similar as well that is not a problem. You can read through the endless amount of KAP threads on thetaobums.com and make up your own mind.

Anyway, as long as you orbit, ground and do the secret smile you have the most important aspects of KAP for keeping things balanced and those you can learn without instructions from a teacher.

I highly recomed you read path notes of an american ninja master by Dr. GLenn MOrris. It is an account of his kundalini awakening and describes some of the KAP practices (he invented the system but is dead). It is a very interesting and well written book.

Thats great Crazy Wisdom! Thanks for taking the time to post. Alot of great info here. I have just sourced a copy of 'Path notes of an American Ninja master' and looking forward to giving it a read.

Cheers

Chris

Cool! It`s a good read.