In my last post, I described my experience with kundalini and (as I would come to think of my particular experience) Kundalini Syndrome. The people who were ostensibly my meditation mentors did not know what to do with this, and the helper they referred me to was primarily helpful not for resolving the underlying symptoms, but for providing someone with whom I could speak freely about this strange kundalini fire. I came to recognize that I needed to change my circumstances — to return to some baseline of basic safety — before I would be able to stabilize myself physiologically. First image: I chose this card during a class exercise in seminary — the person on fire (head especially) spoke to my kundalini experience. (This is one of artist Deborah Koff-Chapin’s Soul Cards; decks available for purchase at https://touchdrawing.com/card-decks-journals/) Second image: evocative of the soothing stability I needed. (Ilana Reimer / Unsplash) I left my job at the meditation center, moving back to my previous community, work, and social support network. There were no more incidents of having to RUN as if my life depended on it. And the depression I’d fallen into lifted with the change of settings. My energy, however, had not evened out. I would get surges of energy and enthusiasm, pouring it into projects at my new job. Eventually I would hit a wall and be spent. Then after a while the cycle would repeat. I remember describing it to a friend as like bi-polar disorder, except not the emotional content — just ups and downs of energy. I must’ve said something to my mother about all this, because I remember a point in my first year back when she requested that I see a psychiatrist, to rule out any issues requiring support. Mostly to put Mom at ease, I did that. My minister gave me a referral to a local professional she respected. I told the psychiatrist about my experiences, and my belief that it traced back to a long-term meditation practice. She went through her usual assessment process. She found no cause for concern. In retrospect, I wonder if she’d seen this sort of thing before. In any case, she sent me on my way. So I went about readjusting to a “normal” life. Along with beginning to untangle my ashram experience — and moving outside the spiritual box they had taught people to stay in — I experimented with what felt right to me in my spiritual practice now. And I paid more attention to my body. Here are some of the things that seemed to help calm my energy cycles and stabilize me:
Returning to “safe” relationships and community supports was also an important part of stabilizing myself. In addition to old friends, and my church community, I eventually looked for and found a life partner. The instinctive sense of safety I felt with him was a significant influence in my choosing the partner I did. I remember vividly the hug my now-husband gave me at the beginning of our second date, and the visceral feeling of safety and comfort. “Hmm, something’s different about this one. {contented sigh} ” Within a couple years of returning home to the Midwest, circa 2008, I found resources online, on kundalini awakening and kundalini rising, safety protocols for kundalini activation or treatment, kundalini signs and symptoms, etc. Though the links where they were originally posted no longer work, I saved some articles to my computer. (You can also find plenty out there now — more as time goes on, it seems — if you search on these terms.) A piece on techniques and pitfalls of kundalini yoga had this to say: “We are treading sacred waters here. To plunge in recklessly is to risk self-annihilation. When Kundalini awakening happens to people who are not on a spiritual path, the experience can leave them fragile and fragmented. As the Kundalini process involves a redefinition and reintegration of self, it adds extra pressure when people wish to suppress the transformation and insist to lead their lives normally.” [emphasis in original] I was a person “on a spiritual path.” But I was not one who had been particularly seeking illumination. Nor had anyone warned me, at any point, that a regular meditation practice could eventually lead not only to the positive daily benefits I valued — improved discernment about life decisions, enhanced relationship skills with others, greater patience, emotional stability, etc. — but that regular meditation could also lead to becoming “fragile and fragmented.” An article on Kundalini Signs and Symptoms, by someone named EL Collie, included the following list: The following are common manifestations of the risen Kundalini:
Psychic experiences:
I had experienced most of the “common manifestations” of risen kundalini, as well as some of that “increased creativity” and “intensified understanding and sensitivity” listed in the second grouping. Lists like this online supported my sense that this was not just a positive experience of awakened kundalini that I’d been having, but that there was a common, well-known shadow side to it — the headaches and pressure inside my skull, the pain in my neck, the energy cycles. Indeed, these were all a direct result of the spiritual disciplines I had undertaken so faithfully for years. While any of the above listed symptoms might be “normal” in the context of spiritual development, it would not be normal to most of the people around me. After I left my job at the meditation center, I was no longer bound to silence on these topics due to the subtle pressures of ashram culture. But treating these experiences as a secret, to be shared with only a trustworthy few, was now a strategy for blending in in mainstream culture. Kundalini awakening was not exactly a topic of conversation at Chamber of Commerce mixers. It was helpful to have the lens of kundalini rising to make sense of my experiences. I wished I’d had it sooner. I remained curious to learn more, and open to other frameworks for interpreting my experiences. Periodically I came across a new resource that was helpful to me. I left the ashram and returned home in 2006. Importantly, I found new spiritual companions on the page — not only Peace Pilgrim but Rumi, Karen Armstrong, Etty Hillesum, Tara Brach, and the historic UU spiritual sisterhood, among others. I bought a house in 2007, and met my now-husband in 2008. The process of pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering was perhaps the most grounding experience of all (and the most exhausting, too); our daughter was born in 2010. By 2012, I was starting seminary, as the first step in the process of becoming an ordained minister in the tradition of Unitarian Universalism. That began a second round of life review. I was still trying to make sense of my experiences at the meditation center, in particular. During that time, I read a 2011 book titled In Case of Spiritual Emergency: Moving Successfully Through Your Awakening by Catherine G Lucas. I don’t remember how I found it. It pointed me toward other resources, including the 1989 Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis (edited by Stanislav Grof and Christina Grof) — indicating that the kind of experience I’d had was recognized, not only by yogis and mystics worldwide down the centuries, but by the field of psychology for at least several decades. I also reached out to the Spiritual Emergence Network in my country; alas, I never heard back. I found it helpful to use a series of writing prompts from Lucas’ book, based on Joseph Campbell’s model of the hero’s journey, to take a fresh look at my life’s journey and spiritual journey. I shared it fruitfully with the spiritual director I was working with at that time. Reviewing that telling again now, what stands out to me is the repeated lesson of trusting my own needs and my own knowing, rather than too readily adopting others’ advice or perspectives — particularly by learning to listen to my body, including my energy. This breakthrough started with realizing I needed to leave the ashram, as the insistent kundalini symptoms were telling me to do. My recovery process after I left included much self-care and self-listening that was specifically body-attuned. When it came to childbirth, I felt a deep trust in my body’s innate knowing and capacities. I had a swift, smooth home delivery (6 hours vs. the typical 12–24 hours for a first birth). And what made me trust the “aha” moment of recognizing the call to ministry was the clear, calm, joyful sensation of my crown wide open and buzzing at the idea. A few years ago, when reading up on trauma and somatics, I recognized my urge-to-run experiences in Peter Levine’s descriptions of trauma discharge (In An Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, 2010). As I recall, in a moment of danger, the fight-or-flight response may turn into freezing instead — because it is not safe to run during the time of actual threat, or in some cases, because playing dead may give the animal a better chance of survival. Later, when a person is safe again, letting this urge run its course (literally) is a healthy way to release the stress of that event, which would otherwise remain embedded in the body. (Shaking it off, again literally, is another method. Animals instinctively do either of these things.) This is what some animals do when a predator has it cornered: the gazelle freezes, and if the tiger picks off another member of the herd instead, or is distracted by a competing predator, like a hyena, the frozen gazelle can spring back into action and flee. By using the adrenaline for its intended purpose — to fuel the vigorous exertion required to escape danger — the stress energy of that life-or-death encounter is discharged. Aha! At last I had an explanation for those times when I’d just HAD to run. This still left me with a puzzle, however. I had a happy childhood, with no traumas that would lead to such frozen energy, no date rape in college, or anything else I could point to as an obvious origin for this. Where did the threat come from? When had I ever been prey to a predator? While the source of my “frozen energy” remained hazy to me, I learned that the phenomenon of spontaneous movement is familiar to some in medicine and body work fields. An occupational therapist, upon hearing me relay the movements that still sometimes happen, and feel therapeutic to me, told me that she had been taught to call this “unwinding.” In myofascial teaching, the fascia, where trauma is held, unwind as a way to move you through that trauma to release it. This is regarded as a natural, self-healing phenomenon with which practitioners can collaborate. Most recently, as I learned about high control groups — and with no small amount of shock, recognized my old group in the descriptions — I concluded that it was actually the one-size-fits-all meditation practice and the ashram community that my body recognized as unsafe. That passive-aggressive, patronizing, untrusting, judging, not-caring-as-it-first-seemed, not-actually-equipped-to-support-me community was the threat I had cause to run from. I now consider the meditation center’s founder a predator — a malignant narcissist and serial user of the “gazelles” in his midst. And the organization he founded is one designed, not to accomplish the mission of service it outwardly proclaims, but rather to cannibalize people — their minds, bodies, time, money, labor, skills, and idealistic fervor — for the aggrandizement of the founder. (It doesn’t matter that he’s dead. That’s the cultural DNA and it’s still playing out now, as it was when I was there.) If only I had known how to listen to my body while I was there working at the ashram. It was telling me — literally — to run away from that group. At another point in my year there, depression communicated the same thing: this place isn’t good for you, you need to GET OUT. I did get out. I calmed the kundalini fire. I created a life I love. Surely my experience of troubling, unexpected “side effects” is the exception among meditators, right? Surely mainstream champions of meditation effectively guide and safeguard people? Well, not so much. Next up in this series: adverse effects of meditation and mindfulness. Not from spiritual teachers or ancient religious writings, but from contemporary study using the methods of science. Fascinating stuff, offering necessary knowledge for practitioners. Thanks for reading. You can subscribe to get every new post sent directly to your inbox. I also post on Bluesky when a new piece is up. Here are some other articles you may enjoy 👇 What I Wanted ... What I Found... What I Lost Please read this disclaimer carefully before relying on any of the content in my articles online for your own life.
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Article ListA list of all articles by title and date, grouped by topics. - Go to list - About ShariUU minister, high control group survivor, and mama bear on savvy ways to seek meaning, belonging, purpose, and well-being in these turbulent times. More SubscribeWant to get an email in your in-box every time I post? To subscribe, you can go here and follow the instructions at bottom. Archives
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