A kundalini experience while meditating

 

These are the notes I wrote for a video I made about this experience. My apologies if you have already seen that but I know some people would rather read than watch a video.

Many people have heard about kundalini yoga or kundalini experiences generally and so might be interested to know what a kundalini experience feels like, to the extent that that can be expressed in words. It might help open some possibilities for you and also save you some time – as you’ll see below!

At the time this happened, in the summer of 1978, I had no history of meditation. I don’t think I even knew then what the word meant! I had a materialist perspective on the mind, consciousness etc. and I was doing research for a PhD in cognitive psychology.

The setting was my office, which was a caravan in the garden of my university department, the Applied Psychology Unit in Cambridge, on a quiet summer evening.

I was typing up some notes when, for no reason that I was aware of, I had the urge to close my eyes and count my breaths, so I did. After about 5 minutes of this I felt a cold, intense, tingling, like a ball of energy, forming at the base of my spine. This sense expanded up my spine and I remember thinking at that point, “When it gets to my head, this is going to be interesting” and it was!

When the feeling reached the top of my spine it expanded rapidly and swept throughout my head. The feeling then changed from simply being a cold, tingling sensation to feelings of bliss and joy, and feeling highly energised throughout my body.

The feelings continued for over an hour (I lost track of time) and, as it was getting dark outside, I got up and cycled home across Cambridge. All these feelings then gradually faded until, after about three days, I had returned to what I previously considered ‘normal’.

That was the start of a couple of futile years of trying to repeat the experience by using as many different kinds of meditation as I could find out about, but the experience never repeated in that time… However, it did kickstart my interest in meditation and, in one way or another, I have explored human potential and spirituality ever since. The kundalini experience was like a tap being turned on that never turned off again...

I have since discovered that some people had similar experiences but were troubled or frightened by them, with some even fearful that they might happen again. I’m pretty sure it helped that I was just curious about what was happening and went with it rather than resisting.

However, if you have such an experience and it troubles you, there is a spiritual emergency network in the UK and USA and probably elsewhere too. The website for the UK organisation is at: https://spiritualcrisisnetwork.uk/about 

Anyway, there we are! In my experience there is no clear and simple relationship between a spiritual practice and a particular experience. Some things just happen for no obvious reason, although a number of practices, including meditation, seem to help.

I hope you enjoy this. Thank you for reading.