My friend is becoming a Kundalini Yoga Instructor

I have been to one of her classes already.

I am going again today but I wanted to share my first impressions and experience.

What I told her right away was that in the beginning of the class when I closed my eyes, my eyes wouldn't stop moving and wanted to open. It was hard to focus my eyes. But by the end of the class I could close my eyes and be completely still and that is an amazing feeling.

Also in the beginning, after three minutes of holding one pose and doing the breathing, I had to ask if it had really been three minutes because it felt more like it had been twenty seconds tops. I don't know where that time went and all I could recall was that I felt like we were making music with our breath. And it was beautiful. And it was like that for a lot of the poses for me. I did ask her to go easy on me though, lol, so they were probably introductory poses.

I also felt that I was synching up with the things she was saying, even thinking the words before she said them or experiencing the things before she explained them. This happens a lot to me I think.

And the things she talks about always remind me of the sensations in my spine that I had when I was younger, from the beginning into my late teens early twenties, and I know there's another post about that around here, about the spinal sensations all up and down. Like a tickling feeling accompanied with the goosebumps all over the body.

I think there's a scientific explanation to it all of course.

I still get some of those sensations now and then, they're coming back more and more, I think as a late response to psychological/emotional trauma. At one point I could bring on the sensation by will, but then I stopped doing that. I won't get into why but I do think the nature of trauma separates us from ourselves and makes it hard to reconnect to ourselves in this way. And maybe the tingling sensation up and down the spine is the equivalent of how the dog shakes off and releases the trauma/stress energy- and if that shivering of the spine doesn't happen then the trauma energy gets trapped in the body and hurts the body. Possibly resulting in auto-immune disorders, undue anxiety and stress, etc.

So it very well could be that this Kundalini stuff is just a way to trigger our bodies into releasing trauma energy that is trapped in the body, and it really might just be a super natural and biological way to cope with trauma. I also think the tingling/near orgasmic spinal sensations could technically be seizures- also related to the response of a traumatic or stressful situation. But once again, seizures of this type would have a healing function by releasing that energy/stress.

Someone else once mentioned that Kundalini Yoga and a Kundalini Awakening can lead to a sexual awakening and that can be "dangerous," lol.

I can see why the yoga might be seen as sexual and may trigger sexual things after having been to just one class. Some of the poses trigger the involuntary movement of certain private parts (felt that way for me, just naturally happening), and the movements of the spine and controlled breathing is sensual I would say. I didn't leave the class feeling horny though. I left feeling calm and centered and loving in a deep way. Because of this I do sense that probably everybody would benefit from this yoga at some point in their lives, but I also understand that many people would reject it, probably out of trauma energy that has been trapped inside their bodies, lol.

These are just my first impressions.

Have any of you tried it, and if not, would you?

And why and why not?

a reply to: geezlouise

Many years ago, I tried hatha yoga and it was wonderful. Never tried the kundalini yoga though. Now that I am much older, way out of shape and disabled with back problems and other things, I would imagine any kind of yoga would be difficult. I can see me now...Help, I'm on the floor and can't get up! LOL

I have been meaning to try gentle movements and get back into the deep breathing, but I am the Queen of procrastination.

It is correct that Kundalini is a body sexual activator and is pushing heat energy from the spine. It can help chi (vibrating energy) to flow that causes the bliss feeling in the nerve system. But the spine is not where the highest level of chi comes into the body. Kundalini (heat energy/fire), Chi (vibrating energy/water)

Once you go beyond materialism that was disproved when entanglement was found then there is nothing that hinders real scientific quantification of everything spiritual.

But many "Scientist" and "Spiritual" people do not want objective truth and measurement to hinder their experience. That is a human trait that humans should not project on the higher levels of awareness.

Kundalini seems a "real" thing, but it's plagued by half-correct info and some dangers. I had an interesting experience where I felt tingling moving up my spine and my hands gave off measurable heat when casually trying to massage-heal someone.

Too bad Kelly Pretty Bear has retired (?) from this site as he had some valuable things to say about it, though one could look at his history and read it, I suppose. He warned of a "burn out" when energies are tapped by poorly prepped people, among other things.

My friend, a die hard materialist who studied Sanskrit for many years in a Master's program in India and CA, has a very poor opinion of the "teachings" common to Western credulous audiences. He basically says most of the info is false, having no resemblance to the actual texts with no provenance other than new-agey charlatans using ignorance to enrich themselves. He is open to there being something to the energies themselves, but is skeptical of casual dabblers having any real way to approach it as the people who can actually read the source material and thus really know about it are rare.

SO ... dunno .. . careful?

When cleansing anything you will get dirt coming to the forefront and its no different with our brains. When lowering our awareness threshold to more subtle thought levels we may experience primal urges that were always there, but silenced by the noise of everyday thought. So accept them as primal urges (programmed by dna to procreate etc) from the brain, let them pass through without giving them any weight or concern.

After meditating for many months, I too realised that I could receive other peoples thoughts and transmit them strongly (some people were totally inert, don't know why). At first I was like wow but after a while I realised it was completely natural. We all have access to these shared thoughts but most people arn't consciously aware of them because they are very subtle.

The electric tingling you feel is prana going through the Ida and pingala channels that circle around our spine. They exist in our esoteric body which science doesn't recognise. The aim of most schools is to allow the prana to rise all the way up to the crown chakra (aka enlightenment).

Its sounds like you doing well.

A lot of modern yogas and practitioners of various "spiritual" arts, have a 'watered-down' understanding of the ancient, and very ancient in some cases, things they seem to practice.

Channeling body energy, breath, and stilling mind is nothing fancy. Humans, plants and animals do it every day forever.

The power and potential within the human spirit and mind is dormant and for good reasons imo.

Here is a thread I made not too long ago describing the detail and moments of a 'spiritual' experience.

Breath work, nature (water meditation, forest walks, star gazing, sun gazing, fire gazing) mental and astral work, emotional balance and placement, creating mental visions/experiences with third eye, physical (kinetic, blood flow, oxygen) work, and deep meditations usually in the darkness... all lead up to such an experience.

Things I practiced on a weekly baises. If people want to know more of themselves as human beings, they have to sacrifice and spend more time with themselves in solitude and discipline.

That's where the keys are. Breathing and thinking can only get one so far.

Cheers

There is no "kundalini" as a metaphysical power. What is actually happening is what would otherwise happen in a non-traumatized and self-aware culture - no small feat of evolution.

Kundalini is evidently a function of a positive feedback loop between two different parts of the brain: the frontal pole, orbitofrontal cortex, and insula, constitute the "intentional awareness of body" pole - with its use of the acetylcholine system (which inhibits) - to focus awareness.

This system is being put into interaction, at the same time, with an imagined "stimulation" of energy 'rising' from the spine - the so called "kundalini".

So what are the elements so far, from a neurological perspective? The forebrain cortical system of the frontal pole mediates "intentional focus"; the OFC allows direct regulation of feeling dynamics, whereas the insula is the internal representation of body state. What else is there? There's the energy: this imaginative part of the process utilizes the dorsolateral cortex, which in turn via the frontal pole, stimulates a feeling of dynamism rising from the spine - a part of our body represented deep in the brainstem. Thus, the forebrain (pole) stimulates activity in the brainstem (counterpole).

This is a self-stimulation exercise which more or less seeks to 'animate' consciousness with a more direct experience of the body. And since the body intermediates between the outside world and the inner world, when we increase knowledge of our bodies, we paradoxically gain what is naively imagined to be 'psychic' powers, but what is really spontaneous inferences that correctly 'land' on the semiotic target.

Kundalini is a potential energy - the very concept of energy as applied, internally, to the regulation of our own affective states.

a reply to: Night Star

I am also a giant procrastinator!!!

A lot of the poses/movements are sitting down ones and it is super calming. But this second class did have some hefty arm workouts and also standing up poses/movements. My arms and thighs and butt is a little sore today omg!!! But it was amazing again, I am super proud of my friend and I am sorry to hear about your back and hope you stop procrastinating and do some meditations because it feels good to be able to bring the mind to a halt and be still for even a couple of minutes at a time.

I love you always no matter what and I want to give you dragons because I know you love them,
Lou

a reply to: LittleByLittle

I appreciate your response, actually a lot, but I think I am unclear about your last paragraph. I think that you are saying that it’s a human trait to value personal experience over empiricle evidence. For example if a person experiences seeing God in the clouds then it was really God and not pareidolia, because the feeling/experience of meeting God is more important than what is really happening? And you are suggesting that a higher level of awareness would be to choose to be aware of what is really happening even if doing so threatens to destroy our spiritual experiences?

a reply to: geezlouise

And you are suggesting that a higher level of awareness would be to choose to be aware of what is really happening even if doing so threatens to destroy our spiritual experiences?

Destroy the materialists unawareness also.

If you quantify telepathy/synchronicity/energetic manipulation and teach humans to maximize body bliss state and awareness then all human religions will be rejected since they becomes a miss representation of what is and souls can measure themselves what is going on and will not accept false dogma.

a reply to: Baddogma

Thank you!

It’s interesting how you mentioned the hand heat because I had notably sweaty palms afterwards.

I would be interested in what your friend has learned and his/her translations on some of the original texts about this yoga. I’m not personally versed in any of it myself but my friend did say that there is a problem happening where people are mixing other techniques with this practice and calling it Kundalini Yoga to make it trendy and marketable, which is a shame. Either way, I will do my best to be careful. Thanks again!

a reply to: geezlouise

Awwww, you are so sweet! Yes, I love dragons!

Keep up with your work outs and enjoy the benefits! Hugs!

a reply to: glend

Thank you for your response!!

I am going through these pretty slowly due to being pretty busy but just saying I intend to respond to everyone. Just taking my time. I did read elementalists other thread which I enjoyed and I think it’s like elementist said with the reading thoughts thing, it’s mostly just predictability and imo being in tune with your surroundings, picking up cues and knowing the patterns and etc. But then again that doesn’t fully explain how when for example you suddenly begin to think about someone you haven’t spoken with in a long time, and then they show up in your life soon after. Also I do sense a kind of shared consciousness or something of that sort, yeah.

I do want to say I mostly believe that we do not have a spirit or soul and that I believe that we are purely our bodies, because that sensation I described is very physical, so it only makes sense that it belongs to the body, imo. To me, thoughts and feelings are physical actions happening within the body. I don’t know what spirit is outside of an “experience” which again is physically based , lol. Even something like an out of body experiences can be explained imo. Maybe I am a materliast lol, idk what that means. But I too have experienced God and then realized that my idea of God was just an idea and that my experience could be explained and I learned just how powerfully we can all deceive ourselves.

a reply to: geezlouise

I was a die hard materialist until I was 18 when certain things happened, that made me consider otherwise. But as you have said, God and/or souls are labels in which we give attributes. None of us really know what they mean. So if its real, or not, is irrelevant to our lives. Someone I really admire, Khandro La, said that only thing important in life is to love one another, and everything else will fall into place. So it matters not.

you suddenly begin to think about someone you haven’t spoken with in a long time

Its not only shared experiences but we can also talk to people close to us, like a real conversation, within our mind. These things I just accept now as easily as I accept normal conversation. Perhaps animals use it to communicate one another
today.

There is a book called "Life is Binary: The Choice to Live Love or Limitation" which cost $1.36 in kindle. The author was going through something akin to your experiences. I found it excellent.

a reply to: Elementalist

I basically agree with everything you've said.

What hits home for me the most right now is the being able to spend time alone and really enjoy myself without needing anything or anyone else to do it. I think it takes a lot of self discipline to achieve this kind of private detachment, to free yourself from the world a little and be able to be truly alone with yourself and enjoy yourself. In a way I think people instinctively recoil from this detachment because they naturally want to belong, and so they end up welcoming attachment. So they need family and friends and all kinds of things in order to feel any sense of enjoyment or satisfaction or definition of self. And it's true that I also want to belong. And it's true that I need people just like anybody else. But I guess... I want to belong to a more loving and free world, and not the sometimes sh-tty world that I actually live in which I radically accept but lets not confuse acceptance with tolerance either mmkay, lol.

Cheers!

a reply to: Astrocyte

Psychic powers being spontaneous inferences that correctly 'land' on the semiotic target feels pretty true to me atm.

But I'm not very clear on the neurological perspective on things, but the spine being basically an extension of the brain stem or the brain stem itself sounds beautiful. I don't believe this sensation is an imagined feeling, or if it is imagined, it is the same way how you can imagine moving your arm... and then you move it. It becomes a physical reality, a firing off of all kinds of connections.

Lately I'm feeling that inner longing to really know, like really truly even if it kills me. But there's nothing I can to do make myself know either. It's not like there are steps or even a process, it's not like a math problem "do steps one two and three and then you will know the answer." You can read a thousand books and still not know. You can go to a thousand places and still never find it. At least that's how it feels for me. And when I begin to know something new, it always feels more like the universe is opening up before me and letting me discover these new things. Idk if this has anything to do with anything but, yeah.

originally posted by: Astrocyte
There is no "kundalini" as a metaphysical power. What is actually happening is what would otherwise happen in a non-traumatized and self-aware culture - no small feat of evolution.

Kundalini is evidently a function of a positive feedback loop between two different parts of the brain: the frontal pole, orbitofrontal cortex, and insula, constitute the "intentional awareness of body" pole - with its use of the acetylcholine system (which inhibits) - to focus awareness.

This system is being put into interaction, at the same time, with an imagined "stimulation" of energy 'rising' from the spine - the so called "kundalini".

So what are the elements so far, from a neurological perspective? The forebrain cortical system of the frontal pole mediates "intentional focus"; the OFC allows direct regulation of feeling dynamics, whereas the insula is the internal representation of body state. What else is there? There's the energy: this imaginative part of the process utilizes the dorsolateral cortex, which in turn via the frontal pole, stimulates a feeling of dynamism rising from the spine - a part of our body represented deep in the brainstem. Thus, the forebrain (pole) stimulates activity in the brainstem (counterpole).

This is a self-stimulation exercise which more or less seeks to 'animate' consciousness with a more direct experience of the body. And since the body intermediates between the outside world and the inner world, when we increase knowledge of our bodies, we paradoxically gain what is naively imagined to be 'psychic' powers, but what is really spontaneous inferences that correctly 'land' on the semiotic target.

Kundalini is a potential energy - the very concept of energy as applied, internally, to the regulation of our own affective states.

Pseudo-scientific psychobabble such as that does not explain away the teachings of great Indian philosophers and first-hand accounts of yogis over thousands of years. It may provide the illusion of a reductionist, quasi-materialist (therefore "scientific") explanation of Kundalini, prana and other superphysical levels of our consciousness, but it should dupe no one who wants real understanding of these subtle phenomena instead of being content with Psychology 101 textbooks written by college professors who arrogantly think they can explain everything.

originally posted by: Night Star
a reply to: geezlouise

Many years ago, I tried hatha yoga and it was wonderful. Never tried the kundalini yoga though. Now that I am much older, way out of shape and disabled with back problems and other things, I would imagine any kind of yoga would be difficult. I can see me now...Help, I'm on the floor and can't get up! LOL

I have been meaning to try gentle movements and get back into the deep breathing, but I am the Queen of procrastination.

Yoga means literally "YOKED" there are three postures to be yoked in; that of body, that of speech and that of mind... just like the eyelid yoked to the eye blinks mundane consciousness never touches it until put under a yoke supra-mundane consciousness yokes it all the other times. Western psychology decided to call such as that sub-conscious... though it is the same thing.

Why the change? Mundane means ordinary and unimportant to what needs to be done or accomplished... so of course like the chameleon to hide itself cloaked the word to make those hungry bite or latch onto something new.

Having listed your "Yokes" then you should obviously be able to see into what those are not only by self but other... the voluntary and the involuntary ones... be sure to use insight for the links between the two to find the excuses or lies you tell yourself; after awhile like the blink they become an automatic reflex and do not at all reflect one's true reality.

Over time that suchness that one presents as untruth flips into truth and one starts living inverted or blind to the actual truth and have no idea how they even got in the upside down position to begin with; and of course the false self or Mara is you that one fails to see in the mirror that shows you the truth of self when it is not self.

Typically that is others that have known you or some subject well enough to put oneself in check to see the egg or yoke is literally all over ones face... having lied to oneself as those excuses grow into the noble truths of the causation of suffering, stress, old age and death. Being at the wheel of one's own life? Dangerous to keep yoking it to illusion and delusion we learn share and pass on as that falsehood eventually does become truth; in a self fulfilling prophecy.

The wheel is always turning with twelve links of causation; you can stop or break any of them at any time... this typically occurs already just like the blinking.

How much dust in the eye from another mouth filling sand in your ear; how much have you done the same? That is the cycle of cause and effect; having chained oneself to previous cause? One has to wait for previous effect... this is what all the sitting around in meditation is good for; just sitting is the practice... anything else occurring and sitting has stopped.

Eventually; one comes to the realization that the sitting never even began... and there you are. That out of body self shows up many times having been out of it so many times previously.

a reply to: geezlouise

Good to see you're taking a slow approach. One word of warning - when close to others they can tap into your energy and drain you. Be on the lookout.

Not all practitioners have benign motives.