The following is a part of a series of blogs attempting to break down the different factors of discomfort, intensity or hurt during a Kundalini awakening (Scroll down to read blog #1 in the series).

•  Fight, Flight or Freeze mode:

A fight or flight response is a physiological reaction that occurs in response to a perceived threat to survival. This activates the sympathetic nervous system, which in return releases hormones into your body to be able to fight off the threat or run fast for your survival. During Kundalini, this response can often be activated, and this can cause you a great deal of discomfort. Your body may perceive Kundalini as a threat or as foreign, rather than as a part of yourself. This can cause a fight or flight response to occur whenever Kundalini is an activated state. The resurfacing of old pain and wounds can trigger fight or flight response as well. Your body (and mind) perceives the pain as a threat, and then attempts to fight or run away from it. This can play out a cycle in which parts of you are fighting against other parts. All this, is highly draining on your body and emotions. Since you cannot truly fight the perceived threat (that is a part of you), nor can you run away from it fully, you can experience many states of freeze instead. This can feel like numbness and a general sense of disconnect from yourself similar to dissociation. Fear combined with Kundalini energy can be much like throwing a match into a gasoline tank. It makes the whole process feel explosive, since Kundalini is such an amplifying force. 

The first step is to learn to recognize when your body goes into fight-flight or freeze response.  Learning that takes time, but can make a big difference in your experience. Once you become aware of the response, and then use available techniques and methods to switch back into the parasympathetic nervous system (the relaxed no-threat mode in your brain). This requires switching from the left to the right side of your brain. Try techniques such as breathing, tapping, singing, walking, drawing, and physical activity. Try anything that can bring you back into the present moment such as describing items in the room, being mindful of your physical sensations or running warm water on your hands. If you can, engage in any physical activity. This can help release the access amounts of hormones and adrenaline from your system. Experiment to see which methods work best for you.

Once the fight or flight response is lessened and you can think more clearly, you can then start a dialogue with your body and mind as to why this perceived threat wasn’t in fact dangerous. List reasons why Kundalini is trying to help you and why the pain you just experienced isn’t threatening to your well being. For instance; “Kundalini is bringing my old pain to the surface so that I can see it and heal it”; “Kundalini is helping me reconnect with my inner child that is in a lot of pain, it is my job to meet her/him there, not to fight with her/him and abandon her/him.” Practice changing how you view pain during this process, pain may be a necessary means to healing and not a current threat to your survival or an indicator that there is something wrong with you. It very well may mean that there is something right with you since you are on a sacred healing path. 

• Disillusionment:

Most of us imagine a spiritual awakening to be graceful, loving and blissful. We may believe that all our pain will fall away in a day and we will then remember whom we truly are. While one can experience these states during Kundalini, it is also a romanticized and incomplete depiction of an awakening. In reality, when love comes flooding in anything which isn’t love surfaces. What we experienced growing up as “love” is all we know and the feeling of letting go of that is utterly unsettling for us. If the love in childhood wasn’t unconditional, came with strings attached or demanded sacrifices of self, it is natural for us to long for it. While we crave it, we go into fear or terror when actually faced with it. Thus, we carry resistance to love in our subconscious and are unaware of it. We would protect ourselves against “love” since we fear its cost. In this awakening we go through a process of sorting out through our beliefs to realize what isn’t love so we can accept love as safe and let it in. We can go through many unconscious layers before we reach a point in which we are fully receptive to the universal love and embody the knowing that we are worthy of receiving it in every cell of our being. Hence, the process of understanding unconditional love detours through the process of realizing what isn’t love, which feels like a long ride through disillusionment land. Through it, we go through what can be a long mourning process, which will end. The more you allow yourself to question what you hold dearly, the more you will be able to discern between love and pain, between safe love and the conditional substitute we see so much of in society.

•  Expansion:

When Kundalini awakens your consciousness will undergo a great expansion in your physical vessel. Although, ultimately growth and expansion is the purpose of incarnating into this “contrast reality”, it can feel painful and demanding on your body and mind. Despite it not being “physical” growth, your body still feels as if it is undergoing major renovation and must continually adjust to a new form. Your mind also has to recalibrate itself around the expanded concepts of self and at times it can feel shell-shocked. Most every time you release or purge old concepts or wounds during Kundalini, an expansion follows. Remember that these are just growing pains, as your body and mind are readjusting to the new “size” of your expanded consciousness.

• Accelerated manifestation:

When Kundalini awakens the gap between your thoughts, emotions, and physical manifestation shrinks so what you think manifests more rapidly. This may sound good if you want to manifest wealth and wellness, however Kundalini brings our subconscious to the forefront and that’s what manifests first. In the initial stages, it can feel as if you have very little control over what is manifesting into your reality, which can be frightening. You may not recognize that what is manifesting are your subconscious thoughts and feel like life has turned against you. When you feel fear during Kundalini it manifests in the body as terror, panic or anxiety instantaneously. It amplifies the feeling so you can look at it, heal it, and recognize the thoughts that are causing it. This can seem like a vicious cycle, since the amplification will give birth to additional fear.

You can easily at this point feel victimized by the cycle since you are not manifesting any of this consciously. It is your subconscious mind that has “taken over” your life, so there is no need for self-blame. The best thing to do if you feel trapped in this cycle is to engage in self-inquiry and examine which beliefs are coming to the surface one by one. Don’t be afraid of the accelerated manifestations. Generally fear only manifests more fear and not external events. Know that although everything is manifesting at the speed of light for you, you are very protected during this sacred journey. If you are experiencing strong fear and are afraid it will manifest in your reality ask the angels or guides you work with to put it in a vault and protect you from the physical manifestation of your fear.

Don’t try to force yourself to change the vibration you are in, just allow the pain and fear lovingly, it will shift on it’s own. There may be a while during this process that you can’t engage in conscious manifestation. You are working through your shadow and need to spend time with it. Let your shadow work be your priority, work on getting to know your thoughts and practice gratitude, this will help raise your vibration without forcing anything. Write or think of a few things you are grateful for each day, even if it’s just for a rough day to be ending and for you to still be alive.

• Learning to live in the unknown:

Our mind and ego have a comfort zone that feels safest in finding definition and palpability. A Kundalini awakening by nature is very abstract. Our mind can’t find a place to drop anchor in this process. It won’t fit into any box and won’t allow us to flatten it into an idea. This is so that we learn to flex our mind muscle and learn to live outside our contained reality and limited perception. Getting used to not anchoring into ideas and accepting the unknown can cause us a great deal of discomfort. The process is teaching us to get comfortable with the unknown, the mystical, and the ineffable aspect of existence. You can’t fit the ocean in a teacup. We were taught that boxes and names are safe; our identity is safe when it’s defined even if the definition is limiting us. We were even taught to put God in whatever box was passed down to us. Yet in truth the universe is so much more than we can perceive and define and the learning curve of existing in the undefined can take time and a lot of trust work. Allowing chaos rather than order, imperfection rather than perfection, trust rather than control, is where Kundalini is taking us. It is natural for us to be afraid of this change, and try to hold onto ideas, yet even the idea of enlightenment is futile with Kundalini in your system. The more you are able to let go and trust the easier this process will be but give yourself time to get there. Practice surrender work. Learn more about how to surrender here.