What Social Media Doesn’t Tell You About Kundalini Awakening
A reflection on reverence, responsibility, and the intelligence of the human system
Over the last few years I’ve watched the word kundalini become increasingly popular on social media.
It’s often described as blissful and ecstatic, a kind of divine feminine shakti energy that makes everything feel juicy and delicious. A spiritual milestone people are trying to activate through breathwork, kriyas, or whatever other practices promise a quick kundalini awakening.
And to be honest, I find it alarming.
Not because kundalini itself is something to fear, but because of how casually this ancient system is sometimes approached. I often see people teaching kundalini practices after completing a short yoga teacher training, guiding others into energetic work that has the potential to profoundly impact the nervous system and psyche.
My concern comes from lived experience.
Because my relationship to kundalini did not begin in a yoga studio.
My Awakening Did Not Come From Practice
My first experience with awakening began spontaneously in 2018, years before I ever stepped into a Kundalini Yoga training, or even took a class.
I wasn’t trying to activate anything. At the time I barely understood what kundalini even was.
What I was doing was sitting in a therapist’s office week after week unpacking a lifetime of trauma I had never fully processed. I was in deep psychological excavation, confronting memories, patterns, and wounds I had carried for years.
A Reflection on Reverence, Responsibility, and Sacred Energy
Looking back, I believe that process of opening and purification is what activated the kundalini in the first place.
The first time it happened it felt profound, like I had reached a real breakthrough in my healing. I carried on with my life with a sense of greater clarity and understanding.
But the second time, around 2020–2021, the experience unfolded very differently.
During the pandemic, like most people there wasn’t much to do, so I got really into my spiritual practice and after several months of intense meditation in isolation while also using cannabis, I unintentionally forced a profound, but this time disorienting, and overwhelming experience. My nervous system flooded with energy I didn’t know how to regulate, and the only language available to explain what was happening to me was mental illness.
For years I have lived at the intersection of those two worlds, spirituality and psychology, trying to make sense of experiences that didn’t fit neatly into either framework.
Western medicine had one explanation.
Eastern traditions offered another.
And somewhere between those two languages was the truth I had to discover through my own lived experience.
Searching for Language That Didn’t Pathologize Me
By the end of 2024, after years of navigating these experiences, I decided to enroll in a 200-hour Kundalini Yoga teacher training.
Not necessarily for the certification.
But because I was searching for answers.
I entered the program with an open mind and genuine respect for the lineage. I hoped the tradition might offer language for what I had been experiencing over the years, language that didn’t immediately pathologize my experiences, but instead contextualized them within a spiritual and energetic framework.
I also hoped to learn tools that could help me regulate my nervous system from a more holistic perspective.
And yes, I was open to the possibility of teaching someday if I felt truly inspired to share the practice.
But what the training ultimately taught me was something else entirely.
The Depth of the Tradition
What I discovered over the course of that year was how much there is to absorb in this tradition before anyone could responsibly, ethically, and with integrity guide others through it.
Kundalini is not simply a collection of kriyas or breathing techniques.
It is an entire system that interacts with the nervous system, the psyche, and the deepest samskaras we carry, the stored impressions of trauma, conditioning, and karmic memory embedded within the subconscious.
When kundalini rises, those samskaras can surface.
Sometimes gently.
Sometimes intensely.
Sometimes in ways that radically reorganize a person’s inner world.
This is something that cannot be standardized, predicted, or fully controlled.
And it deserves to be approached with immense humility.
When the Practices Became Too Activating
During the training, something happened that changed my relationship to the practice forever.
Some of the kriyas we were practicing proved too activating for my system and led to another manic episode.
This was deeply surprising for me because my previous episodes had been triggered by cannabis.
Experiencing this in the context of a spiritual practice forced me to look at the complexity of the human system more honestly.
It made something very clear to me.
Kundalini is powerful.
And when it moves through a system carrying trauma or unresolved material, it can surface things the person may not yet have the capacity to integrate.
This doesn’t mean the practice is inherently harmful.
But it does mean that discernment, preparation, and nervous system awareness are essential.
What I Am Grateful For
Despite my questions and challenges within the training, I remain deeply grateful for what I received.
I was introduced to philosophical teachings that expanded my understanding of consciousness and the subtle body.
I learned mantra and sound current practices that I continue to return to today.
I experienced breathwork techniques that genuinely support nervous system regulation.
And perhaps most importantly, I was given language that helped me contextualize many of the psychological and spiritual experiences I had been navigating for years.
These teachings have become part of my personal practice and continue to support my integration.
Why I Chose Not to Teach
By the end of the program, the biggest thing I walked away with wasn’t a desire to teach.
It was a deeper reverence for the practice itself.
And a clear understanding that a few hundred hours of training barely scratches the surface of what this ancient system holds.
For now, I have chosen to remain a student.
A student of my own nervous system.
A student of integration.
A student of humility.
Because in my experience, kundalini is not something we force open. It awakens when the system is ready.
And some forces are not meant to be rushed. They are meant to be revered.
Always with love,
Saddaf