Living With Active Kundalini for 19 Years

Draft for Hermes to review before publishing.

Where it started

People sometimes imagine that a Kuṇḍalinī awakening is a single bright moment, after which life is calm and holy. Mine was not calm. It was more like a door being opened in a house I had been living in my whole life without knowing there were other rooms.

I didn’t come to this with a peaceful past. I grew up in a very hard environment, with childhood trauma and violence. For a long time just surviving took everything I had. I mention this not for sympathy, but because it matters for what came next. When she woke in me, she went straight to those old places. She did not ask permission.

I want to say clearly, too, that this story does not end in damage. Those traumas were met. They were healed, slowly, and I learned from every one of them. The hardest parts of my childhood taught me what love really is, and they taught me that what looks insurmountable can be overcome. I would not wish that childhood on anyone. But I would not trade what it taught me.

The phases

She has now been active in me for nineteen years. Over those years I have learned that Kuṇḍalinī moves in phases. There are periods of huge expansion, when everything feels open and full of light. And there are periods that feel like being taken apart, when old pain comes up to be met and the personality I had built to protect myself starts to loosen.

Both are part of it. In the beginning I wanted only the first kind. Now I trust the second kind just as much. The hard phases are where most of the healing happens.

She doesn’t give you what you want. She gives you what you need to become who you are.Hermes Damgaard

What I did not understand at first is that the phases are not a ladder. You do not finish the hard part and graduate into the light. They come round again, often at a deeper level, and each time you meet them with a little more trust. Even after many years, heavy weeks can come. The difference is that I no longer think they mean something has gone wrong.

Teachers, books and my own life

I have had many teachers along the way, and I have read and studied a great deal: the old texts, the modern teachers, the psychologists who have tried to understand this. I have learned from many techniques and from many traditions. Much of what I use in sessions I learned from others, and I am grateful to every one of them.

But nothing I offer is just theory. Every technique has had to prove itself in my own body and in my own healing first. If it didn’t help me meet my own wounds, I don’t use it on anyone else’s.

My own life has been a teacher too, alongside all the others. Everything I have been through, including the darkest parts, taught me what love really is and how to give myself a chance at life when nothing around me offered one. That is the healer I am today. Not someone who escaped the darkness, but someone who learned to walk through it.

The ordinary days

Most of life with active Kuṇḍalinī is not visions. It is Tuesday. It is getting up, eating, working, answering messages, going to bed. I have come to believe that how you live those ordinary days matters more than any single practice.

Sleep is the foundation. When she is very active, sleep can become light and broken, and it is tempting to fill the night with practice or reading. I have learned to protect sleep instead. A regular bedtime, a dark room, no screens late, and if I wake with her moving strongly, I let her move while I lie still and breathe out slowly. I do not get up and chase the experience. When sleep goes for several nights in a row, that is a signal to slow everything down and, if it continues, to see a doctor.

Food matters more than I expected. In strong phases I need warm, simple, regular meals, more than I would naturally want. Grains, soups, cooked vegetables, enough fat. The old haṭha texts speak of moderate, pleasant, nourishing food and of leaving part of the stomach empty, and I think they are right about the moderation. Too little food and the energy floats up and away from the body. Too much heavy food and everything feels dull. Stimulants, alcohol and anything that alters the mind strongly I keep well away from.

Work can be a gift. People sometimes think that an awakening means leaving ordinary life behind. In my experience, ordinary work is one of the best containers there is. It gives the day a shape. It asks you to show up, to be kind, to finish things. On days when she is very strong I may need to do less, and I have learned to plan for that. But I have never found that hiding from life helped her move better.

The body has its own say. When she is active, the body may want to move, stretch, shake, sigh or sit very still. I have learned to listen rather than to override. Gentle movement, slow yoga, walking and simple stretching help a great deal. Forcing the body into long, rigid practice when it is asking for softness does not. And when a sensation is new, strong or frightening, I do not assume it is spiritual. I get it checked. Respecting her includes respecting the body she lives in.

Love, people and the earth

Relationships change when Kuṇḍalinī is active, because you change. You become more sensitive. Things you used to tolerate become hard to bear, and things you used to fear become possible. Old patterns between you and the people close to you rise to the surface, just as old pain rises inside you. I have found that honesty is the only thing that really helps. Tell the people you love what is happening, in simple words, without making it mysterious. Let them be ordinary with you. Do not expect them to understand everything, and do not make them your only support.

I have also learned that sensitivity is not the same as fragility. You can feel a great deal and still be steady. Over time she seems to widen the heart so that it can hold more, not less.

Love itself becomes the practice in the end. My life taught me that love is not soft in the sense of weak. It is the strongest thing I know. It is what gets a person through what seemed impossible. When I sit with someone in a session, that is what I am leaning on: not a technique, but the love that once carried me and that I now try to offer on.

Nature is where I go when I do not know what else to do. Trees, water, wind, the ground under my feet. I do not have a method for it. I simply go, and sit or walk, and let the larger rhythm of the living world quiet the smaller rhythm of my nervous system. Nature does not care about my spiritual progress, and that is a great relief.

Try it: Build a small, steady daily practice that includes time to ground and rest. Practice Builder →

When to rest, and when to ask for help

One of the most important things I have learned is when to stop. There are times when the right practice is no practice at all. When the energy is very strong, when I am tired, when emotions are running high, I put aside anything intense: strong breathing, long retentions, the locks. I keep to gentle breath with a long out-breath, short sitting, walking, being with people I love. Rest is not laziness on this path. It is how the body catches up with what has already happened.

I also want to say plainly that asking for medical or psychological help is not a failure. If someone is not sleeping for days, feels unsafe, is confused about what is real, has thoughts of harming themselves, or has physical symptoms that worry them, I tell them to see a doctor or a mental-health professional, as well as working with a teacher. Spiritual processes and ordinary health problems can arrive together, and it is wise to check. I would give myself the same advice.

Try it: Try a few gentle rounds of alternate-nostril breathing on a day that needs calming. Nāḍī Śodhana →

The teacher, and humility

I believe deeply in the role of a teacher, and I also believe a good teacher is not a master over you. A teacher is someone who has walked a stretch of this road and can see you clearly when you cannot see yourself. They can tell you when to slow down. They can recognise the difference between a hard phase and a real problem. They can hold steady when you are not steady. Most of all, they can remind you that you are not the first person to go through this.

A good teacher also points beyond themselves. The real guide is her. Whatever I offer in my one-to-one work and in the Kundalini Apprenticeship at the Golden Sight Institute, I try to keep that in view. I am not the source. I am someone who has been shown a little of the way and is trying to pass it on with care.

Humility, for me, is not thinking badly of myself. It is remembering how much I do not know. After nineteen years she still surprises me. Every person I work with teaches me something. The moment I think I have understood her, she shows me I have not. I have come to love that.

Humility also protects. The ego is very good at turning experiences into achievements. A vision becomes a badge. A strong energy becomes proof that one is special. It can happen to anyone who walks this path, and so I have learned to be suspicious of any thought that makes me feel above other people. Kuṇḍalinī is not a reward for the worthy. She is the life in everyone. The more she moves, the more ordinary and the more grateful I want to become.

What I would tell someone at the beginning

Go slowly. She is not in a hurry, even when it feels like it. There is no prize for rising fast.

Ground every day. Walk, eat properly, sleep, touch the earth. A strong current needs a strong body.

Welcome the hard phases. When old pain comes up, it is coming up to leave. Meet it with as much kindness as you can find, and get support.

Live an ordinary life. Work, cook, see friends, laugh. The ordinary is not in the way of the sacred. It is where the sacred wants to live.

Learn widely. Read the old texts and the modern ones. Learn from more than one teacher and more than one technique. Then test everything in your own life, gently and honestly, and keep what truly helps.

Look after your health. See a doctor when something worries you. A clear medical check is not a lack of faith. It is part of caring for the body she has chosen to live in.

Don’t do it alone. Find someone who has walked this road and can see you clearly. That is a big part of why I do this work.

Surrender is the practice. Not giving up, but giving way. After nineteen years I am still learning it, and I expect to be learning it for the rest of my life.