This excerpt is from Healing Kundalini Symptoms by Tara Springett. If you find it helpful please purchase the book.
As I have explained several times before, there are no true physical symptoms in the kundalini process, only appearances that feel physical even though they actually take place only in the energy body. In other words, all physical symptoms are emotions that are half-suppressed, which means that we feel their pain but not yet their psychological content. I repeat, kundalini is not a disease and can never cause physical disease symptoms.
As a group, my clients enjoy very good health. It is rare for my clients to tell me about any illnesses and I almost never hear of serious afflictions like cancer or heart disease even though I work with many older clients. I attribute this to the fact that in the kundalini process, the desire to make our lives healthier in all respects bears fruit and, therefore, even my older clients are usually in good physical shape due to their healthy diet, a lot of exercise in nature and a generally healthy lifestyle.
It must be stressed, however, that it is quite normal for all human beings to become sick now and then even if they are in the kundalini process. Kundalini does not automatically protect us from all illnesses unless, of course, you have achieved the supernatural ability of spiritual healing. In this case, you can heal yourself and others simply with mental power.
When working with physical symptoms in the kundalini process, the aim is to make the half-suppressed emotions (that are stuck in the pain) conscious and then dissolve them with higher-consciousness healing in the usual way. It is therefore advisable to only start with this work, once we have already successfully alleviated all the emotions that we had in the first place. Most people will find that their physical symptoms already improve through the work on their emotions. On the other hand, if we start too early to work with our physical symptoms, then there is a danger to flood and overtax ourselves through too much emerging fear, sadness and anger.
Pain in the body
The distinction between kundalini symptoms and symptoms of real diseases is not always straightforward as the former can mimic real clinical ailments. For example, I myself once had all the symptoms of gallbladder disease but an ultrasound showed that my gallbladder was in excellent condition. It is, therefore, always advisable to go to a doctor first and take all the necessary tests to exclude real illnesses. As soon as you get the green light from your health professional, you can start with the following exercise:
Exercise: Dealing with physical pain
Feel your pain and rate it on a scale from 1 to 10.
Ask yourself: If this pain was an emotion, would it most resemble fear, anger or sadness? Try these three emotions on like a glove and see if any of them fit. Name the emotion that fits best.
Now imagine your pain as that emotion and imagine a mouth in the liddle of the pain/emotion and let the emotion say something. If you feel angry, start with, “I’m angry/frustrated/annoyed .” and finish the sentence intuitively with the words that come to your mind. Try to say as much as possible without censoring your words. You may say completely irrational and childish things but consider it a positive thing that these words are now coming to light and are no longer suppressed within the physical pain. If you feel fear or sadness, start with, “I’m scared …” or “I’m sad.
Ask yourself to whom would you want to say these things (maybe to an ex-spouse or a parent, for example). Allow your intuition to simply let someone appear without judging immediately. If nobody comes into your mind, that is okay, too.
Now use higher-consciousness healing as described in the fifth chapter to heal your particular emotion and the people who are involved in it.
Check on your scale to see whether your pain has already decreased a bit.
Smile into the place of your pain with deep love and imagine a flower bud opening within it, radiating divine light. Imagine your higher consciousness in front of you so that you can trustfully open towards him or her.
If the pain is very persistent, touch it with your hand and perform a circular or rubbing massage on it. Press as lightly or as strongly as feels good. After a few seconds of massage, gently guide the hand away from your body with the radiating light in the direction of your higher consciousness. Repeat the massage as often as necessary.
If the pain moves to another part of your body, follow it, smile into the new place as well and open the flower bud there as before. A wandering pain is a good sign because it shows that the problem is no longer “stuck” but has started to loosen.
When working with kundalini pain, we often have to be a little bit more patient compared to working only with emotions. The reason is that physical pain indicates that our inner conflict is more deeply buried in our subconscious mind than is the case with pure feelings. So, we should be prepared to work longer with these symptoms daily for days, weeks and sometimes even months and try to be patient and positively appreciate even small improvements.
Here is a case study to demonstrate how to work with physical symptoms: Michael is a 33-year-old accountant and suffered from strong pains in his shoulders that made it impossible for him to exercise. He also suffered from erection problems. When Michael performed the exercise described above, he realised that the pain felt like anger and when he tried to give words to this feeling, only swear words came out. Michael had an extremely hot-tempered father and he never wanted to be like him. There-fore, he had repressed all his anger but had, unconsciously, gone way too far in this process. After doing the above exercise for a few weeks, Michael was able to jog two kilometres, which was a huge breakthrough for him. His impotence, which he had suffered from all his life, also went away within a few weeks.
When pain and negative emotions become worse while practising very rare cases, the pain or associated painful emotions can increase when we focus on it in the way described in the above exercise., mentioned the problem of energy overload already in the fourth chapter.
This most often happens with pain in and around the chest and sometie: so in the head. This can be a sign that we inadvertently tense up while we are practising. It can also be a sign that we generally overfocus on the higher chakras and have neglected the lower ones and in that way have become imbalanced. If focusing on a painful area in our body makes us consistently worse, we should avert all our attention from this area of our body and completely ignore it for a few days or even weeks until the tension dissolve on its own accord.
It is helpful in these cases to focus more on the navel chakra so that the superfluous energy of the cramped and overloaded chakra can flow down to the navel. In this process, we should not even think or talk about the painful body part. If the painful area is in our heart, we can imagine all our feelings of love in our eyes or the palms of our hands (as in blessing or caressing) and simultaneously focus on the navel more often.
Involuntary body movements – kriyas
Kriyas are involuntary body movements that often occur at the beginning ofthe kundalini process. They can be anything from trembling or twitching to elegant hand gestures or even full-body yoga postures. We can compare krivas with normal involuntary movements such as yawning, a shudder when we are disgusted or eyes that open wide in fear. Kriyas are harmless and are simply a sign that your inner ice-block is beginning to melt. When you surrender to these movements, they often feel liberating and relaxing.
There are, however, two ways of getting problems from kriyas if you do not deal with them correctly. The first problem arises from trying to abuse these involuntary movements as a means of nurturing “spiritual pride”.
For example, I sometimes receive emails from people who want to show me their kriyas because they think they are ultra-interesting. (They really are not.) I have also read reports that some people “show off” their kriyas at spiritual events.
Buddhist and Hindu literature repeatedly warns us against the danger of becoming attached to appearances on our spiritual path and abusing them to build up one’s ego. Of course, this also applies to kriyas. For this reason, one should try not to display kriyas in public and never boast about them. They are not a great “spiritual achievement” and abusing them for egoistical purposes is more a sign that someone is not spiritually advanced at all.
The second danger is to surrender too much to your kriyas for a long period until they are completely out of control and almost impossible to stop. This development is very problematic because I have had clients who could not leave their home anymore because of their involuntary body movements and other clients who were thrown out of meditation groups or had beaten themselves black and blue.
It is therefore of great importance that we always keep control of our bodies and consciously decide when and where we allow these movements to take place. The ideal is to experience these physical movements only internally and to stay outwardly still and perfectly controlled. If the kriyas consist in movements of the arms, for example, one should try to visualise these movements internally but let the real arms lie quietly in one’s lap.
If you cannot control your kriyas very well, you should say to yourself, “I am the boss and I control my body.” Then you should try to control your kriyas as much as possible with muscle tension. For example, if your head is thrown back, place your chin on your chest and control your head in this way. If your arms twitch too much, you can even sit on your hands for a while. It takes only a few days or a few weeks for most people to regain control of their out-of-control kriyas. Once you have regained control, you can afford to let them run wild every once in a while but only when you are alone and in a safe place where you cannot hurt yourself.
Chronic fatigue and exhaustion
Many people in the Kundalini process suffer from phases of fatigue and exhaustion. As always with physical problems, we should make sure that medically everything is in order. Once we know that we are physically healthy, we can work with fatigue with the same exercise that we use to dissolve physical pain. We begin by asking ourselves where in our body we feel the fatigue and then follow all the other steps of the method.
Most people who suffer from fatigue believe that they have somehow lost their energy and that they need new energy. But this idea is not correct. The tiredness comes from the suppression of their feelings especially anger – and it is this constant effort that robs them of their energy. It is also this “not-wanting-to-know” what they feel that literally pulls a veil of fatigue through their brain, So, the solution is to get in touch with their real feelings as described in the exercise about dissolving physical pain and then dissolve these emotions with higher-consciousness healing. It is also important to constructively address all conflicts with other people who are involved in these emotions.
I had quite a few clients who could rid themselves of extreme fatigue within a few days or a few weeks through practising higher-consciousness healing. Here is an example: Bruno was so tired that he almost could not talk to me when he came to his first session. He could not work, of course, and spent most hours of the day in a kind of half-sleep. When we discussed his situation, Bruno told me that his girlfriend gave male clients “tantric massages” which sometimes also included masturbating them. We discussed how Bruno felt about this and whether he considered this work to be prostitution. Bruno claimed that he completely approved of his girlfriend’s work and that it certainly was not prostitution. However, his attitude changed in the days after our session and he suddenly realised that his girlfriend’s work hurt him deeply. Of course, this development triggered a relationship crisis but Bruno’s fatigue was blown away after only three weeks.
Supportive measures for chronic fatigue
Sleep eight hours every night but not more. Set an alarm, if necessary. Too much sleep makes you even more tired during the day.
Stay in an upright position throughout the day and never lie down. Lying down produces alpha and theta waves in the brain, making you tired.
If you are tired during the day, sit down comfortably but always keep your spine and head upright.
Keep your eyes open all day – even while meditating. Closing your eyes also produces alpha and theta waves in the brain and makes you tired.
Be ready to address all conflicts that you have with other people.
When the fatigue starts to dissipate and you feel more irritation and anger, do the anti-anger exercise and try to deal with the conflicts in your life more constructively.
Head symptoms
Kundalini symptoms in the head often do not respond as readily to the procedure that I have outlined above as other physical symptoms do. The reason is that the lower part of our head (chin, neck, jaw, mouth, cheeks, ears, nose and eyes) acts as a representation of our entire body. For example, tensions in the jaw may represent anger in our abdomen, tensions between nose and mouth may point to fear in our solar plexus and pressure on the eyes may be a sign of unexpressed sadness in the heart.
We can imagine a small humanoid figure on our face with the abdomen in our chin, the stomach around our nose, the chest and shoulders at the height of our eyes, the throat at the place between our eyebrows and the head on our forehead. For this reason, only symptoms above the eyebrows should be treated as true head chakra problems. With all symptoms from the eyebrow down, we need to work on the part (or chakra) of our body that they represent in addition to the work on the head.
People who experience frequent symptoms in their neck and face are often out of touch with the places in their body where these emotions actually originate. For example, frequent headaches resulting from neck tensions are often caused by anger in the abdomen that people are unaware of.
We can find out about our unconscious emotions in our body by relaxing the body part that corresponds to our head symptom and visualise an opening flower bud within it as explained before. During this work, we need to pay close attention to the slightest sense of discomfort or aversion.
Once we have found any signs of negative emotions, we can dissolve them as described in the fifth chapter. Therefore, with symptoms in the bottom part of our head, we often need to work both on the symptom in the head area itself, as well as on the corresponding part in our lower body.
Head pressure
A notorious symptom in the kundalini process is head pressure, which is a true head symptom corresponding to the head chakra with its topic of how we think and view the world. This pressure can occur at various points in the head and is either from the inside out or, vice versa, from the outside to the inside. Unfortunately, this problem is not easy to treat as it results from excessive positive thinking.
One might assume that positive thinking is always positive but, unfortunately, this is not the case at all. The following examples illustrate why excessive positive thinking can have very negative consequences: One of my clients with a strong head pressure told me about her wonderful marriage and how easy it was for her to deal with all her husband’s quirks. She was completely shocked when her husband suddenly filed for divorce. Another client with bad head pressure had lost millions of euros through ill-conceived business ventures. Nevertheless, he was still convinced that he had many more “wonderful” business ideas, which angered his wife and endangered their marriage. Yet another client with head pressure had a boyfriend who pressured her to take part in a polygamous relationship with him. She agreed because his arguments seemed to be “positive” but emotionally she could not cope with this arrangement at all. The most common “positive thinking of people with head pressure is having too high an opinion of themselves along with a tendency for complacency and narcissism.
Of course, many narcissistic people in the world are not in the kundalini process and do not suffer from head pressure. But when the kundalini has awakened, the unfounded idealisation of oneself will have negative consequences – most of all, head pressure. To understand this dynamic, we need to remember that the kundalini process urges us to be more honest, authentic and spiritual. Our ego, on the other hand, wants to continue to spin its fantasies and stories so that we ourselves, our ideas and our families always look good. This dash of the drive for authenticity on the far hand and the desire to stay in our “positive fantasy world on the other hand takes place in our head-chakra. The truth and the fantasies literals press against each other and create the unpleasant head pressure.
The work with head pressure is usually very slow and tedious because no one likes to exchange the idealised opinions they have of themselves with more self-critical and realistic attitudes. Therefore, head pressure usually disappears much more slowly compared to dissolving fears or other physical pains that we gladly let go off. To get rid of head pressure, we have to be prepared to be much more self-critical than before. In that context, it is interesting that among my clients, men tended to idealise themselves and women often saw their partners in a more positive light than would be justified.
Occasionally, I had clients who were ready for this (self-critical) work and were able to reduce their head pressure significantly or even completely dissolve it. In most cases, however, it took a long time – even vears – and required many “admonishments”. Unfortunately, many of my clients with head pressure broke off their therapy with me, even though I was extremely careful when questioning their overly positive ideas. This shows how difficult this problem is to deal with.
I advise people with head pressure to seek feedback from a trustworthy person and become radically honest with themselves. They should try to criticise all their smug, narcissistic and dishonest thoughts and actively look for even more selfish views in their unconscious minds.
Particularly women should also be willing to be more critical of their partners or other people around them. To find these egotistical ideas and anger, everybody should look mainly in their lower chakras and try to make these chakras “speak” as I explained in the section about dissolving physical pain. If they find critical, aggressive, misogynist or other ugly views, they should not be too horrified but rejoice that they can now correct these attitudes.
Problems around sleeping
In the kundalini process, many people experience temporary sleep disturbances, nightmares, and insomnia. In this section, I will point out some practical solutions for all these problems.
Insomnia
One of the biggest problems with sleep in the kundalini process is the difficulty of falling asleep or staying asleep. These difficulties are due to the fact that our expanded consciousness sometimes does not allow us to sink into the unconsciousness that is necessary to fall asleep. It is even possible that we consciously experience our dreams. To dream, we need an increase in theta waves and for most people, these slow theta waves cause them to fall asleep immediately. In the kundalini process, however, we can sometimes consciously experience these so-called hypnagogic states where we dream but are still awake. We can even learn to consciously experience the onset of delta waves, which is the moment when we fall into a deep sleep state. This transition manifests with a small fear at the heart. Some of my clients who felt this fear mistakenly assumed that they had a serious psychological problem, which they did not.
The following exercise helps to consciously induce sleep. The interesting thing about this exercise is that it has almost the same effect on the brain as proper sleep and, therefore, we need a lot less sleep when we practise it. It is important to remind ourselves from time to time of this fact as we practise it because, otherwise, we can easily get frustrated. Unfortunately, anger is the great wake-up call and will make it even harder to fall asleep. Someone prone to having sleep problems should do the following exercise every day, even in periods when falling asleep is easier.
Exercise: Sleep meditation
Lie down in your favourite sleeping position and imagine that you are in the arms of your (very large) higher power. You are protected and loved like a baby.
Tell yourself that you do not need to “really” sleep as long as you do this sleep meditation.
Relax all the tensions that you can feel in your body. Imagine that all these tensions become runny like mush and drip down into your bed.
Imagine that your whole brain, especially your forehead, becomes like mush. Also, release your lower jaw.
Imagine that all your thoughts and feelings are just tensions and let them melt away like mush along with your brain.
Continue to relax your body, brain and thoughts in this way. Do this in a dozy way, without making any big effort or visualising anything.
At some point, you will notice that dream images emerge from your unconscious mind. You will know when this happens because these dream images have a distinct difference from ordinary thoughts that is easy to recognise. If you notice these dream images, it is a good sign that you are approaching real sleep. Just continue your sleep meditation and remind yourself that you do not need to “really” sleep.
If you are just on the verge of falling asleep, you may feel a little fear in your heart. Rejoice that you have come this far and continue to let go of the fear by imagining it melting away like mush – just like all other tensions.
The most important thing to remember is that you do not really need to sleep when doing this meditation and that it is sufficient to simply practise it to wake up refreshed in the morning, even if you have done it for a long time.
Nightmares
Through our increased sensitivity in the kundalini process, our dreams can also take on a much more intense and realistic quality. For that reason, some people are prone to thinking that their dreams are now prophetic or otherwise “more real” than normal dreams are. This can create a lot of fear especially when people have nightmares. Fortunately, both of these ideas are not true. For dreams, there is always the rule that “a dream is always just a dream”, so there is nothing to be afraid of. Even ultra-realistic nightmares are just very uncomfortable but never dangerous.
The only exception to this rule is having an inspiring dream of a divine being or a high spiritual teacher. These positive dreams can be confidently inspired by them.
taken at face value and we can allow ourselves to be comforted and
People who often suffer from nightmares can try to “order” their unconscious mind in a friendly way to produce only beautiful dreams before going to sleep. Since we have easier access to our subconscious mind in the kundalini process, this strategy is often successful. To make our unconscious mind cooperate, we should speak to it as we would to a child who needs protection from danger – with love but also with an authority that does not tolerate any contradiction.
Sleep paralysis
Some people in the kundalini process experience states of sleep paralysis in which their minds are awake but their bodies are still asleep and appear paralysed. As with other sleep problems, this symptom can be traced back to their expanded consciousness that is now awake where before it was unconscious.
Sleep paralysis can be uncomfortable or scary but is completely harm-less. You can end it quite easily by focusing on just one finger or toe and try moving it. Then you can move the whole hand or the whole foot, followed by the whole arm or leg and already the sleep paralysis is over.
Problems when waking up
Almost all of my clients report that they often experience uncomfortable emotions in the first moment after waking up and, therefore, often have a bad start to the day. They also frequently think that this is a sign of profound psychological problems but, fortunately, this is rarely the case.
Our unpleasant feelings arise from our subconscious mind, which is particularly open when we first wake up – firstly, because of the kundalini process itself and, secondly, through dreaming at night. Additionally, our willpower is still weak due to our drowsiness and lying in bed such that we cannot defend ourselves well against this painful onslaught. These three factors explain why we are often flooded with unpleasant material from our unconscious in the early morning.
To lessen and even completely eliminate this problem, we should make a habit of saying a simple prayer in the first second of waking up. The easiest prayer is to simply call for our higher consciousness just as a child would call for their parents. The Dalai Lama recommends the following little prayer, “Today, I want to develop for the benefit of all beings and I want to use all the experiences of the day to uplift my mind to a higher level.” This prayer is very effective because it uses the word “want”. As soon as we use this word, our willpower literally gets switched on and, in that way, we are much better able to control and transform our negative states of mind.
You can also create your own little prayer or simply practise the part of higher-consciousness healing that you like best. The most important thing is to practise regularly when you wake up in order to make it a habit so that you can better deal with the inundation of your mind with unconscious material.
