For the last decade, I have seen increasing numbers of people who have had very serious and sometimes devastating kundalini awakenings as a result of taking psychedelic medicines. I have seen their pain and distress, and have painstakingly helped them to reintegrate their systems and recover.
This tender awakening work asks a lot of us.
It has left me thinking deeply about what might be missing in the way we use and facilitate the use of psychedelics as healing tools and recreational experiences in our culture.
The interest in, and access to, psychedelics is currently surging on this planet. In my practice, I have noticed that there are missing components or steps in the way its use is promoted.
My perspective is that people need to be more fully informed that psychedelics might awaken and activate their dormant kundalini. In fact, the power of psychedelic medicine may blow that sacred power of Kundalini right open. Once activated, the Shakti power is not able to be put back in a box, it cannot be permanently stopped and, thus, we must all find ways to best flow forward. Our lives become permanently changed, and it’s often not a quick trip, it can sometimes be a long rough road before you plateau at peace.
Personally, I believe psychedelics would benefit the seeker more by coming with an advice label like other deeply affecting and life-changing substances. Forget Alice in Wonderland’s mushroom that comes with the enticing note, ‘Eat me’. Instead, it would be beneficial to have a complete list of side effects like any medicine bought at the chemist, allowing people to make more informed choices and understand that the substance they are taking is not just a medicine or healing agent, but a powerful spiritual activator as well. Plant medicines have always honoured all these elements – the healing, the transforming, the activating, the spiritual – combined but somehow, we have ended up in a modern culture that can put the spiritual use last.
And spiritual activators are designed to awaken Kundalini.
We need to keep in mind that we are not always ready or in the right place in our lives to have an intense kundalini activation. A good facilitator or teacher will know this and work with students and clients accordingly. Some people are very vulnerable, do not have access to a lot of support or financial resources to deal with the ensuing consequences of a difficult awakening journey. It is not for the faint of heart.
Kundalini is a powerful and complex process that demands care and attention, awareness, and time. It can often generate rapid changes in a person’s life. While these changes are in alignment with the soul’s journey we benefit from being prepared or ready to engage it.
Over the last few years, the use of psychedelics has flowed across the world, with deep sharing of their healing powers, wisdom giving and mind-opening capacities.
Many have flocked to them in search of such experiences and results and many have received deep medicine. I, too, have seen amazing results of people who have had incredible healing from them so I am glad they are available. May they continue to be a gift to humanity.
From my standpoint, this use of psychedelics has caused a simultaneous tidal wave of a spectrum of kundalini awakenings, some of them are directly sought after and welcomed and others are unexpected and spontaneous ignitions that the seeker had no idea was a potential side effect. This aspect is often experienced as terrifying.
I know, because over the last years I have spent time supporting such people to recover, stabilise and deal with the impacts of a psychedelically activated kundalini awakening they had no intention of exploring and no idea even existed.
Such activations can suddenly launch a person into an intensive, often extremely physical or psychological awakening process that deeply changes their lives. Some people may remain devastated, fragile, angry and dysfunctional despite their best efforts to recover. In my experience with clients and their struggles with such intense activation they often suffer some degree of depersonalisation.
Psychedelics are big, powerful medicine and can sometimes deliver to someone a more intense activation than if they had awoken traditionally through yoga or meditation or a natural spontaneous awakening. Sometimes people are blessed to have an amazing guide, shaman or teacher who can recognise and importantly frame for them what is happening. This makes an important difference. The presence of a wise and seasoned facilitator can support them through this spontaneous awakening and help them settle the process, soothe it and importantly contextualize it. That is how it needs to be. That is how it was used in ancient medicine rituals in tribal communities.
Unfortunately when things are not well held people may experience important awakenings and leave ceremonies or events alone, in the throes of extensive kundalini symptoms which they cannot make sense of. They worry they are going crazy. They experience intense fear, anxiety that makes no sense, terror, sometimes bolts of energy and electricity or pressure in their bodies, strange body symptoms and so much more. In my experience with clients who have found themselves unsupported in this awakened state they often end up with a degree of depersonalisation.
They usually end up self-diagnosing via Dr Google by putting their symptoms in the search box. From there they travel down the rabbit hole unwinding a notion of what has happened to them.
Sadly, I also know of people who have experienced abuse or been told they were crazy by their medicine teachers when they had Kundalini activations.
My heartfelt call to our healing community is how can we collaborate and work together to support the way kundalini activates with psychedelics? How can we encourage people in the aftermath of such experiences so they can be safe, feel heard and understood and have access to the resources that they need? People need to know Kundalini awakenings are normal and are a part of our human evolution.
I deeply adore Kundalini. She is a huge gift giver and life transformer, bringing us into alignment with who we really are and what we came here to offer or be by really being ourselves. It needs to be remembered that there is significant work required to have a safe and deeply experienced awakening. The path of clearing the weeds out and undoing the programming and conditioning that stands in the way as well as resolving the trauma can, for some people, be extensive and exhausting.
We need to stand with them and beside them as they embark on an expected or unsought, potent medicine journey of spiritual awakening under the mighty, eternal medicine of Kundalini herself.
This is my call to the universe and to our healing community.
If you are reading this and have experienced an unsought or disruptive Kundalini awakening process or would like support, you can find my free Kundalini eBook loaded with self-care tips on my website. You are not alone. You are not crazy. What has happened to you is part of what psychedelic medicine is designed to do. You are on a new life path that includes all that came before it. If you are seeking support with a Kundalini awakening, I wrote a course just for you.
If you suddenly have found your feet on this kundalini path I bow to you, I welcome you with much love and I bless you.
To our shared healing community, I stand with and beside you as we tenderly guide awakening in all forms upon this planet.
2 Comments
Myree .. Yes ! this is what happened to me, in 2013, during an Ayahuasca ceremony I experienced a kundalini awakening and have spent the last almost 10 years integrating it. There was no supportive shaman, no wise person to guide me and help me through what was unfolding in my life. No support networks and no real understanding of the implications of plant medicine and the consequences. The relationship I had with yoga and practice hadn’t prepared me for it. It wasn’t something I really knew anything about, it most likely prepared my body and system for that to happen and I was unaware of what had happened until much later and I found your work and started to read and research the subject. Thankfully now I feel much more grounded and in my body – and am a functioning person in the world again, although it is a complete rebuilding process and even that in itself is a long road, although not so fraught with difficulty and ‘suffering’, more joyful and peaceful. I would love to help other people who are going through the same thing – and do feel this will unfold for me when the time is right. Thank you for your work and the support you give to people.
Dearest Vicky, Thank you so much for sharing your powerful and big journey with awakening and the ignition through plant medicine. My heart is with you. And for validating this so deeply, this intensive life change of kundalini awakening people can go through in this way. I love how much you have transformed your journey with Kundalini and awakening and know you will be an incredible guide in the future! Standing beside you sister!
Big love!
Myree x