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 the 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, aligning us 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 a 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.
8 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
I needed to read this. Thanks. I’m not done my journey. It’s a long way to peace like you said. I had a lot on my plate and heart when I was woken up. I got called into the void. Most people describe light, I saw no such light. No such hope. I saw black. Nothing. And as soon as I came to acceptance that I was alone in the dark I open my eyes to see a large snake…. god. Staring into me. I could see myself, and this serpentine god. He spoke in language I couldn’t understand and I responded in tongues. I wish I was making this up. The serpent then consumed me as I watched from the third person, when I was inside the snake, it disappeared. Leaving me in the dark. To awaken to reality again 6 or 7 hours later. I just have never been able to make full sense of it, as I don’t even quite know what happened. It still gets at me all this time 9 years later. I hope you see this, and maybe have an opinion or two, I’d love to hear.
Hi Brennan,
I have other students before who have experienced similar things. I’d like you to firstly consider that the ‘dark’ can actually just be a different manifestation of power, it doesn’t always reflect negativity. Dark can be the intensity of power, it can also be the potent space before a new beginning or birth. Sometimes students that encounter blackness, darkness as an initiation, can actually be seeing a much denser manifestation of gifts, think of dark matter and how it’s condensed.
This experience sounds shamanistic, and while that can be scary to someone who is not looking for it there is nothing inherently negative about the symbology of your experience, some people would pay for this!
The serpent could be Kundalini, which is wonderful but she can also be terrifying because the full force of the presence is god-like. Snake visions are some of the most well represented visions people receive so you are in good company. So you were ingested by a powerful healing trope and then left in the womb of your own power and connection to the void. I can only suggest finding a guide and revisiting this with a positive attitude being willing to embrace the power and awe in this message.
This is one of the many reasons I encourage people to find a teacher. Modern society doesn’t prepare you for these experiences and there’s no local shaman’s or wise woman’s office on the corner where you can just pop in and ask. I think a fresh perspective will highlight that this sticks with you because it’s important in a good way, it’s meant to give to you, not detract.
Blessings to your sacred awakening!
Big love,
Myree x
Hey Brennan I had a similar vision from some of my sessions. I would get visions of darkness and wrinkles in the background slowly moving. As I tried hard to make out what it was. I saw it was a elephant. Another time was a wolf. My very first awakening I was pulled through a portal seeing the universe as it got farther away I was seeing a bunch of universes all bunched together in sync with one another forming a head. It pulled out one of them and pulled me back through the portal. I dont know what they mean entirely but maybe trauma/attachments or memories that need some defragmenting to help you better understand yourself. Following my vision I always go into deep self healing Meditation with mudras and plucking techniques that shows memories gaining some type of understanding appreciation or realization at the deepest level. No matter what prayer is involved in all my sessions by giving, Taking and thanking or other word a technique that involves the exchange of energy and appreciation.
Great noticing Tobe!
Thank you for sharing your experiences here. And it’s always a grounded place to come from if you bring gratitude, which I feel you do also. I wonder if either of you journal these experiences? It can be so powerful to integrate and unpack medicine bundles you receive in these processes if you write and make record after the fact.
Big love,
Myree
Hey so when I first had this awakening something magnetized my hands together and took partial control of my body as I was In the back ground able to take my body back when ever. Thoughts or ideas came to mind that weren’t expected. Immortality and illuminati were the first thoughts that popped up in what seemed a mind with clear and emptiness. Afterwards I took form that connected the feet and hands together and started doing series of hand signs what seemed like energy was being pinpointed and pulled out through my arms and out my finger tips and as the second series of hand signs started I got to this point where my hands and arms were arced above my head and I started humming. Repeated it with different hands signs each time and it always ended with arms armed over head and me humming in the same frequency or vibration as i didnt think nothing of it till i started humming as i changed hand positioning I didn’t even know I was capable of huming different sounds each and everyone had a different effect on me. After the 3rd time around the next thought that came to mind was this is prayer. In my head I was thinking without thinking this is prayer. I understand how it works as it felt like Giving, Taking and thanking. I couldn’t believe what was happening was real it was like void was filled I never noticed was missing. This right here was my first experience of a spiritual awakening and it lasted 6 hrs or so i never knew what madras were till a year later and was performing handsigns you can’t even find on the internet. The techniques and hands signs were all part of the enlightenment. I’ve done this type of meditation many times and it took time to understand if I was interacting with different entities at first there is more than one path and i feel its easy forsomeone as new as i was to feel this kind of divine feeling and jump at it. Not too sure but I was probly being tested or cleansed of ideas of religon, sacrifice and exchange for my desires. It was abumpy ride. I just really wanted to know what it is it’s not easy to go against everything you been taught. I don’t want to anger my spiritual guide or what ever enlightened me with this knowledge. Its confusing Every time I’d go in this state I feel like a God afterwards. I felt at peace, balanced, and happy i was definitely stronger and felt no pain i could bring people around me and heal them sharing their pain . I know it’s divine and ancient. It’s our birth right and our purpose. I took a break from it till I know what I’m doing. After a year of it I decided to research spiritual stuff. I researched shamans, witch doctors, native American, ancient Gods and beliefs of ancient civilization anunaki etc.. All this confused me even more. Everything I could outside of religion as religion has some truth but is based on faith and i feel was abused and scattered to control the people. There is definitely a connection to my experiences. I know everyone is capable of accessing devine enlightenment but also anyone proving of this divine enlightenment with use of its full potential can basicly deceive people and start religion or gain followers or worshipers by performing Godly acts. I hope you read and reply I know it sounds crazy maybe one day someone will have the answer to put me back on track. I appreciate any feed back. Thx
Hi Tobe,
Thank you for this deep sharing, the most important thing I want you to know that there is a whole community of people, connected through the ethers of awakening, that experience awakening, their deepest nature and the Divine through mudras and prayers in this way. It is beautiful and sacred and powerful and your journey makes sense to me. They are also as you describe a source of healing, attunement and elevation that can take you into experiences of Oneness as you have shared. It is very normal, even if not in a mainstream kind of way.
My advice would be to continue to trust yourself and go slowly. Give yourself credit for how far you’ve come by yourself and perhaps pay attention to an element of all these spiritual practices that is the student/teacher relationship, even if the teacher as you describe is unseen or form another realm. There are many gentle leaders in the world who are happy to impart knowledge and give name and reason to what can be an overwhelming download of information. You don’t have to follow a Guru and you don’t have to follow the path of your teacher but it is comforting to be connected to community and realize that many people have experienced similar callings.
There’s no rush to get anywhere and something profound that you can do, and sounds like you already do, on a day to day basis is tune into your intuition. Follow the introspective path and let all the other wiz bang stuff come in its own time.
I honour you, you are more courageous than you realize.
Big love,
Myree x