Kundalini

If you are scouring the Internet for kundalini yoga - weight loss forums are ablaze with tips and tricks culled from various free kundalini yoga exercises that may be found online – or if you are searching for a kundalini yoga teacher, kundalini yoga center or if all else fails even some kundalini yoga videos for self study at home, you know that there is plentiful information available.

In its simplest form, kundalini yoga is a package deal of movements and postures, all of which are associated with reaching the goal of growing mentally, emotionally, as well as spiritually. Much like other forms of yoga that have not allowed Westerners to divorce their spiritual purposes from the health benefits the exercises offer, to learn kundalini yoga you must look carefully to find an accredited and well trained kundalini yoga teacher; training is usually received in the proper form of kundalini yoga sequence as well as various exercises that focus on breathing. Kundalini yoga is not to be confused with the somewhat frivolous approach of bikram yoga that permits teachers to become accredited within nine short weeks.

Yet perhaps because the access to bona fide kundalini classes or even an authentic kundalini yoga DVD, the term “kundalini awakening” - sahaja yoga aficionados may be familiar with it – or “kundalini rising” is not heard too often. Nonetheless, it is a very real occurrence within the study of this form of yoga, and one that often hits Westerners unexpected and leads to frightening consequences.

The way kundalini yoga works is through the chakra system, and any practitioner aware of the power of the root chakra understands that misuse of the energies present or a failure to properly channel the energies will have powerful negative consequences. The practice of kundalini is said to have overwhelmed Western practitioners and in response to an overload of the nervous system with meditation practices that are forced upon a mind not used to them – as well as kundalini yoga exercises and breathing techniques that are engaged in well past the comfort point of the human body – that which is said to be infinite bliss by Hindu gurus is experienced by uninitiated Westerners as a sudden onset of psychological difficulties.

Medical literature acknowledges the creation of alter egos, seizures, altered states of mind, failure to maintain grounded in the hear and now, panic attacks, bouts of depression, as well as cases of suicide as having been associated with the practice of kundalini to excess. Naturally, what is considered excessive to one person barely scratches the surface for another, thus making it very hard to lay down a hard and fast rule for others to follow.