Kundalini

The teaching

As the Hatha Yoga Pradipika and Purnananda's Sat-Chakra-Nirupana teaches it.

The coiled one

Kundalini, the coiled one, is the goddess as power, Shakti, by whom the world is made. In the world she is awake and at work; in the individual she sleeps. The Sat-Chakra-Nirupana pictures her at the root centre, as fine as the fibre of a lotus stalk and shining like lightning, coiled three and a half times around the self-born linga, her mouth covering the door of the central channel, which is called the door of Brahma. While she sleeps, a person lives turned outward, in the world of the senses.

The Hatha Yoga Pradipika gives her place in the practice in one image: as the king of serpents holds up the earth with all its mountains and forests, so Kundalini holds up all the practices of yoga.

Shiva and Shakti

Behind the image stands the tantric account of the world. Shiva is pure consciousness, still; Shakti is his power, moving. In making the world she unfolds from the finest to the densest: from mind into space, space into air, air into fire, fire into water and water into earth. In the body she comes to rest at the bottom of that unfolding, in earth, at the root, and sleeps there, while Shiva remains above, at the crown.

The whole of kundalini yoga is that unfolding run backwards. The power returns up through the elements to her source, and the two are one again.

The road between the sun and the moon

Her road is the central channel, sushumna, between ida on the left, the channel of the moon, and pingala on the right, the channel of the sun. The Pradipika calls ida the Ganga and pingala the Yamuna, with the sleeping power between them. While the breath runs in ida and pingala, the mind runs with it. When the two are balanced and the breath enters the middle channel, the texts say, the mind falls still, and only then can the power rise.

The three knots

On the way up stand three knots, granthis, where the road is tied shut: the knot of Brahma, the knot of Vishnu and the knot of Rudra. The texts place them differently. The Pradipika, as its commentary reads it, sets the first at the heart, the second at the throat and the third between the brows; other texts set the knot of Brahma at the root, the knot of Vishnu at the heart and the knot of Rudra at the brow.

The Pradipika marks each stage with an inner sound. When the first knot is pierced, a tinkling is heard, like ornaments; at the second, a sound like a kettledrum; as the breath reaches the space between the brows, a drum; and when the knot of Rudra gives way, a sound like a flute. These are given as signs along the road, not as goals to be listened for.

The rising and the dissolving

The Sat-Chakra-Nirupana describes the ascent as a dissolving. As the power rises through each lotus, the element of that lotus is absorbed into the next finer one: earth into water at the second centre, water into fire at the third, fire into air at the heart, air into space at the throat, and space into mind at the brow. With each element its sense dissolves too: smell, taste, sight, touch and hearing. Then mind dissolves into what lies beyond it, and at the crown the power unites with Shiva, and a nectar is said to flow from their union.

Then, the text says, she returns by the same road to her place at the root, and as she goes down the elements come forth again in their order. That is why the practice is called a yoga of dissolution, laya. It is not the gathering of a force but the undoing of the world, in meditation, back to its source.

What the texts set first

No text puts this at the start. The yogi first keeps the restraints and observances, eats moderately, sleeps and works moderately, and has a teacher who has walked the road. The Pradipika's measure for food is to leave a quarter of the stomach empty and to offer the meal to Shiva.

The Pradipika calls its methods for rousing the power seals, and tells the yogi to guard them carefully, like a box of jewels, and to tell them to no one. In the tantric schools the power is said to wake by grace as much as by effort, through the descent of power from the teacher, and the pupil's work is to become ready.

Why teachers urge care

The same texts that praise the rising warn against forcing it. Breath pressed too hard brings illness, the Pradipika says, and its whole method is slow. Teachers in these lines today treat heat, shaking, racing thoughts or broken sleep as the signal to stop and ground the practice, never to push it further.

Patanjali adds a warning of another kind. The powers that come with practice, he says, are obstacles to absorption, however marvellous they seem to the mind turned outward. One who seeks the rising for experiences or powers has already lost the way.

What a reader can do

The house gives no method for raising kundalini, and the old texts agree that it is not work for a beginner alone. What a reader can do is learn the map and keep their own practice slow and plain: a seated, gentle breath through the nose, never held, and a few minutes of resting attention, at the heart or the belly rather than the head.

If heat, shaking, racing thoughts or sleepless nights come with any practice, stop, eat, walk, sleep, and see a doctor if it does not settle.