What is Kundalini?

People talk about Kundalini as if it’s an energy. It’s not. It’s a pathway through which energy can travel. And understanding this explains a lot about what happens when trauma blocks start to release.

An energetic pathway

Kundalini is an energetic pathway that runs up the spine. But again, this is hard to convey because it’s physical and it’s energetic at the same time. And it runs really from the root chakra, which is an energy point in the body, all of the way up to the crown chakra, which is another energetic node.

It’s a pathway within which Life Energy, Sexual Energy can travel up. We also have a front channel that runs downward.

Not an energy—a channel

The reason I think it’s worth mentioning is that people can talk about Kundalini as if it is an energy. It’s not an energy. It’s a route, a pathway through which energy can travel.

The tantric tradition has a particular map, the Taoist tradition has a particular map—but that’s the point that I want to make.

Kundalini awakenings

And the reason it’s important is trauma, repressed emotions, physical tensions create blocks in the Kundalini pathway. And when those blocks start to release, we have things called Kundalini awakenings.

And suddenly all this Sexual Energy that’s been building up in the sacral chakra begins to move up, and we start to experience a lot of pleasure in the body—but at the beginning, sometimes also a lot of pain as this powerful energy tries to force its way through the ‘blocks’ that remain.

This can sometimes cause people to shake and tremble and twitch and have really odd experiences as Sexual Energy starts to circulate around the body. So if you’ve ever seen someone with what can be known as an ‘open kundalini channel’ shaking as their sexual energy circulates, that’s a sign that they still have ‘trauma blocks’ in their body.

When someone has really done their work to release what does not serve from the body, energy circulates and you don’t shake. You simply feel waves of orgasmic pleasure and easily travel deeply into expanded, connected states. I am not there yet myself, I still have work to do to release trauma from my body.

I share this as I think its important to differentiate between the pathway through which energy flows and the energy itself and to explain what is for many the slightly shocking experience of their body shaking and experiencing pain as well as pleasure as their energy begins to move more freely around the energetic and physical body.