A Kundalini emergency can mimic schizophrenia and other health issues. While Eastern mystics and yogis and many Western holistic practitioners believe in it, mainstream Western medicine does not. Whether you call it an aroused Kundalini or an energy imbalance or a spiritual emergency, it doesn’t really matter, because it’s a health emergency.
Western medicine was not able to provide an answer as to why Chris experienced intense piercing pain over his eyebrow as our plane landed. He screamed in pain, and then it was gone just as quickly as it came, except for the lingering headaches over the next few days. The nurse at the airport had no explanation. I took him to our family doctor, who offered no explanation and didn’t recommend any tests. Chris continue to feel sensitive (inward inversion of pressure) in that area for the next six months. He then began experiencing the first of many symptoms which medicine labels the “prodromal signs. When I brought the head pain to the attention of the doctors after Chris was hospitalized, they simply shrugged their shoulders. They had never heard of intense head pain as a symptom of schizophrenia.
Western medicine had no explanation, but Kundalini arousal offers one. A friend alerted me to this* article on the symptoms of Kundalini. One of the many possible symptoms is headaches or pressures in the skull.
The Kundalini-Network in Denmark has a site that documents seventy-six cases of Kundalini arousal.
Else Johansen writes:
– Kundalini arousal especially occurs as an unintentional side effect of yoga, meditation, healing or body-and psychotherapy. Some of the other releasing factors can be: Births, unrequited love, celibacy, intense studies, physical traumas, deep sorrow, high fever and drug intake. But Kundalini arousal can also occur suddenly without apparent course.
– When the process of Kundalini had lasted in me for about ten years, I was too tired out to be able to earn a living on my own. I went to a doctor and said: “It is completely crazy, my Kundalini has been aroused. What shall I do?” And then I told him about my state.
– “You are deeply psychotic”, he said. “I will send you to a good psychiatrist. The energy you are talking about does not exist. You have serious misconceptions”.
– I got sick pay and later disability pension, diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, without first having been taken in for a mental examination. No doctor that I spoke to concerning my pension believed my talk about Kundalini.
– But in the yoga literature I got a reasonable explanation of what had happened to me. Yes, I understood that the secret purpose of yoga and meditation actually is to release the kundalini force. When Kundalini reaches the brain, it is said to be stimulating the brain cells that are normally not used, so that a higher state of consciousness is reached.
Else Johansen continues and says that the doctors’ ignorance of Kundalini has led to diagnoses like hypochondria, escapism, inflammation of the brain, and calcification of the brain.
– In a radio program, in which I participated, a psychiatrist said that Kundalini is just an idea, imported from the East through yoga. People hear or read about it, and therefore they think they have Kundalini arousal.
– But that reasoning does not hold, Else Johansen continues. I have met 250 (1996) people who have had a well-defined kundalini process, and about half of them did not know about Kundalini beforehand. It was a shock to them when the process started. They have been helped a lot, knowing what actually happened to them, because in any case it is an advantage to know what is going on. That they later found an explanation to the odd thing that happened to them, has helped them enormously, because it is in any case an advantage to know what is going on.”
The addition of, or withdrawal from, drugs (legal or illegal,) exacerbates the physical and mental symptoms.
An earlier post of mine discussed correcting energy imbalances by shifting the assemblage point.
In Castaneda’s The Fire from Within, Don Juan repeatedly warns about the health dangers that come from an assemblage point that has been knocked off center. Both legal and illicit drug use can knock an assemblage point off center. Don Juan uses peyote and other medicinal plants to induce a hallucinatory state in Castaneda. To bring him back to a balanced state afterwards, Jon Whale observes that Don Juan surreptitiously gave the author a quick sharp blow to the shoulder blade, popularly referred to as the shaman’s blow.
Dr. Whale has observed that psychiatric drugs do a poor job of moving the assemblage point back into position. According to him, psychiatric drugs do not take into account the complexities of the endocrine system and leave the patient in a chronic depressed state rather than correcting the situation.
________________________
*Mudrashram Institute of Spiritual Studies webpage
“They had never heard of intense head pain as a symptom of schizophrenia.”
They should have. Several times during crisis I experienced thundering headaches that came like a bolt from the blue, and vanished just as quickly again. I’d only experienced tension headaches in the back of my head a few times up to then. These “crisis headaches” were located in the front of my head. At first, they made me a bit nervous, then I realized they occurred each time I had what you might call a major insight, succeeding in connecting “symptoms” with my life story, recognizing the meaning with the “symptoms”, understanding what had happened in my life. Some time later, I read in a book by a Norwegian shrink, Svein Haugsgjerd, about one or the other western psychiatrist/analyst (one of the more known ones, but I can’t remember the name), who’d observed that sometimes his “psychotic” clients experienced sudden, violent headaches in their foreheads (location of which makes us conscious beings, and also of “the third eye”) when “pieces fell into place”. But, of course, this is a psychoanalytic explanation, and psychoanalysis is about just as “out” as eastern philosophy in biopsychiatric circles.
Nice post. I need little convincing of kundalini and transpersonal aspects of schizophrenia, but I have a question — have you yourself ever had kundalini experiences, perhaps in giving birth? I ask because I’m trying to see if there is a pattern of definite kundalini awakening experiences in a family context associated with schizophrenia… thanks for reading.
Hi, Jason,
I can’t say I had a kundalini experience in giving birth, although the events leading up to the birth are, to me, interesting. I actually heard the “ping” of conception, and then Chris was eerily quiet in the womb for the rest of the pregnancy. He was 27 days overdue. Nothing unusual about the actual birth except it was long and drawn out. If you type “shamanic initiatory illness” into the search bar of my blog, I write about why I believe I was pulled into it through my son’s “illness.” Here’s a quote from within that post:
“A shamanic initiatory illness is a transformative ordeal that either comes on unexpectedly with no known precipitating event or can be activated on purpose by spiritual practice. It shows up as an odd amalgam of mental and physical symptoms, as mentioned above; is typically very debilitating; and takes the individual to very odd and dark mental and physical places. Interestingly, the illness seems to create a field that affects family and friends around the sufferer, who sometimes go through their own tough times in parallel.”
Best regards,
Rossa
That’s so interesting … Thanks for the quick reply. The “conception ping” is unusual and cool. The results you got from transforming to a positive outlook are heartening.
I’m acquainted with both kundalini and the “spiritual emergency/intiatory illness” that surrounds it from experience. There are ways to handle it that pretty much obviate the debilitating side, but unfortunately they often don’t seem to make it into the hands of those that would benefit. (Of course it does mean a spiritual practice and the patience that implies.) Mind you it doesn’t always go smoothly and people still do get ‘ch’i sickness’ as it’s known in the places I hang out. The vomiting and purging stuff often does seem a necessary phase.
Definitely plausible from my experience that you’d have been “pulled in” via the energetic broadcasting that your son was doing — in fact that would be expected. Those effects can be consciously directed as well with practice, you may know something about that. Stuff like qigong is all about that.
BTW have you ever had difficulties with electronics or light bulbs in your house? Although the energy isn’t just electromagnetic, it can interact with machines in funny ways — even mechanical ones, now I think of it. Just a long shot there. 🙂
I hesitate to give you this link — I just posted something on kundalini and schizophrenia but differently angled, in which the birth experience is a big part of the trigger, and the mother may be… not as open as you. 🙂
I still do differentiate kundalini from schizophrenia, which I see as a PTSD-style illness that comes from continued denial of the transpersonal aspects — that took my post to some places that aren’t so pleasant but I’d love to have your opinion — here it is if interested.
It came out of combining my interests in the esoteric angles with the ‘family therapy’ approach. I didn’t address the positive side so much in this particular post but tried to account for the negative sympotms… based on your thoughts would want to widen what I wrote I’d say…
Either way, many thanks for a great blog. /Jason
Hi, Jason.
I’m lying in bed with my laptop, so will review your comment and the link tomorrow, and see if I can come up with some observations. Without knowing what the link is about, I can assure you, after going through what I’ve gone through, nothing is too weird to contemplate.
Best, Rossa
No problem with lightbulbs or electricity in our house.
There’s no hurry! But thankyou.