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Kundalini and the
Massage Therapist Copyright 2009, Linda Gertrude
Means by Linda Gertrude
Means, Ph.D., CMT Peacehope Healing
Arts, Monroeville, PA Author’s Note: The information presented here pertaining
to the facilitation of kundalini activity by bodyworkers is based solely on my
own professional experience in
massage sessions with clients. I
have found no other sources Sharon’s
head began to slowly lift out of the face cradle and turn side to side, early
in our massage session as she laid prone and relaxed on the table. (Note: all names and personal
identifying characteristics of clients have been disguised to protect their
confidentiality.) Her breathing
became occasionally ragged and erratic, sounding like it was forced through a
bellows, interspersed with big vocalized sighs and hyperpnea. I recognized the spontaneous neck
movement and the unusual breathing as manifestations of kundalini awakening,
which is the deepest form of energy healing. I was looking forward to a powerful and
interesting session! Sharon was a new client at the spa; her husband had given
her a gift certificate, she looked at the menu of services and thought,
“Esalen massage looks good!”, so she booked an appointment with
me. During our intake discussion,
Sharon said, “I have been working on my healing process for four
years.” She had never
received any sort of treatment for a strong whiplash suffered in a car accident
about twenty years ago. Over time
her whole back became involved, to the point of chronic pain and arthritis in
the hips and lower back, in addition to neck pain, for several years. Sharon started seeing a chiropractor
four years ago, and the lower back and hip problem cleared entirely through the
magic of craniosacral work. But she
still had chronic neck pain, going into the right arm, and sometimes complete
numbness in the right hand. I
observed that the neck and shoulders were hunched forward, her habitual posture
from years of pain. Sharon told me
that she was ready to heal the old injury. I agreed to help her using Esalen massage mixed with
shiatsu. With Sharon lying prone, I
began the session making quiet contact with my hands on her neck and head,
inviting her energy field to open to my touch. Within a couple of minutes,
Sharon’s neck began to move.
The movement was big but easy and fairly fluid. Even lying in the face cradle, Sharon
allowed her head to lift and turn, side to side and in every direction. This continued for the whole duration of
the session, in prone and supine positioning. Sharon didn't try to restrain her
movement or breath, nor did she say anything about it, she seemed to be okay
with what was happening, so I didn't feel a need to say anything about it
either. We just allowed. I felt blessed by the sacredness of the
experience. At the end of the session, Sharon was ecstatic, she kept
laughing and hugging me. She said
that the pain was completely gone, and that she felt like a different person,
her neck felt normal for the first time in twenty years. She noticed that she could straighten
her upper spine, saying, “I don't need to hunch over any more!” Sharon told me that she had been to
another therapist for Swedish massage, and her neck started to move
spontaneously during that session, but the therapist kept telling her to stay
still, so she suppressed the movement.
Sharon’s
session was my first experience in working with a client’s spontaneous
kundalini activity during a professional massage treatment. I had previously worked with a friend
during his kundalini awakening, using a crystal on his body to help move
kundalini through blocked areas. I
was also informed by my experiences of kundalini activation in my own body, as
well as years of reading about kundalini in yoga literature, all of which
enabled me to recognize this phenomenon when it manifested during
Sharon’s massage. Even now,
after repeated kundalini massage experiences with several clients, I am still
in awe to be in the presence of kundalini awakening at the massage table. Kundalini
awakening has been understood as a yoga practice for thousands of years. Kundalini is traditionally characterized
as a form of energy, usually dormant, coiled like a snake at the base of the
spine in the root chakra. Kundalini
awakening occurs when the sleeping serpent moves out of the root chakra into
the sushumna, the central energy channel which runs through the spinal
column. As kundalini moves upward,
chakras are activated, blockages are cleared, psychic senses open, and deep
transformational healing occurs on every level. The awakening of kundalini is an
evolutionary process of spiritual
growth and holistic healing.
Kundalini works with an innate intelligence that knows the path to
optimal functioning of the human organism; it carries the possibility of
realizing our full potential as enlightened human beings. For me, kundalini activation during a
healing session seems like the ultimate realization of Esalen Massage, which is
a bodywork practice intended as a tool for facilitating and accelerating human
healing and evolution. Kundalini
yoga is the body of knowledge which was developed to stimulate kundalini
energy. Practitioners of kundalini
yoga aspire to awaken the movement of the sleeping snake, using yoga asanas
(postures) and pranayama (breathing practices). Kundalini awakening can also happen spontaneously,
with no effort or knowledge on the part of the experiencer, occasionally in
response to powerful energetic events such as childbirth or trauma, and
occasionally during energetic bodywork treatments. Kundalini may also be awakened through
the practice of shaktipat, which is an energetic transmission performed by a
spiritually enlightened master. Kundalini awakening is often marked by the occurrence of
kriyas, which are spontaneous movements of the body, sometimes seemingly
random, sometimes moving the body into classical yoga asanas or mudras. Sharon’s spontaneous neck
movements during her massage session were kundalini kriyas, and her breath
pattern was also a kundalini manifestation. Although kriyas may look like
convulsions, they are often experienced as comfortable and welcome, and may be
accompanied by ecstatic feelings or profound spiritual experiences. In my personal experience, and in the
descriptions of others who have experienced kundalini kriyas, there may be the
feeling of energy gathering in one part of the body, which builds to the point
of finally shaking or jerking the spine, legs, arms, or face. With my massage clients who experienced
kundalini activity for the first time, even though it was a new and unusual
experience, all of them recognized it as something beneficial and allowed it to
occur during the session without commenting or questioning. During
that initial kundalini session with Sharon, I simply observed the movement
without trying to engage with it in any way. It made sense to me that the movement
occurred in Sharon’s neck, because that was the site of the injury that
she intended to heal, and I have observed consistently that kundalini activity
tends to manifest primarily in the areas of chronic tension or pain, old
injury, or in the region governed by the chakra related to the client’s
primary physical or emotional imbalance.
Arthur
was my second kundalini client, two weeks after Sharon’s session. Arthur and I had been doing weekly
shiatsu treatments for several months, addressing his old injuries in the
cervical and lumbar spine, which had left him with back pain, plus weakness,
arthritis and lack of balance in the legs, with the right leg particularly
affected. He also had some
restriction in the right shoulder, which had released considerably through our
work together, but still needed attention. As
Arthur laid face down, I sat on the table with his right arm draped over my
leg, lifting the shoulder to loosen it, assess the restriction, and apply
acupressure. The right arm began to
swing, hitting the table, moving randomly in every direction. This had never happened before in
Arthur’s sessions, and he was in his usual deep trance state, so I did
not believe that he was consciously directing the movement of his arm in this
way. Because I associated the
shoulder restriction with Arthur’s spinal injuries, I suspected that the
arm movement was a manifestation of kundalini activation, and wondered whether
it would occur in other parts of the body.
I worked my way down the spine with thumb pressure,
pulling the erector muscles away from the spine on both sides, moving from neck
to sacrum. Arriving at the
tailbone, I grasped it between my fingers and gently wiggled the entire
spine. Just then, spontaneous
movement began to happen around the sacrum, primarily on the right side,
involving the right leg. Hello
sweet kundalini, I whispered. I
stayed there for some time wiggling the tailbone, watching energy churning in
the gluteal muscles, sometimes lifting the right hip six inches off the
table. Arthur laid quietly
experiencing, I watched fascinated, losing all track of time, welcoming this
ultimate healing energy at work in the area of Arthur’s major
blockage. Our
sixty-minute session took two and a half hours that day, as I returned again
and again to the sacrum, holding the tailbone and watching kundalini work her
magic for ten or twenty minutes at a time.
Arthur was completely surrendered to this weird thing happening in his
hip. When I felt like we were done,
I kneeled next to the table and asked, how are you doing? He lifted his head to look at me, and
couldn't speak. He reached over and
started patting my face, speechless, just patting, patting, patting. Finally he spoke: “Goddamn, that was
something!” Arthur described the experience as being in a state of
total harmony and just being, no thinking, he felt like he and I were joined as
one unit, he knew that he was being cared for and protected and healed. I reassured him that this was a healing
at the deepest level, that it was releasing the energy blockages associated
with his injury and leg problems, and would enable his body to function more
normally physically because the energy pattern holding that injury in place was
being unblocked. He told me that he
was now feeling a lot of intense energy in the solar plexus, so he laid down on
his back and I held a quartz generator crystal on his solar plexus with the tip
against the xyphoid process. After
a minute, he began to grasp my hands very tightly, pressing the crystal deeply
into his solar plexus. Then he
began to pull my hands away. I
removed my hands, leaving the crystal in his hands, and he put the crystal on
the table and was done. He said
that the crystal had removed a lot of energy from the solar plexus. My sessions with Arthur continued to produce consistent
kundalini activation. During our
second kundalini session, I pressed my elbow into Gallbladder 30 in the middle
of the gluteal muscles and got an immediate kundalini response, pounding back
against my elbow, intensely, like a
jackhammer. I had asked Arthur to
tell me if he became uncomfortable with the kundalini work or wanted to stop,
and because he simply laid quietly, I let the jackhammer do its work for
fifteen or twenty minutes, feeling amazed and grateful to witness and feel this
extraordinary energy healing happening in my presence. And not only in my presence, but in
response to my touch. I began to
understand that my role as a “kundalini therapist” might be to
stimulate kundalini activity by summoning the energy snake to the area of
blockage, and if kundalini wants to push against a blockage in order to move
through it, my pressure provides something for it to push against, possibly
enabling it to break through more easily.
This is just speculation, but I’ve experienced the same phenomenon
with several kundalini clients: it
always manifests in the area of a major blockage, and responds to my pressure
by pushing repeatedly against my touch. I’ve
also noticed that kundalini seems to become active in the presence of an
accumulation of excess energy, and the shaking kriyas act to disperse the
energy, moving it out of the affected region and into the energy flow of the
whole body. Perhaps this prevents
an energy accumulation from forming a permanent blockage. In a later session with Arthur, I
decided to experiment with whole-body drumming to stimulate kundalini, because
in receiving body drumming myself I had observed that it had an
energy-dispersing effect similar to that of kundalini. I
began this session with a transcendental 25-minute Deva Premal serenade
intended to lull Arthur into a slow brainwave state, helping him to lose all
track of time and space, working with tracks 1 and 2 of Deva Premal Sings the Moola Mantra. Track 1, Moola Mantra Invocation, is slow and tranquil, lush instrumentals
interspersed with contemplative vocals.
Track 2, Moola Mantra Part I,
begins with the same mood, then moves into a repetitive, hypnotic, rhythmic
chant, with interludes of sensuous fluid instrumentals. I used this music to make initial
contact with Arthur’s energy field, moving and stretching the whole body
and working the length of acupressure meridians on the back of the body,
opening channels to get energy flowing.
I also chose these songs for this session because I can sing easily with
them, and chanting during the session helps me sustain a light trance and
embody the music vibrationally. Next on the playlist was David and Steve Gordon’s Light of the Canyon, from their Sacred Drum Visions CD. With Arthur lying prone on the table, I
drummed for seven minutes over the length of the body, with riffs ranging from
full-hand beats on the sacrum to feathery light taps of the fingertips up and
down the spine, finally coming to a close on the feet. For several minutes I held both feet,
applying thumb pressure to the Kidney 1 point on the midline of the sole
beneath the ball of the foot. I
immediately began to feel kundalini movement in the feet, then watched it move
up the legs and into the hips and back.
The movement became symmetrical and fluid, swaying back and forth from
left to right. In the past,
Arthur’s kundalini only manifested on the right side, and only in the hip
and leg, usually laboriously blasting away at the blockage in the right
hip. This time it looked like some
new channel had opened, enabling kundalini to dance freely and bilaterally and
move into other parts of the body, as high as the upper back. Where his kundalini had seemed so
labored in the past, now she seemed happy to be moving easily. After Arthur turned over into a supine position, I spent
several minutes moving around the body holding feet, knees, belly, shoulders,
just making energetic contact.
Everywhere I went, kundalini followed me, activating under my
hands. Then I drummed on the whole
front of the body, ending on the head, finally holding the head for several
minutes, watching kundalini appear here and there in various parts of the
body. I ended the session cradling
Arthur’s head between my arms, and kundalini moved into the neck, turning
the head from side to side, which was another first for Arthur. After the session, Arthur was elated. He told me that the drumming felt
electrifying, literally and figuratively.
His right leg felt looser and freer, and the feeling of kundalini and
electrical activity was still happening in various parts of his body after he
got off the table. I felt uplifted
by engaging once again with this astonishing energetic manifestation of supreme
healing intelligence. Clients often report profound or ecstatic experiences
while kundalini is active in the body.
Tina was working on activating her throat chakra and finding her voice
to speak her truth, so it was not surprising when her kundalini showed up in
her neck, very gently moving it from side to side, typically near the end of
her sessions. Each time, she reported
seeing indescribably brilliant lights in surreal colors. When I gave her a Brazilian crystal to
take home and work with on her own, she laid down, placed it on her throat, and
immediately saw the brilliant light again. Anna’s kundalini begins moving as soon as she
stretches out on the massage table, even before I approach her. With Anna lying prone, her kundalini
responds to pressure in the trapezius and erector spinae muscles, and works on
opening her heart by drawing the shoulder blades back toward one another. Her legs also occasionally jump off the
table in response to pressure on the back.
I like to use two quartz crystals to stimulate the movement of kundalini
up Anna’s spine, resting one crystal on the sacrum with the tip pointed
up the spine. I hold the second
crystal off the body, about an inch above the spine, and slowly move it from
the sacrum toward the head. As the
crystal moves up the back, kundalini follows, with the movement of the body
originating beneath the crystal in each position. In our first crystal session, we brought
Anna’s kundalini all the way up into the head for the first time; her
head was gently swaying in the face cradle, and I began crying from my feeling
of awe. After the session, Anna
said to me, “The kundalini went into my brain.” When I asked her how that felt, she
replied, “It felt like clarity, total clarity. Here’s what it told me: love is easy.” The kundalini movement in Anna’s back is so intense
that the shoulders lift several inches off the table, but the kriyas don’t
create muscular tension; in fact after our kundalini sessions, the muscles in
her upper back feel soft and plump and full of energy. I first observed this phenomenon when I
assisted Tony with a crystal during his kundalini awakening. Tony had stood in line at John of
God’s healing center in Abadiania, Brazil, and asked for help to open his
psychic senses and expand his capabilities as a healer. He received a spiritual healing
intervention, then went back to his room to rest, laid down on his bed, spread
out his arms, and his kundalini awakened.
I found him there ecstatic, body shaking and writhing, seeing visions
and getting revelations about sacred geometry. On his second day of this activity, I
helped him move stuck energy with a quartz crystal. His kundalini movement was most intense
in the area of the solar plexus, so I held the crystal over the heart center,
and the energy shot up into the chest.
We continued working in this way for several hours, occasionally taking
a short break to drink some water, then getting right back to work. The kriyas were strong and convulsive,
sometimes lifting the sternum several inches off the bed, sometimes banging the
head repeatedly against the pillow, but Tony was elated and comfortable. Afterwards, he sat up and asked me to
place my hands on his shoulder blades, to calm the energy there. I was astonished by the feel of the
muscles in his upper back, squishy and expansive and responsive to my
touch. I had the impression that
the kundalini kriyas were creating movement by expanding the muscles instead of
contracting them. I’d never
felt muscle like this, and it was a blissful experience for me just to touch
this energy-full tissue. Every
time I participate in a client’s kundalini activation, I give thanks for
this gift, for the client and for myself.
As a bodyworker, I know that my client is experiencing the deepest form
of healing possible, because kundalini knows precisely where to go and how to
work to correct any and all limitations in the human organism. All I need to do is remain present and
hold the space for this sacred healing. It is an enormous blessing for me to
experience and play with this serpent energy, witnessing its expert
chiropractic work, and the actualization of its supreme healing
intelligence. I
end this kundalini chronicle with haiku: Hot
rib-rattling snake kundalini
can’t hold back her
deep dance of joy! |