Kundalini Yoga Meditation

By Michelle Taffe

What is Kundalini Yoga Meditation?

This was the question I asked myself before going to my first retreat with Swami Ganeshananda last year on the Mediterranean island of Majorca – where he regularly leads retreats for a small ‘sanga’ or spiritual community there.

I had done a 10-day Vipassana retreat in 2005 and since then I had practised the meditation techniques as instructed on the Vipassana course.

But I sometimes as I practised Vipassana – otherwise know as ‘mindfulness meditation’ – I felt like there was an important element somehow lacking. With the focus very much on the mind in the Vipassana tradition – it can feel like the body is overlooked as a vehicle for transformation.

Kundalini – according to Hindu beliefs – is the life energy that is stored up at the base of the spine and is represented as being like a snake in many texts. The idea behind Kunalini Yoga Meditation is to release this kundalini energy through a meditation practice, thus allowing it to travel up your spine, opening up your chakras as it goes and eventually leading to an experience of enlightenment.

But for most people, this kundalini energy remains coiled up during their whole life time, thus the potential for an awakening or enlightenment experience remains dormant and unrealized.

The basic technique for this meditation has been passed from guru to student through a lineage of teachers, and this is the recommended way to learn this practice.

So in this article I just want to give you a short introduction to kundalini yoga meditation.

Starting with that ever-present life force – the breath – you begin to breathe deeply and slowly in through the nose, drawing the breath all the way down into the diaphragm. Then you slowly breathe out. The next breath, as you breathe in, follow the path of your breath past your throat chakra and down into your heart chakra.

Imagine your heart opening and expanding, while you silently say – ‘may my heart open, may I grow spiritually’. Then follow the breath down through your solar plexus, the sacral chakra and the root chakra. Pause a moment, before slowly breathing out, following the path of the breath up in reverse through the chakras – or ‘energy centres’ of your body. Continue in a slow cycle of deep breathing, silently repeating the desire for your heart to open and for your own spiritual growth.

After five or ten minutes of this breath cycle you can return to regular breathing, just concentrating on following the in breath and the out breath. You can repeat this cycle as many times as you like – with a half an hour a day being a recommended starting point for a regular kundalini yoga meditation practice.

The more you practise this meditation, the more you will slowly become aware of the energetic centres in your body, and eventually you will recognise the stored up energy known as kundalini located at the base of your spine.

If you’d like to begin a kundalini meditation practice, it is a good idea to find a teacher or a group to learn from. An unexpected release of the kundalini energy in an inexperienced practitioner can result in both psychological and physiological problems or blockages.