What is kundalini?

Kundalini is among the most powerful ideas in the Indian spiritual traditions, and among the most casually repeated. It is described as an immense energy lying coiled like a serpent at the base of the spine, holding the potential for enlightenment if it is awakened and directed rightly.

The image, and what it means

The coil is not decorative. It says something precise: this energy is present in everyone already, and it is at rest. Nothing needs to be acquired. What is needed is that something dormant should wake, and that when it wakes there should be a clear channel for it to move through.

The emblem of this mandir shows the same thing — a serpent winding up a staff to a flame at the crown. That is the whole doctrine in one drawing.

What awakening involves

Descriptions of kundalini awakening in popular writing tend towards the ecstatic. The traditional accounts are more careful, and they are worth attending to: an awakening that occurs in an unprepared body or an unsettled mind is described as disturbing, sometimes severely and sometimes for a long time.

This is not a warning invented to make the teaching seem precious. It is the reason the preparation exists.

The preparation

The preparation is unglamorous and it is most of the path. A seat you can hold. A daily meditation that is genuinely daily. Conduct settled enough that a disturbance would not capsize your life. And a teacher who has watched your practice and will say when you are ready — including by saying that you are not.

Where to begin

Not with kundalini. Begin with sitting still for ten minutes a day, and keep doing it until the ten minutes are easy. Then come to the mandir and ask what comes next.