Kundalini meditation is a psycho-spiritual discipline that aims to raise awareness and increase self-awareness and creativity. It involves techniques to strengthen the brain and neural pathways, regulate breath, and use mantras. The ultimate goal is enlightenment and oneness with Brahma. It was introduced to the West by Yogi Bhajan and is integrated into various schools of yoga, including Raja, Bhakti, and Shakti yoga, as well as Ashtanga yoga. Direct instruction from a teacher is critical for safety.
Kundalini meditation is part of the practice of Kundalini yoga, a psycho-spiritual discipline that aims to raise awareness using techniques that connect practitioners with their spiritual selves. The practice is said to increase self-awareness and increase a person’s creativity. The techniques used in kundalini meditation are meant to strengthen and refine the brain and neural pathways, making them more receptive to spiritual energy. In yoga philosophy, kundalini is considered the life force that resides at the base of the spine. During meditation, the kundalini energy, which is sometimes symbolically illustrated as a coiled serpent, rises through the practitioner’s lower six chakras to reach the seventh chakra or crown chakra, where self-realization occurs.
As with other yoga meditation practices, Kundalini yoga involves regulating the breath to focus one’s concentration. The yoga student can be given mantras to repeat during practice. These are groups of words meant to help the student achieve transformation, with most of the mantras taken from Indian spiritual texts. They are meant to calm the mind so that the student can focus on spiritual evolution. The ultimate goal of kundalini meditation is the attainment of enlightenment and oneness with Brahma, the foundation of all creation.
In classical Kundalini yoga practice, the techniques are passed on directly from a teacher or guru to the student. If practiced incorrectly, kundalini meditation can cause both physical and psychological distress, so many yoga teachers insist that this teacher-student relationship is critical to the student’s safety and well-being. Kundalini yoga was introduced to the West in the late 1960s by Yogi Bhajan, an Indian master of the discipline who saw it as an alternative to the psychoactive drugs then popular in Western culture. His teachings marked the first time the practice was exposed to a general audience.
There are many different schools of yoga today that incorporate kundalini meditation into their practices. Yogi Bhajan taught that it should be a part of three traditional schools of practice. These include Raja yoga for mental power and concentration, Bhakti yoga for devotion, and Shakti yoga for generating spiritual power and creativity.
Kundalini meditation has also been integrated into the practice of Ashtanga yoga, which focuses on aligning movement with breath. While some of its principles resemble those of the more physically based school of Hatha yoga, the practice of Ashtanga symbolizes its goals through the eight limbs of Ashtanga. This is a symbolic conception of various aspects of yoga practice and includes moral codes, self-purification and study, attention to posture and breath control. It also values the qualities of sense control, intention, meditation and contemplation.
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