This time there have been 23 responses to date, as follows:

0-25 8
26-35 4
26-45 7
over 45 4

Either the age of awakening is getting younger :)), or simply that more younger people are finding their way to the K-list.

Combining the two polls, the figures are as follows:

Born awake 1
0-25 11
26-35 11
36-45 10
Over 45 9

Pretty evenly divided, oddly enough.

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The posts

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New poll? Jot me down for 21...though I had no idea what was happening at the time.:^)

Oh,

And to respond to your second part of the question...thinking about Jesus' crucifixion.

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I was self-aware at 3 years of age and had my k-awakening at 42 years of age.

Just thinking of a discussion I had with a friend on a trip from Mich to Min.
I asked him how long he felt I was on the spiritual path and he replied oh my...years and years.
I told him I had been on a spiritual path for 5 years... tops. He could not believe it. We talked further and thought that maybe because I had became self aware at 3 this could have something to do with it? Maybe spirituality is linked to becoming self aware? I have always felt 'conscious' and have dealt with it all my life. I feel that I have had compassion when others would not...usually to my physical/emotional detriment.
Only after suffering extremely did I (re)awaken to the spiritual world and its path.

It was only after totally relaxing under a friends fingertips and THEN while haveing sex I experienced having an orgasm. I stayed relaxed up to and through the orgasm but after the first wave that is when the k-awakening occured. I think that staying relaxed and in tune to the electrical feelings that occur during such times, this instead of rushing headlong to the O.

Oh yeah...dont forget to breath...

Rod
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sorry to sounds stupid but what do you mean by your were self aware at 3. How do you know if you have had a full k awakening.
Does it not happen on and off throughout your life. I guess my first k experience was at 24- 2 months ago but how can we be sure about these things and does it really matter. It's something that's in all of us and when we are ready we will open up to it, no?

Jules

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Well, I've always thought it interesting to know at what ages people awaken--especially as more and more people seem to be becoming K-awakened at an early age. My awakening came at age 55.

Love, Hillary

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17 for k- awakening

thanks,
rita

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I was 24 years old when I first experienced Kundalini, and I'm 43 now.

As a young single man of 24, I had been meditating, fasting and otherwise "cleansing" myself for several years in an attempt to get closer to God. One day I was chanting the Rosary to Mother Mary (I'm not Catholic, or even very interested in churches, but I'm attracted to Ascended Masters and Angels...) and clasping my hands tightly over my heart and I started to feel a burning sensation there in the center of my chest. I didn't realize what was happening right away and was a little concerned. It happened for several days in a row before I remembered some Theosophy teachings about Kundalini and then I connected the dots.

I was a little worried at first because I had always heard that you need to have a Guru right there who can help in case things get out of hand. I had nothing like that so I just sat down and asked Mother Mary to stop the Kundalini thing if it was not meant to be or was dangerous to me. Otherwise--I asked Her to watch over me and moderate things, and I'd just keep going and be mindful of keeping pure thoughts.

The next day I sat down to meditate and I touched myself on the top of my head where the soft spot is on a baby. Within about 10 minutes the light had risen up to my crown chakra and was causing the same burning/swelling sensation in the top of my head as had happened the last few day in my heart chakra. The effect on my conscious awareness was pretty amazing. I had always been very sensitive and kind of psychic. But this was a hundred time stronger. I gradually learned how to summon the Light up my spine at will and to direct it into whatever chakra I was working on at the time.

I'm 43 years old now and so I've been lit up with the Kundalini almost constantly for about 19 years now. The worst things that have ever happened to me are short-term headaches from prolonged overuse by projecting too much energy out of my brow or third eye chakra. Also, there are times in which my body gets so lit up that I have a hard time sleeping.

Boyd

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> What age were you when you first became K awakened? 41 years old

>What do you think triggered your awakening?

Many years of meditation and being in front of a Swami, who came to give an introduction talk about Siddha Yoga. (Very unexpected and confusing.)

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I was 31.

I think my surge was built on a pyramid of happenings: three years of hard work in therapy with a psychotherapist who was also a shaman; meditation; Reiki I initiation and tai chi.
The actual awakening itself came on the Rolfing table - whole-body bliss to an amazing degree - followed by three weeks of incredible peace and lightness and wonderful energy surges. (Then came the deep dark hole.) It was totally unexpected. I'd always been afraid of Kundalini (and knew very little about it) so it took me a while to piece it all together.
So not one thing really. I think I was ready and the Rolfing aligned me physically.

Amanda

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I became conciously aware of being k awakened when I was 46. It was triggered by meditation and k has always been kind, considerate and gentle with me.

Love, Maria

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hello all!
my awakening was about 10 months ago, and I am 25 years old. during the past couple of years before, I had done several intense vipassana meditation courses, and meditated every day for some time. I also had a chaotic relationship that broke my identity into pieces and sent me down into depression. my 'pre-kundalini descent', in other words, all the way down into the black underworld to find that divine fire.... in this time I started getting very interested in earth centered religion, goddess worship, shamanism. i also started mixing the vipassana meditation technique with focus on chakras and practising awareness in channeling sexual energy. ('peeling of the desire from the desire'... in lack of better words) in addition, I had smoked quite a bit of marijuana and used hallucinogenics over the last however many years.

the night of the awakening I tumbled through all kinds of sensations and visions and sounds, through the whole night. a couple of days later while I was lying on the floor in meditation, I felt like a layer of skin lifted off me, and my spine started moving like a snake. i sat down in front of my altar, quite confused, and my whole body started moving. i had no idea what was going on... i didn't know what kundalini was, although I had heard of the term. but strangely enough, I was never scared. just observed, and was blown away with gratitude over what I knew was a positive thing. a couple of weeks or so later I was told about kundalini from a friend who was studying History of Religion with me. (a few weeks before that, the same guy had jokingly asked me, while I was indulging in a cigarette outside the university building, 'are you trying to smoke down your kundalini snake?' but i didn't really register it at the time. funny) and it's been like that ever since - little parts of the puzzle falling into place one at a time.

wow, long answer to short question... sorry.

blessings to all
Maria

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Question:

What age were you when you first became K awakened? What do you think triggered your awakening?

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Dear Hillary and List,

I have no idea! ;-) Strange things always happened, i.e., "knowings," dreams, visions. When I was very young I often had bad dreams, altho' I think they were "dreams" of being lost. So lost that it became a horrible nightmare. It could have been a dream of separation from God and not wanting to come into this world. I'm not very comfortable in this world.

When I was six or so, I would, according to my parents, get out of bed and dance in a circle chanting some kind of gibberish -- they said. Robert Peterson writes about this kind of thing in his book on OB experiences.

As I became older I always felt out of place and then began spending a lot of time by myself, lying on my back, crossing and uncrossing my legs. I used to "count" with my fingers all the time. I was always counting.

Then...as I got older, I started having visions...and on it goes. Very boring, most of you here have had the same things. However, I didn't until I came to this list that there ARE people who experience these things!

But as far as "awakening," well, perhaps, I've always been "awake?" When I was four years old, I stuck out my tongue at the pastor. I didn't like him. No reason. I used to "see" fairies?

If I had to actually choose a year when I realized I was awake, I'd say 44. That's because that's the year when I knew I had to find out why I was so different from other people AND that was the year when I knew precisely who Jesus is and was and what the Bible really means as opposed to what most people, myself included, think/thought it means/meant. When I was 45 I was "told" to lead a discussion group on The Course in Miracles -- never read it until then and knew precisely the whole point of the entire Course. It is Kundalini. No one really recognizes this, I find.

Also, it was then I knew that if time is NOW, and everything is happening in the now, karma is simply guilt. It was then I decided that karma doesn't exist, as guilt shouldn't/doesn't exist because we're all the perfect beings in the NOW because time doesn't exist. We are at once at the beginning and the end, without any effort on our part. You see? If we are One, we are totally free, sinless and without karma. Forget the guilt! ;-)

Excuse the rambling. I had to get that out. It's a very hard concept to 'see' but I think, it's the whole point of our being. No worry. Very hard.

So, Hillary, put me down as both always awake and awake at 44...I don't know. Since joining this list I can only conclude that we're all a terribly weird awakened bunch experiencing and exhibiting perhaps, some of the most wonderful mysteries this life has to offer.

;-)

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I was 33 years and 9 months.

I had been practising TM for 3 months. About a year earlier I had read Steven Covey's book "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People." It was in this book that I had heard about the focusing and relaxation benefits of TM. I had approached the Melbourne centre at the time and was outraged at the prices they charged for the group service they offered. I decided they were a cult and decided not to have anything to do with them. The thought of doing it wouldn't go away though. Each Saturday I would see the ad in the newspaper and somehow feel guilty. In October of that year I found out (in 3 different ways) they were teaching the course free in the first week of November in order to lift the vibrations in Melbourne for the '92 state govt. elections. My ex-husband and I did it together.

Prior to this I had been mulling over death. In January '91 my mother in law had died. This was the first funeral I had ever been too. Somehow I had managed to get to my 30's without anyone close to me dying. It seems astonishing now. In August '92 the first man that I had fallen in love with died. In between I had been to 8 other funerals. Everywhere I looked I saw death and decay. I started to ponder the futility of my own existence. I was at a point where the plans and dreams of my youth had happened. I had a husband that I loved, 2 beautiful children, a home that I'd renovated, a business that was doing quite well and a yuppie life style with a wide social network. These things had been the goals in my life, when I got these things then I was going to be completely happy. Instead I felt so empty, so unfulfilled it was almost unbearable. There was nothing left in my world paradigm to hope for. I couldn't project my fulfillment into some imagined future because I couldn't imagine or understand what was missing. Each day I became more mired in the existential angst that was consuming me. I remember getting up one morning and saying out loud "God, if this is it, if I have to live the next 40 or 50 years of my life like this, I'm ready to die now." The really scary thing was that after I said it I realised I meant it to the depth of my being. There wasn't even a small part of me that wanted to retract the statement.

During this period I also started to have realisations that my relationship with my husband wasn't as wonderful as I had believed it was. I started to wonder whether I did really love him. There was really no emotional intimacy and I was carrying a hell of a lot of deep resentment about it. I walked through the family room one day where he was watching TV and turned to him and said "I'm not going to wait for you forever you know," and then wondered what in the hell I meant by that. I had no idea. He didn't bother to ask either. Our relationship had deteriorated to a business relationship with sex. I started to feel really trapped and we went to marriage guidance counselling. It made things worse. More and more stuff was coming to the surface that I could no longer repress. I started to feel I was a slave to my sexual desire and because of that unable to change my life circumstances with my ex. Eventually I stopped having sex with him.

Within a month of starting to meditate, I was feeling a presence that warmed me to my core. Often I would be flooded from above by a golden light. My spirits soared. I remember coming out of meditation one day and saying, "I love therefore I am." I had been pondering Descartes statement, "I think therefore I am," earlier that day. I was overawed by the truth in my variation. I think of this as a golden period. Everything I touched turned to Gold. Our business and staff were flourishing and I seemed to be acheiving things effortlessly in all area's of my life and everything seemed to be charged with a new vitality. I was also having quite incredible spiritual experiences that I was interpreting according to the spiritualist paradigm that I'd discovered a month or so before I'd learned to meditate.

Toward the end of January I started feeling arousal in my genital region. I'd been celebate for about 3 1/2 months by this stage and this arousal made me feel so uncomfortable that I stopped meditating. By this stage I was totally addicted to meditating. It kept happening and eventually after several experiences in meditation it became clear that if my spiritual development was to continue I needed to open up. I sweated over this for two days. I wanted to and didn't want to simultaneously. I had no idea what I was opening too. On February 8, 1993 I jumped into the unknown and accepted the terms and felt the ecstacy of Kundalini for the first time. Over the next 3 months I got the grand tour of my personal heavens and hells as kundalini charged through me on an almost continuous basis. The decision to open up meant that for those three months I couldn't close down again. I had signed up for the complete tour and there was no option to get off again. There is a fine line between pleasure and pain and I crossed it over and over again. In this period I did nothing else accept deal with my internal wars. My family ate takeaways, my house disintegrated into a hovel and I didn't go to work or socialise. Kundalini totally consumed me in a huge battle for soveignty. Eventually I gave up. I see it now as the best thing I have ever done.

Regards,
Julie.

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I was 36, and it happened on the weekend of the solar eclipse in August '99. I had been personally miserable to a point of mental exhaustion, and that was a weekend full of strangely aggressive occurrences, and I've always wondered if the eclipse had something to do with my becoming mysteriously ill with burning brain, dizziness, visual blur, intelligent energy running through my body (and stopping momentarily at all my scarred places, feeling them, doing something to them), a feeling sometimes of an invisible weight dropping over me, difficulty swallowing, etc. I was physically ill and exhausted (diagnosed with "chronic fatigue syndrome") for a year and a half before the spiritual dreams and understandings and precognitive stuff and hypnagogic bliss started, and I came across the k-list about then and started putting it all together.

I think I've been moving towards this all my life. I was interested in spiritual things as a child. And at age three I had some inexplicable awareness of the provincial smallness of the small Arkansas town we lived in, even though I had nothing else to compare it to in my tiny life experience. Some part of me was larger and knew more.

My k-awakening is partial, I suppose. Only once have I had warm energy move up my spine and pleasantly pop all my vertebrae, and that in half-sleep. No freight trains, thankfully. But I can feel things going on in my chakras. So I've definitely got a toe in the water (and can't imagine what full immersion would do to me).

Shelle
away for a while, but back and hoping you're all well

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It was the 4th of July 2002, I am 33 now.

My awakening came with the simplist meditation. For almost one month I decieded to sit quitly with the intention to receive communications from my soul/ inner being or blend with them. Then focusing only on my breath, let go of all thoughts simply go into allowing state. I leared this meditation form ABRAHAM http://www.abraham-hicks.com/

I started receiving movements and vocal expressions, different types of breathing including "Bastrika", asanas I never new before that felt so exact, prefectly in place and pleasurable bodily sensations. Sometimes those movements look like marshal arts or moderen dance. My experience combined with new hightened awarence, creativity, ability to focus and a sense of aliveness. Joy is a very natural state of being that my smile wouldn't leave my face.

Three month ago I got to my greatest challenge with kundalini. I wouldn't speak about it now.

My preparations started when I was a little kid. Universal matters were always like my own personal matters. I can see how I've been attracting people, books and great teachings all over my life.

Thanks Hillary
Mohamed Omar

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I would say that my awakening has happened in stages throughout my life (I'm 49). As a very young child I had visions and various psychic experiences and for as long as I can remember my spiritual life has been of primary importance. When I was around 14 I had panic attacks for no apparent reason, and looking back I think that these were K related. However it was in 1994 that I can definately say I experienced K "symptoms" and the start of a huge shift in consciousness.

Hope this is helpful, it is very interesting reading other list members replies to this poll.

Love Carole

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Hi,

When I was younger I was quite self aware from what I remember. I seemed to follow my own little pattern to drop thoughts and unconscious things/habits. When I was 6 or so I saw my mum talking to herself. I remember seeing how crazy it looked and decided never to do it, not even in thoughts. So I didn't think too much when I was young.

A little realization started when I was 10 or so at school, I hadn't done my homework and I knew the teacher was going to be angry. I was quite worried, but suddenly had a realization that there's no need to worry. That it was just a feeling. If I am aware then there will be no problems, when the confrontation with the teacher comes it won't last long. Why worry? So I started to use that understanding and applied it to each little annoyance that came up in my mind.

When I was 18 I had an out of body experience and was very excited about it all. I started to get quite obsessed with them. Used to practice each night and have around 3 a week. I loved to explore! But I ran out of interest eventually and motivation. Started to get very tired. I went through a long stage of emptiness, without much enthusiasm and some painful feelings started happening in my spine.

Only a few months ago when I was 19 I had a very painful time - a lot of heat, and energy rushes, a lot of fear. I don't know when the kundalini process started, perhaps when this pain began or sometime around the OBE phase. Perhaps before that.
I remember feeling some energy going through me throughout the last year or so, but it only just started to get quite noticeable recently, in May 2003.

All the best!

Tom

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I would have to say that my Kundalini awakening probably began at about age 23.

I had just started to study Yoga book a friend gave me. I noticed when I started practicing the Yoga postures that I felt a strong "stirring" that I did not comprehend. Though in a way "it" felt sexual, I knew it was spiritual in nature. I had no idea what it meant.

One night I became aware of this very strong loving "presence" which seemed to encompass me. This energy kept increasing, as soon as I adjusted to the loving energy it would increase again. This increasing energy, and my subsequent adjustment, repeated for a few hours. The energy was so intense at the beginning of each increase it was almost painful until I adjusted. I was aware of what felt like every cell in my body vibrating in response to this energy.

The next day I could psychically see I was surrounded by an energy/light which was pinkish-violet in color. When I moved my hand I could see the energy flow from my hand kind of like a cloud of energy floating in the direction I moved my hand.

This same experience has repeated occasionally over the years since. The visions I experienced along with this loving energy have always been different.

Spiritrose

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Hi, All,

This is really great, reading everyone's stories! For myself, I have been spiritually aware all my life, but had no idea of Kundalini until age 49. In the five years or so before that I had developed rheumatoid arthritis, and so was exploring many alternative health options, including Reiki attunement and other energetic methods. Along with my arthritis I also experienced bouts of spontaneous trancing, getting lost in the designs of wood grains or Celtic knotwork. I thought it must just be another symptom of my disease. Then last year I took a class in Qi Gong. After 1 week I was being awakened every night by kriyas, and my back and stomach area was aching with the need for the muscles to contract. I finally surrendered to it and experienced more orgasmic activity than I had in my whole life previous.

I was totally freaked out until a psychic reader told me that this type of experience was quite normal for a Kundalini awakening. What a relief to have a frame of reference! Things are progressing slowly for me, but that is in keeping with the rest of my life. Sometimes I think I am in a completely different time dimension than the rest of the world. While the rest of the world lives through a month, I experience about a week. Meanwhile, I am enjoying the rushes of energy as they occur. Oh, yeah, I also want to mention that since I began taking the chemotherapy drug Methotrexate for my arthritis, my once beautiful hair had gotten really dull & lifeless, but Kundalini has brought it back!

Love you all,

Carol

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I started experiencing the external symptoms of kundalini at 27, seven months ago, but it really started at 26, when I started the turning back.

The kundalini process, or cleaning process started when I reached my limit and decided I was not going to make any more efforts. I had been since six years making bigger and bigger efforts to solution ( "overcoming" in my old syntaxis)some mental problems who had transform my daily life, in a very dificult daily life. :). At a point I decided that If live was going to be like that I didnīt wanted to live. So I sttoped doing any effort and just let everything heal by itself. As months passed I deepened more and more in the ideas of "letting go" and understood that that was exactly what I should have done from the begining. After a year my body awakened and the process got faster and amazing. As I had already assimilated the notion of "letting go everything" ( surrendering to Goddes) the process went through me smooth, healing and repairing and causing no harm, whowhever full of confusive situations and experiences.

Chao.

elargonauto.

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Dear list,

I was 19 when suddenly the world around me changed in a way I never could have imagined before. I am still unsure what exacly triggered the awakening but some notable circumstances seem to have played a role.

First of all it was a very stressful time, I was heading for my school leaving examination and I had to learn a lot (I was actually learning math when I first realised that something is ongoing).

Secondly I was using drugs like exctacy some days before that, so my first idea was, that the drugs were to blame for my strange state. But after consultations of all kinds of medical experts in the succeeding months I finally opened myself to mediation which took away all the fear and desperation. This is now almost ten years ago when this long journey began...

Furthermore I was kind of sick of it all, not seeing any sense in life. When I look back I can see that I was somewhat "living on the edge", one step further and I would have lost myself in drugs and futility. So nowadays I see the process, which is still ongoing, as a salvation, even though the first months were the hardest of my life up to now. Somehow all which happened makes sense.

First I was very concerned in all these factors which may have triggered the awaking. But with the time I got the impression that it is not really important which factors might have been important. In some cases they seem to be obvious, sometimes not. For me they served as a first explanation, an conceptial aid which made it easier for the mind to label and understand. But after all, the process seems to have intelligence, it chooses factors which fit in ones live, that's just it.

P.S. I have put a more detailed version of my first awaking in my answer to the thread "an interesting interrupting email" on 07/04/03

Light and Love,
Lars

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Triggered at age 16 -- able to live with it by age 21. :)

ken

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coming back from holidays I found a lot of great stories about the age of kundalini awakening! And now I like to tell again my awakening because I've not found many stories of k from yoga practising.

I'm 49 and I have been practising yoga for 6 years but, even before, Iloved a lot to study dance and gym in different ways. I'm never been able to stay still. My main job is archaelogy and so, I had the tools to study about religions history and particulary egyptian, greek and roman religion and the ways on which antique deities were rappresented. I saw movements everywhere, from the lotus flowers growning to the ancient dancers and snakes carved on the reliefs.

When I found Iyengar yoga I understood this was my path and I begun to practise every day; now I have half an hour of pranayama in the morning and 1-2 hours of asanas in the evening. It is a lot of time as I'm not yet a yoga teacher and I have an other full-time and non relaxing job, but, I'm never been so happy before!

At the beginning of May, I was practising asanas on my own, as usually in the evening, and I felt this new movement in the bottom of my spine. It was an unforgettable feeling! From this moment, I felt K reising until the top of my spine, between the neck and the brain. But I never felt K going upper than the top of the spine. I started to try meditation after yoga practising. Sometimes, from the neck the feeling becomes wider and paceful, sometimes I feel only the K reising and it is very burning.

None of my yoga teachers really believes me. I spent two weeks of holidays in an intensive yoga practise and I said to the teacher these effects of yoga but he said it was only an energy awakening and this cannot be called Kundalini. I don't know and I don't care of it; I thought it was correct make my teacher known about the results of his teachings on my body and my mind

I'd like to know if someone in the list had the same experience, starting from practising asanas. It might be interesting because really a so rich teaching like Iyengar Yoga is not widely known for K-awakening. The week later my first experience i was so lucky to find your list!

Love Emanuela

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My awakening was at 42. I still do not know what triggered it, but it may have been my intense reading of the Seth book "The Nature of Personal Reality". I feel that my life has evolved in 7 year cycles, and that each 7th year was a growth spurt for me, with the kundalini awakening in August of my 42nd year. It was very intense, and included almost aching sexual arousal all the way up to what felt like full-body explosions. The sound and electricity were all encompassing and almost unbearable at times, frequently culminating in the sudden stillness of OBE's.

I was kundalini-ignorant throughout the process, but early on I made the conscious decision to let go to it and trust it, which quickly changed the process from frightening to magical for me. It lasted about a year, and gradually toned down and faded, but I was left in a higher place, for which I am forever grateful. I was also changed physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, feeling like a new and improved version. :-)