Kundalini.Tantra.by.Satyananda.Saraswati

Kundalini, a universal phenomenon
Reports have come from all over the world indicating that there is a
psychophysiological phenomenon which exists outside of the barriers of social, cultural,
religious, geographical and temporal boundaries and which resembles the phenomenon
called kundalini by the yogis and sages of India.
In Northwest Botswana, Africa, the !Kung people of the Kalahari desert dance for
many hours to heat up the n|um so that the !kia state can be obtained. This state of
transcendence resembles that in many yogic texts on kundalini in which states of
consciousness beyond the ordinary and participation in eternity are described. One
tribesman reports that, "You dance, dance, dance, dance. Then the n|um lifts you in your
belly and lifts you in your back, and then you start to shiver... it's hot. Your eyes are open
but you don't look around; you hold your eyes still and look straight ahead. But when you
get into !kia you're looking around because you see everything..." (4)
Judith Cooper writes about the !Kung: "In one of the darker corners of the Dark
Continent the !Kung people of the Kalahari keep in touch with the gods. Two or three
nights a week the men dance around a fire, graceful as leopards, to the sonorous drone of
the women's chants. Soon the mood turns solemn, and the night air swells with unseen
presences. Sweat rolls down the dancers' bodies like sweet rain, as the n|um, the healing
power, starts to boil. The moment of transcendence is painful. When the inner fire shoots
from their bellies up their spines, the dancers shiver and tremble, fall to the ground or go
rigid as stone. Some of them dance into the fire and out again, perfect as gods, their feet
unburned. They can see into the essence of things now, even into the insides of other
people, where malignant ghosts feed on diseased livers or prevent the conception of sons.
Laying their healing hands on the sick, they bid the n|um to drive out the forces of
darkness." (5)
In the Chinese Taoist tradition it is said that when prana or chi, the vital principle, has
accumulated in the lower belly, it bursts out and begins to flow in the main psychic
channels causing involuntary movements and sensations such as pain, itching, coldness,
warmth, weightlessness, heaviness, roughness, smoothness, internal lights and sound and
the feeling of inner movement. It may cause the body to brighten and even illuminate a
dark room. Yin Shih Tsu reported that he felt heat travel from the base of the spine to the
top of the head and then down over his face and throat to his stomach. (6)
These kinds of reports tally exactly with the experiences of yogis who describe
kundalini as travelling up the spine with heat and light or with the surging energy of a
snake preparing to strike. A classical description of kundalini from the yogic tradition
comes from Swami Narayananda:
"There is a burning up the back and over the whole body. Kundalini's entrance into
sushumna occurs with pain in the back... One feels a creeping sensation from the toes and
sometimes it shakes the whole body. The rising is felt like that of an ant creeping up
slowly over the body towards the head. Its ascent is felt like the wiggling of a snake or a