From: Yogani
Date: Tue Mar 9, 2004 10:59am

Q: I have been practicing yoga and pranayama for about six years. I started this practice to get rid of my asthma condition now I succeeded to 90%. Normally I do not do meditation except some self-affirmations and relaxation after my pranayama. The sound OM does not much interest me for my religious background. Now I found you and practicing the meditation as per your instructions for the past 50days. (For the past three years my yoga is not regular, but I do pranayama for five minutes a day, before starting meditation)

When I started the meditation it was good and in few days a sort of pleasant cool breeze (cool current) started flowing in my back during and after the meditation. During my prayers during the day and afternoon I feel the same sensation in my back spreading till my upper back. I do pranayama and meditation in sidhasana.

My question is, for the ten days during the day around 10 A.M. till 2.30 to 3 P.M. I am having the cool current sensation flowing in only in my both the legs and hands from the shoulder till the finger tips. Some times it is very strong but pleasant. Please le me know what this condition is. As for my understanding the energy flows in the upper parts of the body not down. Please let me know what it is or it is the energy flowing down instead of upward. Kindly advise.

A: It is kundalini energy. It can be very evident in the legs and arms. You have heard the expression, “lotus feet?” Kundalini goes wherever the nervous system goes. This means to every cell in the body. It begins in the spinal nerve (sushumna) and radiates from there, sometimes instantaneously with the rise of ecstatic conductivity in the spinal nerve, and other times with some delay in time as kundalini energy works its way out from the spinal nerve. Also, energetically, the subtle nervous system reaches far beyond the body via the aura, and kundalini goes there also. That is how others can feel our rising ecstatic bliss. Good vibrations, you know.

Many years ago the same experience you describe rose in me. It was so pleasurably intense in my legs and feet that the only way I could calm it down was by walking barefoot all over the neighborhood. It was like having orgasms in my feet. I had the same thing in the arms and hands too. Being physically active helps smooth it out. You may want to check out the lesson on kundalini symptoms and remedies if you feel the need to smooth it out.

The symptoms have much to do with friction between kundalini energy and deep obstructions coming out. In time it evens out to be much smoother unending ecstatic feelings everywhere in the body. Ecstatic living!

If I have to take a guess, I’d say your pranayama has been opening your nervous system up over the past few years, and now meditation is taking advantage of that cultivated situation. You are very wise to be taking up meditation to complement your pranayama. The relationship of these two practices, and the importance of doing both, is discussed throughout the lessons, beginning with first instructions in spinal breathing. You may wish to bring your pranayama up to the spinal breathing level, if you have not already. This speeds up the effects of pranayama, while at the same time providing much more balance of energies in the nervous system, so there is more progress with less chance of excessive energy flows.

Good things are happening.

Click here for additional lesson content on the role of Hand Mudras in relation to Kundalini currents.

The guru is in you.