Beth Owl’s Daughter has a wonderful article on the experience of the Kundalini awakening:

[T]he unplanned, or explosive kundalini awakening can be life-shattering and may result in years of difficulty, as we try to integrate and stabilize our changed sense of identity. This is why most yoga practices that work with this soul fire attempt to teach the seeker to gently raise the energy through meditation and awareness of the subtle energetic body.

Still, these awakenings may result in profoundly erratic behavior, speech, and emotional states in the individual experiencing them. Observers have noted that the subject may exhibit involuntary and spasmodic body movements and postures; pain; abnormal breathing patterns; paralysis; tickling itching; vibrating sensations; hot and cold sensations; inner sounds, such as roaring, music, whistling, and chirping; insomnia; hypersensitivity to environment; unusual or extremes of emotions; intensified sex drive; distortion of thought processes; detachment; disassociation; sensations of physical expansion; and out-of-body experiences (OBEs).

This article is part of a series Beth is doing on the three Graces, but an understanding of the way Kundalini energy operates within us is very linked to the Chironic process. I have come to see that Chiron rules the Kundalini energy that flows within our body, and many of us that were born between the mid 1950s and the mid 1980s have an opposition of Chiron to Uranus that accelerates the rising of Kundalini, sometimes in a way that is difficult to manage. Chiron’s goal in its rulership of this magical energy is to free us from the blocks that we place in our energy field to keep us safe, but which also keep us stuck. Sometimes the freeing of those blocks unleashes a flood of energy that we are not always ready for.

Psychoanalyst Stan Grof has a wonderful book called Spiritual Emergency which recognizes that many of these “midlife madness” episodes are actually an unfolding of our spiritual beings. Grof says,

The basic idea is that there exist spontaneous non-ordinary states that would in the west be seen and treated as psychosis, treated mostly by suppressive medication. But if we use the observations from the study of non-ordinary states, and also from other spiritual traditions, they should really be treated as crises of transformation, or crises of spiritual opening. Something that should really be supported rather than suppressed. If properly understood and properly supported, they are actually conducive to healing and transformation.

I have also seen where the Uranus opposition that occurs for most people in the 39-42 age group can bring about an acceleration of the Kundalini and create some mental instability as well as a fantastic spiritual opening to a different way of living a more authentic life.

I have always loved the idea that what we call “mental illness” is actually a spiritual problem that requires a spiritual solution. Certainly medication is useful to help stabilize the individual so that the underlying issues can be dealt with, but medication should be viewed as a temporary aid rather than a permanent cure.