Kundalini Awakening: What I Learned When the Serpent Found Me

⚠️ A note before you read. This article describes intense altered-state experiences, including a kundalini activation and two ayahuasca ceremonies. These practices are not safe for everyone. If you have a history of psychosis, severe trauma, dissociation, or heart conditions, do not pursue them without professional guidance. This is one person's account, not a recommendation.

The snake has terrible PR.

If you grew up anywhere near a Judeo-Christian tradition, the serpent is the villain — the deceiver, the reason humanity "falls into sin." But in nearly every other wisdom tradition on Earth, the serpent is the symbol of awakening. The teacher. The thing that wakes you up.

This is what happened the year I stopped running from it.

What is kundalini awakening?

Kundalini awakening is the activation of a dormant energy traditionally described in yogic and tantric texts as a coiled serpent at the base of the spine. When awakened, this energy rises through the central channel and the chakras, producing intense physical, emotional, and spiritual phenomena. It is a process — sometimes gentle, sometimes overwhelming — and not a one-time event.

It started at the base of my spine

The facilitator had placed one hand on my crown and the other near my heart, and my body exploded.

That is the only word that fits. A charge of electricity shot up from the base of my spine and my conscious mind — the part of me that analyses and narrates and tries to stay in control — stepped aside.

Something else took over.

I should say this upfront: I was sober. No ayahuasca, no mushrooms, nothing visionary. The only thing I'd had was ceremonial cacao. I could feel the cacao warming my chest, loosening something.

But when the energy began to move, that warmth was nothing compared to what came next.

My body started moving in ways I wasn't directing. Shaking, convulsing, breathing in rhythms I'd never breathed in before. My spine and head rolled in waves.

Wherever there was tension or a blockage, the energy found it and worked through it in whatever way it saw fit.

I could feel it travelling up through each chakra, one by one, like a snake climbing my spine from the inside.

I had no conscious control. The only thing left to do was surrender.

"Follow your energy"

Eleven months earlier, my coach had said something that I understood theoretically but not practically:

"Follow your energy. When you're in flow with your energy, it will tell you what to do next. You don't have to force anything. You just follow it."

At the end of that session, he handed me two books: Serpent Rising and Shakti: The Ultimate Guide to Tapping into the Divine Feminine Energy.

At the time, I was still deeply skeptical about "energy." I could barely feel it.

I'd done some Reiki sessions, but my life didn't transform afterwards. I'd done Qigong. I felt some sensations, yes, but they were subtle. Even during ecstatic dancing and holotropic breathwork, where I genuinely felt energies unblock, I still didn't trust that I could access that realm reliably and safely in everyday life.

It felt elusive. Something that only appeared under special conditions.

So I entered 2025 with a quiet intention: to investigate what energy is.

2025, as it happens, was the Year of the Snake.

It turned out the snake had been listening.

The snake in Genesis

If you grew up anywhere near a Judeo-Christian tradition, the serpent is the villain of the story: the deceiver who convinces Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge, and the reason humanity "falls into sin."

In Genesis 3 it's written:

"Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, 'Did God really say, You must not eat from any tree in the garden?' …'You will certainly not die,' the serpent said to the woman. 'For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.'"

That part wasn't a lie. Their eyes were opened. They gained the knowledge of duality, of good and evil.

But there's another phrase in the serpent's promise that most of us skip past: "you will be like God."

Not you will learn about God.

Not you will obey God.

You will be like God.

The call from the spirit

The serpent first came to me through a dream.

I was at an art business conference, surrounded by people performing importance at each other.

In the corner stood a woman who didn't match the energy of the room. There was something almost angelic about her presence. We started talking and I asked her what she did.

"I run a gallery," she said, "with artists who work with the spirit of Mother Ayahuasca, artists who channelled wisdom from the cosmic consciousness."

I woke up. It felt like a message, though I couldn't decode it yet.

Later that same day, I took my dog for a walk. A woman appeared on the path with her husky. She looked remarkably like the woman from the dream.

I asked, half casually, "What's your dog's name?"

"Aya," she replied.

"Aya?" I repeated, not quite believing it.

"Yes, Aya," she confirmed.

Goosebumps crawled up my body. My intuition told me this was not a coincidence.

That same day, an email arrived from a shamanic practitioner I knew. She had one spot left on an ayahuasca retreat happening in three weeks.

I knew Mother Ayahuasca, also known as the serpent spirit, had called me.

Eating the forbidden fruit

Over two ayahuasca ceremonies, the serpent spirit showed me something very different from what I was expecting.

I thought I'd spend hours wrestling with childhood trauma, maybe accompanied by literal snakes slithering through my psyche and making me vomit. There was some trauma release, yes, but it was a tiny fraction of what actually unfolded.

Most of the time, I was experiencing the other half of the serpent's promise:

You will be like God.

My third eye opened. Fractals and sacred geometry bloomed behind my eyelids before dissolving into something far more spacious — a field of awareness where everything imagined already exists and all things are possible.

My ego scrambled for something to hold on to. A name. A profession. A story about who I am. But in that field, nothing sticks. Every identity it builds collapses in seconds, replaced by another, then another, endlessly. When it finally lets go, what remains is nothing and everything.

I could also feel energy in a way I never had before. The etheric body — that subtle layer extending just beyond the physical — became tangible. I could feel every layer of energetic vibration: in the music, in the people around me, in every thought-form.

Everything I'd studied in esoteric texts and dismissed as abstract was suddenly as real as my own hands.

I could see duality for what it really was: Māyā. Good and evil, yin and yang, masculine and feminine, feeling and reason, self and other — not opposites, but two expressions of the same energy, two sides of the same coin.

Then I noticed I was in a conversation with this consciousness.

Q: What's the bottleneck in my life right now?
A: Not listening to yourself. Not listening to your energy.

Q: How do I reach this state without ayahuasca?
A: You already know. Fasting and meditation.

Each answer landed instantly — not as intellectual knowledge, but as something my whole body understood.

Then I realised that I was having an internal dialogue with myself this whole time.

There is no separation between "me" and this cosmic consciousness. There never had been one.

And every answer I received was something I'd always known.

What Plato said finally clicked: "Learning is remembering."

I'm here to remember what I've always known.

The serpent who told the truth

Steve Jobs famously kept one book on his iPad: Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. Before he died, he requested that a copy be given to each of the 500 people who attended his funeral.

In that book, Yogananda's teacher Sri Yukteswar offers a symbolic reading of the Genesis story. He explains that the passage cannot be understood literally.

The tree of life is the human body. The spinal cord is like an upturned tree, with the hair as its roots and the nerves as branches. The fruits are our senses.

When that energy moves only downward, driven by primal instincts, we become animal. We get trapped in the illusion of duality: good and evil, Adam and Eve, reason and feeling, self and other. We forget our higher nature.

But when the same energy rises through the spine, it becomes the force that carries us back to Eden — back to our godlike nature.

We realise that separation is an illusion and that we are at one with anything and everything.

"The personal responsibility of every human being is to restore his dual nature to a unified harmony, or Eden."

Sri Yukteswar wasn't saying anything new.

In many mystical traditions, the serpent is the force that drives us towards direct experience and awakening. It is the urge to see with our own inner sight rather than outsourcing our truth to external authority.

In ancient Egyptian traditions, the cobra is the symbol of protection and revelation of hidden truth, opening the inner eyes of initiates to what lies beyond ordinary perception. It is imprinted on every Pharaoh's crown.

In the Hermetic tradition, two serpents climbing a staff — the caduceus — represent the unity of opposites.

In yogic teachings, the serpent is Kundalini itself: the coiled potential at the base of the spine that, when fully awakened, brings a person into enlightenment.

The serpent can make you fall, but it can also wake you up.

Serpent rising

A few months after the ayahuasca ceremonies, I went to a Kundalini Activation ceremony.

"Unlike Reiki or some other energy work, we're not channelling anything external," the facilitator explained. "We're working with the dormant energy already within you."

I wasn't unfamiliar with this energy. I'd felt it in Dr. Joe Dispenza's meditations, where he almost always starts with kundalini ascension — pulling the energy from the root chakra up to the brain. But in those states, I was still in control.

This time, control was taken from me.

The energy that moved through my body was more intense than anything I'd experienced in the ayahuasca ceremonies. I need to say that again because I still can't quite believe it: completely sober, no substance whatsoever, and this was the most powerful energetic experience of my life.

I had no control. And I realised I didn't need any.

Everything my coach said in January suddenly made sense in my body.

Follow your energy. You don't have to force anything.

You just surrender to it. You let it move you.

Signs of kundalini awakening

The serpent doesn't always come through a ceremony. For some, it surfaces gradually — through meditation, breathwork, somatic practice, or unexpectedly during a period of intense emotional opening. Common signs include:

• Spontaneous shaking, trembling, or involuntary movement during meditation or rest
• Sudden waves of heat or tingling running up the spine
• Vivid pre-sleep imagery or symbolic dreams
• Changes in sleep, appetite, or energy
• Sensitivity to sound, light, electromagnetic fields, or other people's emotional states
• Spontaneous emotional release (crying, laughter, grief) without obvious trigger
• A sense of expanded perception or non-dual awareness

Mild versions of these are common in serious meditators. Sustained, overwhelming versions can be destabilising. If you are experiencing a "kundalini crisis" — disorientation, sleeplessness, or severe psychological symptoms — work with a qualified teacher or therapist familiar with the territory.

The snake that sheds

The serpent came for me multiple times this year. Each time, something I thought was me turned out to be a skin I'd outgrown.

A snake that can't shed doesn't just stop growing. It dies. The old skin hardens and constricts until the snake can't survive inside it anymore.

As this Year of the Snake closes:

What version of you needs to die, so that something truer can live?

FAQ

What is kundalini awakening in simple terms?

Kundalini awakening is the activation of a dormant energy described in yogic traditions as a coiled serpent at the base of the spine. When awakened, this energy rises through the spinal column and the chakras, producing physical sensations (heat, vibration, involuntary movement), emotional release, and altered states of consciousness. It is generally understood as a stage of spiritual awakening, not an end-point.

Is kundalini awakening dangerous?

It can be intense. For most people who encounter it through gentle practices (meditation, gradual yoga, qualified teachers), it unfolds slowly and beneficially. For others — especially with unstable nervous systems, untreated trauma, or sudden activation through aggressive practices or psychedelics — it can produce a "kundalini crisis" with disorientation, insomnia, or psychological destabilisation. Approach the territory with respect and ideally a qualified teacher.

How do you know if you're having a kundalini awakening?

Common signs include spontaneous spinal vibration or shaking during stillness, heat or tingling rising up the back, vivid symbolic dreams, intensified emotional sensitivity, and altered perception. Mild forms are normal in serious meditators. Sustained, life-disrupting forms warrant working with someone who knows the territory.

Do you need ayahuasca or psychedelics to awaken kundalini?

No. Traditionally, kundalini is awakened through years of yoga, meditation, breathwork, mantra, and devotional practice — without substances. Plant medicines like ayahuasca can occasion experiences that feel kundalini-like, but the energetic territory is the same one accessible through embodied contemplative practice. Many practitioners consider the slower, sober path safer and more sustainable.

What does the serpent symbolise across traditions?

In yogic traditions, kundalini. In ancient Egyptian tradition, the cobra is sacred protection and hidden knowledge. In Hermetic tradition, the caduceus's twin serpents represent unity of opposites. In some Indigenous Amazonian traditions, ayahuasca herself appears as the serpent spirit. Across nearly every tradition outside Genesis, the serpent represents awakening — direct knowledge, embodied wisdom, and the urge to see with one's own inner sight.

Can you trigger a kundalini awakening intentionally?

You can prepare the ground: consistent meditation, breathwork, yoga, somatic practice, ethical living, and working with a teacher. But the awakening itself isn't a button you press. It happens when the system is ready. Forcing it tends to either produce destabilisation or nothing at all.

Continue the work

• Expand Your Consciousness — the broader pillar this sits inside.
• Tap into the Power of the Unconscious — for the layer of the psyche that the serpent first reveals.
• Shadow Work & Self Discovery — for the parts of the old skin that need to be met before they can be shed.

With love,

Ginny Wan