When I experienced my ´moment´ of spiritual awakening (read about it here), I had never heard of Kundalini energy or a Kundalini awakening. It was not until I learned about chakras that this was a thing, and that I had actually experienced a Kundalini awakening myself.

After doing some research, I came to understand that the rising of our Kundalini energy can occur in different ways for different people. It can happen very fast (and painfully), or it can be a more gradual process.

Because some of the ‘symptoms’ of a Kundalini awakening are in a way similar to a spiritual awakening, it is easy to confuse the two, but they actually are two different things (although they can occur simultaneously!). Here is what I found out about how they are different, and what my personal experience was like.

What Is A Kundalini Awakening?

Kundalini energy is the most fundamental life force energy in the universe. This energy resides in all of us and sits dormant at the bottom of our spine (in the sacrum) from the moment we are born.

This energy, often referred to as Shakti, is described as a red serpent like energy that is surrounding our root chakra. (If your not familiar with the chakras, check out this post).

The rising of this energy along your spine through your chakras is called a Kundalini awakening.

During a Kundalini awakening, the energy rises up the spine in order to eventually flow out through your crown chakra and merge with your full energetic body.

When this energy is activated, you will experience a shift in your energy and your consciousness. This shift can happen gradually, but it can also happen very quickly, in which case the ‘hit’ can feel much more intense.

A Kundalini awakening is basically an energetic level up of the power of your soul. You will feel stronger within yourself and you will find that you have gained a certain knowledge that seemed hidden to you before.

Because Kundalini energy is universal, it contains information about you on a soul level. This includes your awareness of universal consciousness, as well as information about your life’s mission and trauma from current and previous lifetimes.

No wonder that a Kundalini awakening will accelerate your capacity to heal subconscious trauma, and even ancestral wounds that you were not even aware existed!

Note that the energy can either stay dormant at the bottom of the spine your whole life (in which case you can still lead a perfectly happy life in the physical world!), or it can awaken and rise up along your spine at some point in your life.

Activated Kundalini energy opens up a life in other dimensions beyond the dimension of our physical world. There is no need for this to happen to live happily, but when it happens, you will certainly feel an increase in the power of your soul as this marks an evolution in your consciousness here on earth.

Kundalini Awakening vs Spiritual Awakening: The Difference

The main difference between a Kundalini awakening and a spiritual awakening is the fact that a Kundalini awakening is an energetic process, whereas a spiritual awakening is more of a mental process of self discovery.

One does not exclude the other. That is why it is very well possible to experience a Kundalini awakening as well as a spiritual awakening at the same time, but it doesn’t have to happen that way.

During my spiritual awakening, that in retrospect was actually more like a Kundalini awakening that sparked my spiritual awakening, I experienced a clear surge of energy and a sudden feeling of energetic connectness with everything around me. I experienced an intense feeling of bliss, a high.

I had an instant feeling that my world, an my perspective on it, had completely changed in the blink of an eye. It did not happen after a process of self reflection or studying, it just happened instantaneously.

During a spiritual awakening you will also experience a shift in consciousness, but without the intense or instantaneous energetic sensations in your body. Therefore, a Kundalini awakening is initially a physical process, and a spiritual awakening is more focused on the mind.

Kundalini Awakening Symptoms

Because both a Kundalini awakening as well as a spiritual awakening are very personal processes and different for everyone, it is not surprising that the experiences vary from person to person.

I did however notice there being a clear distinction in the intensity of how people experience a Kundalini awakening. It is experienced either in a fast, very intense, and often painful way, or in a more gradual, and even blissful way. I´m in that second category.

These are some of the common symptoms for both of these:

Less Intense / Gradual Kundalini Awakening

• A sudden sense of oneness with the universe
• A feeling of ectasy and extreme bliss
• Heightened senses
• Getting visions, vivid dreams or seeing light flashes
• Strong feeling of connection to your intuition
• A sudden change in perspective on life
• A release of old patterns and limiting beliefs
• Questioning everything and life as you knew it
• A strong sense of compassion and understanding for all living beings
• A deep sense of understanding of life
• A surge of synchronicities happening in your life

👉 Some of these points are also common to experience at some point during a spiritual awakening process, but in that case, they happen less suddenly, and more often occur after a period of self-discovery.

Very Intense / Sometimes Painful Kundalini Awakening

Some people have a more extreme experience when it comes to Kundalini awakening. These are often easier to distinguish from a spiritual awakening, because they are such intense and obviously physical sensations:

• An intense feeling of sharp pain shooting through the body (sometimes described as many knives or a fire bolt shooting up)
• Extreme sensitivity to light, sounds and other sensations
• Sleeping problems
• Seeing intense visions, vivid dreams
• Extreme boosts of energy, either high or low
• Shaking of the body
• Tiredness, hyper energetic
• Heat flushes
• An overall feeling of extreme instability

How Does A Kundalini Awakening Happen?

There are different opinions out there about how a Kundalini awakening can happen, and whether it is possible to force it or not.

Personally, I doubt whether it could be forced, and I tend to agree with Christina Lopes´ explanation in this video, where she explains her belief (from many years of experience) that a Kundalini awakening only happens when you are ready for it.

The reason being that any universal consciousness transcends the consciousness of our rational minds, so therefore this intelligence knows way better than our mind (the ego) when we are ready for it to happen.

It would be quite egoic to think that our ego would be smarter than a universal consciousness, and would be able to decide when to awaken the Kundalini energy.

I strongly believe that the release of the energy goes along with what our body is able to handle, and what we are destined to go through. After all, there is no good reason for your subconscious to overload your system unnecessarily..

By all means, please let me know if you have had a different experience!

How About You?

If you like to know more, check out the book Kundalini Awakening for Beginners, it has all the information you need about the Kundalini energy, and includes many exercises (from yoga to meditation) and in-depth techniques to work with the chakra system.

What is your experience with all this? Have you experienced a Kundalini awakening or a spiritual awakening? What was that like?

I’d be interested to hear about your experiences in the comments! 🙂

This post was all about the difference between a Kundalini awakening and a spiritual awakening.