Waking Energy 7 Timeless Practices Designed to Reboot Your Body and Unleash Your Potential

utterly impassable—at least in their minds. The kundalini sequences are so challenging not because
they require physical strength or ability, but because it takes something that powerful to move past the
doubting mind of the ego to find liberation. In order to taste freedom, I had to make it through the
gauntlet of the limited, objecting mind to land safely, truly safely, upon the shores of greater
possibility—where I would discover my infinite self, my limitless potential.
It was this stoking of the inner fire that promised there was something better, beyond the familiar,
beyond “good enough.” And I wanted something better than the anti-anxiety drugs and antidepressants
(as useful as they could be at times). It was this merging of body with will and love that could not
only silence the doubting mind, but quell fear and separation (from rational thought and truth) and
restore me to myself.
The Power to Weather the Storm
Though I may have first been introduced to kundalini in the late 1990s, I didn’t really understand its
power until I experienced a relentless string of anxiety attacks after a great personal loss in 2008. It
was my mother who found articles on how going into the eye of the storm and inviting anxiety to pull
up a chair and have some tea was the way to stop it in its tracks even before it had mounted its attack.
When I practiced this direct approach along with my kundalini, I felt as though I had won the
lottery. I felt a kind of relief, safety, and peace of mind I had never known until then. I felt
empowered. After experiencing its miraculous benefits, I knew that the next time I found myself on the
edge of the fire swamp, I would have the right artillery to beat back those big, ugly fire rats before
they could even start to think of nibbling at my heels.
Kundalini came to my rescue again just a few years ago when my healthy and powerful mother,
who came from hardy eastern European Jewish stock, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in late
May 2013. Though she beat it and went into full remission months later, by January 2014 she had
decided that she had suffered enough and stopped treatment. The cancer came back with a vengeance.
By July 2014, she was moved to hospice and prepared for flight.
I was overcome with so much emotion, fear, and reckless anxiety that I didn’t know what to do. I
stood in my sister’s living room, trying somehow to manage the agony of what was happening. I felt
the rumblings of the inner tsunami building. Instead of being able to move past the shock to tears,
which would have actually served as a release, I felt I was being dragged, bound and gagged, toward
a precipice where a hungry pterodactyl waited, licking its lips and salivating. It had been years since
I’d felt anxiety’s vise grip, and I was frozen, incredulous that this slide into Hades could be
happening to me again.
But this time was different. This time I was different. I was prepared. I had my secret weapon.
Exhausted, terrified, and shaking, I started my kundalini practice and with each kriya (exercise), I felt
the thoughts of impending doom recede a bit more. The anxiety didn’t just whimper and slink away; it
shrieked like a banshee and ran out of the room at breakneck speed. And there I was—somehow
standing tall, starting to believe that I might live to see another day.
Out of all the other practices I could have done, kundalini was what I chose in that moment,
because I knew it was the only thing powerful enough to match the intensity and velocity of what was