Meditation/relaxation Sudden Burning Sensation Options

Has anyone ever recieved a sudden 'burning sensation' while they were meditating? I was doing my usual 15 minute a day meditations and I suddenly felt the front of my stomach completely burn up like it was some powerful energy floating around, but it wasn't a painful burn it was a comforting burn (If that makes sense) but it was deffinitly intense. My only assumption is I was meditating on a sun of light moving around my body, maybe my body kind of manifested and felt what I was feeling on my body. I kind of needed to stop and recollect myself and continue because I never felt that sensation before - has anyone else experienced anything like this? I've been researching and the only thing I could come up with is kundalini injury or something, any ideas

This sensation would seem to be more connected to the sun meditation than kundalini activity. I say this primarily because it is similar to the sensations that arise when meditating on fire energy, solar energy, etc., such as in the condensation of elemental energy. The solar plexus is the point at which we exercise control over our breathe, and is therefore also the place at which we assimilate energy to be stored in the dan-tian just below and internal to the navel.

Kundalini is specifically the latent nervous energy in the spinal cord, specifically at the root of the spine. It is the potential energy of the nervous system released after the nervous system (the physical, organic system of the body) has been toned and prepared such that it is able to handle the refined energy.

If you have been practicing yoga every day for some time now - a year or more - and your meditations center primarily on emptiness and being, with very little visualization, then it is a possibility.

There's a lot of information about kundalini on this forum, and a lot on the internet, however I personally am disinclined to believe the majority of it, especially that regarding the 'raising' of kundalini. I was fortunate to speak with the spiritual master of a friend - that is, a woman she accepts as a spiritual master - who is in the vedic/yoga tradition. She did not talk about kundalini specifically, but she had to say about meditation in general this: "that imagination is strong, then this is good, and to dream is healthy; but meditation is about emptiness. If we use intellect to meditate, mind is still clouded. If we use imagination to meditate, mind is still clouded. When mind is empty, then consciousness will awake from dream."

I spent time considering her words, and came to the conclusion that there must be a difference between 'chi' and 'kundalini'.

Eh, in any case before using a term like kundalini, I would spend some time studying it from its cultural context, not to berate you for considering it, but the majority of the time I have heard it referenced it has been taken into consideration without the support of the literature and theory that do very well to document this phenomenon, it symptoms, etc.

If you're interested in kundalini phenomenon, you might consider a book by krishna gopi, "Kundalini: The evolutionary energy in man." For it's discussion of kundalini phenomenon from a personal point of view of Gopi himself, as well as his later musings on the nature of kundalini, I found this book to be most helpful understanding what kundalini is and how/why it arises under the conditions that it typically does.

peace

I wouldn't call it a "kundalini injury" but it might be an arousal of so-called kundalini. Although the literature explains it in different ways and although people like to go with the oft en-ead point that the sensation begins at the base of the spine, I can tell you from personal experience and the direct reports of others that it can be experienced as beginning as an intense heat in the abdomen that may then press upward, crossing the neck into the head. When it does happen, especially the first or second time it happens, it is kind of shocking--fascinating, ecstatic,and terrifying at the same time. It is not that uncommon but it is rare that it leaves a person "enlightened." The energy "burns through" the system. Although it is metaphorically spoken of as occuring in the etheric body in the chakra system, it is occuring in a loop in the brain--and some Hindu spiritual teachers and yogis are indeed also speaking about it in these terns nowadays. A dramatic change in consciousness occurs. But for most people, they become quickly reoriented, the energy filters back down, and they go back to ordinary life. A paradigmatic shift has occurred., though, and they are different than before. The meditative experience is actually a symptom or epiphenomenon of it and it can occur again and again. Change then occurs gradually. The mistake for the practitioner is to become desirous of or addicted to the sensation or having grandiose expectations about what the experience "means.". You stunt further advancement and delude yourself by doing this--and some people unleash major psychological problems by abusing meditation practice and the phenomena that arise in this way.

So continue with your practice and if this sensatiion occurs again, just observe it. Rest in it, don't manipulate it. Leti t take it's own course in a graceful and safe way.

This post has been edited by Zosimo: Mar 16 2009, 09:20 PM

Anyone else notice the excellent rhyme the title makes? Meditation, relaxation! Sudden Burning Sensation!