Scientific research into kundalini awakening is still a relatively small field, but it has grown considerably in
recent years. Researchers have now investigated the phenomenology of kundalini awakening, spontaneous energetic experiences, involuntary movements, mystical states, physiological changes, difficulties with integration, and the sometimes difficult distinction between spiritual awakening and psychiatric illness.
Kundalini research is still at an early stage.
Some of the evidence consists of surveys and qualitative research; some consists of case reports; a few studies include physiological or brain measurements. Much of the literature is exploratory.
This means that science cannot yet explain exactly what kundalini is or establish whether traditional descriptions of kundalini energy correspond directly to any particular neurological or physiological process.
What the research does increasingly show, however, is that people across different cultures and backgrounds report a recognizable cluster of powerful physical, psychological and spiritual experiences, and that these experiences can have profound and lasting effects on their lives.
For that reason alone, kundalini deserves serious scientific investigation rather than dismissal or automatic pathologizing.
The following studies focus on kundalini awakening itself or on closely related spiritually transformative experiences.
1. Investigation of the Phenomenology, Physiology and Impact of Spiritually
Transformative Experiences – Kundalini Awakening
Researchers: Marjorie H. Woollacott, Yvonne Kason and Russell D. Park
Published: EXPLORE, 2021
This study collected detailed accounts from people who had experienced powerful spiritually transformative or kundalini-type awakenings.
A striking 85% reported unusual flows of energy through or around the body. Other common experiences included expansion of consciousness, sensations of light and love, leaving the body, increased sensory sensitivity and lasting changes in beliefs and values.
Important triggers included intense meditation or prayer, concentrating strongly on spiritual matters, and
being in the presence of a spiritually developed person.
Participants also frequently reported that health professionals did not understand their experiences.
Read the original research on PubMed
2. Characteristics of Kundalini-Related Sensory, Motor and Affective Experiences During Tantric Yoga Meditation
Researchers: Richard W. Maxwell and Sucharit Katyal
Published: Frontiers in Psychology, 2022
Participants: 80 meditators
This study investigated spontaneous experiences among practitioners of Ananda Marga Tantric meditation, a tradition that explicitly recognizes kundalini.
The researchers found high rates of spontaneous phenomena:
- 61% reported involuntary bodily movements
- 53% reported somatosensory experiences
- 56% reported unusual light experiences
- 46% reported inner sounds
- 28% reported unusual heat or cold
- 73% experienced unusual changes in mood
Reports included tingling or energy rising along the spine, shaking, jerking, spontaneous breathing changes, unusual sounds and light, pleasure, ecstasy and bliss.
Importantly, this was a community sample rather than a study restricted to people who had become psychologically unwell. Most mood effects were positive.
Read the full study at Frontiers in Psychology
3. The Physio-Kundalini Syndrome and Mental Illness
Researcher: Bruce Greyson
Published: Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 1993
Psychiatrist Bruce Greyson examined whether the cluster of physical, emotional and perceptual experiences traditionally associated with kundalini should automatically be interpreted as mental illness.
He used what became known as the Physio-Kundalini Syndrome Index, incorporating experiences such as unusual energy, heat, bodily movements, changes in perception and altered states of consciousness.
Greyson argued that kundalini-type experiences could sometimes be distinguishable from psychiatric illness and that clinicians should understand the difference rather than automatically pathologizing unusual spiritual experiences.
Read Greyson’s paper at the University of Virginia
4. Delayed Diagnosis of the Physio-Kundalini Syndrome: Case Report and Literature Review
Researchers: Tony B. Benning, Kylie P. Harris and Ryan Rominger
Published: Spirituality in Clinical Practice, 2019
This paper describes a 40-year-old woman who repeatedly sought medical help for predominantly physical symptoms before a psychiatrist eventually interpreted her experiences as physio-kundalini syndrome.
The authors point out that kundalini-related experiences may be confused not only with psychiatric disorders but also with physical diseases.
Their main recommendation was that knowledge of spiritual emergencies and kundalini phenomena should extend beyond psychotherapists to doctors and nurses.
View the original publication and abstract
5. Awakening of Kundalini Chakras Presenting as Psychosis
Researchers: Mini Sharma, Mondeep Dhankar and Deepak Kumar
Published: Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine, 2022
This case report concerns a 19-year-old woman who had been practising intensive yoga and kundalini exercises without guidance and subsequently developed severe symptoms including catatonia.
The paper illustrates a difficult clinical question: when does an unusual spiritual experience remain within the spectrum of spiritual emergence, and when is conventional psychiatric treatment necessary?
The authors argue that cultural and spiritual context should be considered, while also taking severe impairment seriously.
Read the complete paper at PubMed Central
6. Towards a Neurophysiological Model of Kundalini
Researchers: Swapan Samanta and colleagues
Published: Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 2026
This recent paper proposes a possible neurophysiological model for kundalini.
The authors draw on neuroscience, contemplative descriptions and retrospective clinical observations from 404 patients. They propose that kundalini phenomena might correspond to progressive changes in autonomic regulation and cortical integration.
The authors are careful to state that this is a hypothesis-generating theoretical model rather than established proof.
They propose measurable predictions involving such factors as heart-rate variability, cortisol regulation and attentional stability, which could be tested in future studies.
7. Spontaneous Spiritual Awakenings and Spontaneous Kundalini Awakenings
Researchers: Jessica Sophie Corneille and David Luke
Institutions: University of Greenwich and Imperial College London
Published: Frontiers in Psychology, 2021
Participants: 152
This is one of the most interesting modern studies because the researchers specifically compared spontaneous spiritual awakenings with spontaneous kundalini awakenings.
Kundalini awakenings were found to be significantly more physical than other spontaneous spiritual awakenings.
However, kundalini experiences were not significantly more negative. Overall, participants rated both kinds of awakening as overwhelmingly more positive than negative, even when the initial experience was difficult.
Experiences included non-duality, mystical states, energetic phenomena and major alterations in consciousness.
The researchers also found associations with the personality trait of absorption and with what they called temporal-lobe lability.
Read the full open-access study
8. Development of the Kundalini Awakening Scale
Researchers: Laura Sanches and Michael Daniels
Published: Transpersonal Psychology Review, 2008
This research developed a psychological instrument called the Kundalini Awakening Scale (KAS) in an attempt to measure kundalini-related experiences systematically.
The researchers compared:
- 24 yoga teachers
- 37 yoga students
- 22 people following other spiritual traditions
- 28 people from the general population
Kundalini experiences were highest among people following other spiritual traditions, followed by yoga teachers, yoga students and then the general population.
Kundalini experience was associated with years of spiritual practice rather than age, and with regular meditation.
Interestingly, people following less structured spiritual paths reported more disruptive kundalini experiences. The authors suggested that structured spiritual practice might provide some protection against difficult awakenings.
Read the study through the British Psychological Society
9. Near-Death Experiences and the Physio-Kundalini Syndrome
Researcher: Bruce Greyson
Published: Journal of Religion and Health, 1993
Greyson tested the hypothesis that near-death experiences and kundalini awakenings may involve overlapping processes.
People who had experienced near-death experiences reported significantly more physio-kundalini symptoms than control participants.
This does not prove that near-death experiences and kundalini are the same phenomenon, but it provides empirical evidence that the two types of experience may share a cluster of energetic, perceptual and bodily characteristics.
10. Neurophenomenology of an Ecstatic Kundalini State: An fMRI Case Study
Researchers: Edward Modestino and colleagues
Published: EXPLORE, 2016
This is particularly interesting because the researchers studied a person who could deliberately enter what he described as an ecstatic kundalini meditative state while undergoing fMRI scanning.
The participant’s experience also scored strongly on the Physio-Kundalini Syndrome Index.
During the ecstatic state, increased activation was observed particularly in areas of the left prefrontal cortex associated in other research with positive emotional states.
The authors reported that the subjective experience involved strong joy and happiness and that the brain findings were consistent with research on positive meditative states.
Because this was a single-person case study, it cannot establish a universal neurological signature of kundalini, but it demonstrates that kundalini-type states can be studied experimentally.
Read the original study on PubMed
11. Meditation, Kundalini and Mystical Experiences
Researcher: John M. de Castro
Published: Consciousness and Cognition, 2015
De Castro compared people engaging in meditation, yoga, contemplative prayer and combinations of contemplative practices.
All these practices were associated with greater mindfulness, mystical experiences and kundalini-related effects.
However, meditation showed the strongest relationship with kundalini and mystical experiences.
The amount of practice appeared more important than the particular pattern or social context in which the practice took place.
The author proposed that increased sensitivity to present sensory and perceptual experience may help explain the relationship between contemplative practice, kundalini phenomena and mystical states.
12. Kundalini Awakening, Kundalini Awareness
Researcher: Martin Lockley, University of Colorado Denver
Published: Journal for the Study of Religious Experience, 2019
Lockley examined reports of kundalini-type experiences within the broader literature on religious and spiritual experience.
Reports commonly involved intense physical sensations associated with the spine and nervous system, followed by long-lasting changes in consciousness, values and spiritual outlook.
Lockley also observed that many Western experiencers apparently had kundalini-type experiences without initially knowing or using the word kundalini, suggesting that the phenomenon may be more widespread than surveys based solely on the terminology would indicate.
13. Kundalini-Like Experiences as Psychopathology: A Case Series and Review
Researchers: Hari Hara Suchandra and colleagues
Institution: NIMHANS, India
Published: Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice, 2021
Rather than presenting a single case, this paper examines several people whose kundalini-related experiences were interpreted through both psychiatric and traditional yogic frameworks.
The authors discuss altered perceptions and other intense mental experiences following spiritual practices.
Their central point is that clinicians need to understand both possibilities:
an unusual spiritual state may sometimes resemble psychiatric illness, while severe psychiatric symptoms should not simply be romanticized as spiritual awakening.
The study therefore contributes to the difficult issue of differential diagnosis.
14. Reflections of Shaktipat: Psychosis or the Rise of Kundalini?
Researcher: Jon Ossoff
Published: Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 1993
This classic case study describes a woman hospitalized with highly unusual behaviour following what was understood within a spiritual framework as a shaktipat or kundalini experience.
Her behaviour included spontaneous breathing patterns, bodily movements and mudra-like gestures that initially appeared to psychiatric staff to represent psychosis.
Ossoff used the case to question whether psychiatric categories alone can adequately describe some extreme spiritual-emergence phenomena.
It remains a case study rather than controlled research, but it became an important early contribution to the discussion of kundalini and spiritual emergency.
View the academic record for the original paper
15. Confusion and Integration Challenges Following Kundalini Awakening
Researcher: Jeffrey Overall
Published: Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2026
Participants: 19 people reporting kundalini awakening
This very recent study used qualitative comparative analysis to investigate why some people experience considerable confusion after a kundalini awakening.
The strongest difficulties were associated with:
- very intense “dark night” experiences
- difficulty reconciling the person’s old life with new spiritual insights
- absence of a structured spiritual practice
The study also found an interesting complexity around spiritual communities: supportive communities could help people, but could also sometimes shape or interfere with the person’s own interpretation of their experience.
The author concludes that a combination of structured spiritual practice, appropriate community support and periods of solitude and reflection may help integration.
View the published research record
16. The Lived Experience of Kundalini Awakening in New Zealand
Researcher: Sarah Willson
Institution: Massey University, New Zealand
Published: MSc thesis in Health Psychology, 2021
This qualitative study investigated kundalini awakening from the perspective of people who had actually undergone the experience.
Using interviews and a holistic model of health, the researcher examined changes occurring over time in physical, psychological, social and spiritual functioning.
The study interpreted kundalini awakening primarily as an embodied psychospiritual developmental process, rather than automatically as pathology.
Because this is a master’s thesis rather than a peer-reviewed journal article, it should be regarded as exploratory research, but it provides unusually detailed firsthand material.
Read the thesis through Massey University
20. What Helps People Integrate Spiritually Transformative Experiences?
Researcher: Marie Grace Brook
Published: Psychology of Religion and Spirituality
Participants: 431
This study included people who had experienced mystical experiences, near-death experiences, religious transformations and kundalini awakenings.
Participants rated a large range of practices according to how helpful they had been during integration.
Practices rated especially highly included:
- compassion
- allowing psychological and spiritual material to arise rather than suppressing it
- calm environments
- solitude
- time in nature
- honesty
- gratitude
- forgiveness
- understanding spiritual transformation
- supportive people
- spiritual reading and prayer
- exploring one’s feelings and unconscious material
A particularly interesting finding was the strong consistency among very different kinds of spiritually transformative experiencers regarding what they found helpful.
This was a self-report survey rather than a controlled treatment trial, so the ratings indicate what experiencers themselves perceived as helpful, rather than proving treatment efficacy.