If your deepest yearning is to be alive, awake and potent, then this book is for you. If you want to transform crisis into a gift, may this inspire you. If you are navigating the perils of a spiritual emergency or an intense spiritual awakening, then the human sober stories here will serve as examples. The invitation to love and acceptance that reside in the kernel of each of our experiences show us that humanity and divinity are no different. If your deepest yearning is to be awake to both light and dark, and integrate the personality with being, then this book is for you. The kundalini process is about waking up what is asleep in each of us. This book is also about using chronic illness and grief as doorways to transformation. This is part memoir, part self-help peppered with reflective questions and simple guided awareness practices after each chapter to wake you up. So put on your seatbelt as this journey traverses mercurial terrain. In the alchemical forging ground rises the phoenix. Welcome aboard! Different people experience kundalini differently depending on different stages of rising as well as what blocks are in the physio-psycho-spiritual system. These could be kriyas, opening of non-ordinary states, glossalia, etc. When the openings are in "wilder" phases because of the unblocking process happening, there are ways to help soothe it and listen to what is the wisdom the kundalini is sharing. Kundalini can be explosive and rapid as a fire razes through a dry forest of beliefs and world views. It can also be smooth like mist. Surrender honed over decades has allowed me to listen to the teachings of the Shakti (Divine Power Consciousness). There were times that my ego personality desperately wanted to control and manage the phenomena that was very disturbing. This grasping created more problems with the kundalini process. Think of BIG energy moving up your spine, and then LITTLE energy (ego) trying to micromanage the direction of big energy. It doesn't work. Part of my development was seeing directly these distinctions as energy patterns, and then translating them into the integration of being and non-being. There is a necessary place for the ego, but I found it wasn't the way we usually think about it.
About the Author: Kathrina Peterson was trained in Buddhist monasteries in Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka and Nepal. She is a holistic healer and teacher helping others realize their authentic selves. She offers integral body-mind approaches based on the integration of western psychology, eastern philosophy, somatic and energy medicine to assist transformation. My life orientation is deeply rooted in awareness training. I bring at least 25 years of body, mind and spirit exploration with the ability of the heart to make change at any age. The medium I use are awareness, touch, sound and movement. In working with babies to elders, I have come to witness what human development looks like and what it can be given the right direction. My teaching style focuses on how each student can flourish. My interest in the body-mind-spirit connection has its roots in my childhood. My mother was a natural healer in the Philippines and as a child, I often was around watching and assisting during her treatments. Having parents from two cultures was fertile ground for my perceiving of differences, similarities and connections. At the age of 21, I let go of a doctoral appointment in medical anthropology at UCLA after working in Calcutta, India with Mother Teresa. Facing death opened an existential angst and propelled me to look at life not from a 21 year old perspective, but from a fast-forward 80 year old woman looking back at her life, and choosing to live a life that made more sense. I spent the decade of my twenties living as a contemplative in the Buddhist monasteries in Asia. I graduated with a Masters degree in East-west Psychology from CIIS. My focus was consciousness transformation and spiritual emergence. Having drenched myself in the study of the psyche from both psychological and spiritual dimensions, I felt a somatic approach was needed to complement my investigations. I continued my explorations with even more experiential modalities that were more meaningful making for myself. My professional training became more meaningful with my own personal experiences with loss, spiritual emergence and chronic pain. When life unfolds unexpectedly, we learn to swim with grace, or otherwise we sink. These "dark nights of the soul" (yes, there is more than one in a lifetime!) have guided me into cyclical individuation and a deeper clarity and acceptance of the dynamic stability inherent in life.