This is an excerpt from my book Return to Rhythm, which dives into somatic psychology, spirituality and neuroscience.

I first likened Kundalini energy and orgasm while meditating and chanting OM. The day before, I had listened to a podcast with Deva Premal, who had called OM the “cosmic yes”.  Chanting OM was my way to align with the yes that reverberates through the cosmos.

A short ways into my chanting I began feeling an energetic sensation awakening at the base of my spine and clitoris, not unlike building sexual energy. Immediately, my ego mind kicked in and began questioning and judging my experience. I had a flash of shame, wondering why sexual pleasure was entering my spiritual practice.  I paused my chanting, and considered returning to a silent meditation.  Luckily at this point in my life, I could recognize my ego and self-shaming as my conditioned self, not my true self.  I had done work to release shame around pleasure, and this was another opportunity to do so.  So I practiced letting go and blessed myself with full acceptance of this new energetic experience – pleasurable meditation?!

I returned to chanting OM, wondering if my previous experience was a one time occurrence, but I found that the Kundalini/orgasm energy was right where I left it and ready to build. My chanting continued to expand the sensation beyond my pelvis and up into my belly.

At some points, the sensation would just feel like a warm tingling energy, at other points I felt an electric-like sensation, “zinging” me from the inside, making my insides feel weak as the energy itself was expanding within me, causing involuntary movement. This felt very similar to climaxing and orgasm, and here I was in an empty room, on my yoga mat, chanting OM.  I might as well have been in the bedroom with my love, chanting yes! The cosmic yes!

Sacred Sexuality

After this experience I started to dissolve the strong divide I had unconsciously made between sexuality and spirituality. I felt very curious about the link between Kundalini energy and sexual energy.  I wondered whether they paved the same energetic path in the body, and whether maybe in fact they were the same energy? My inner laboratory of the nervous system, meditation, kundalini yoga, and sacred sexuality with my partner have all pointed to yes.  In addition, I dove deeper into the poetry of spiritual mystics Rabia, Rumi, Meister Eckhart, Hafiz and found eroticism all over their prose to divine love.

Most poets are like a belly dancer

who never reveals anything below her waist-

I won’t tease you like that

for I love when your eyes get

excited.

-Rumi

Opening Chakras and Full Bodied Orgasms

I saw that my work to balance my nervous system and open my energy centers (aka chakras) related directly to the quality of my sex life.  I became able to expand the sensation of my orgasms further up the core of my being.  I found the true meaning and experience of “sexual healing” through stomach and heart orgasms.  The tension and unresolved pain that I held in those places were lovingly massaged by my increasing full body orgasms.

There was a time when my orgasms were focused in my pelvis and genitals.  I had to tense my hips to orgasm, as if I had to confine the energy.  The “tension orgasm” is how many people reach orgasm.  It is likened to a “good sneeze”, and is but a fraction of a full bodied orgasm.

In comparison, an orgasm with increased embodiment and nervous system balance is an event that is considerably longer in duration and increasingly widespread in bodily sensation.  Full bodied orgasms dissolve tension throughout the body and flood the body with healing hormones and life-force energy.  This is what we are meant to experience!

Orgasm as “Diagnostic Tool”

I now use my orgasms as an accurate map of tension I have accrued, by experiencing how expansive my orgasms are and where they tend to get stuck.  Therefor, orgasms can be both a “diagnostic tool” and “healing tool”.

For example, for awhile I was quite blocked in my solar plexus, mid-stomach, so I focused my healing practices on that energy center. I dug into the developmental wounds, psychological conditioning, and physical tension patterns of the solar plexus.  I used self-inquiry, subconscious reprogramming, yoga, breathwork, meditation, journaling, and Reiki. I processed old beliefs around power and control and my self-worth.

One day, while talking with a friend about this, she helped me see that I was ready to move beyond my solar plexus blockage, and use the energy that would get stuck there to rise upward and empower my heart chakra.  I had an amazing visualization of a sacred sword piercing through my diaphragm connecting solar plexus to my heart, Anahata, releasing a river of flowing energy to my heart that I didn’t even realize I had been starved for. I began feeling a whole new river of energy within my being.

Heart Centered Bliss

Before my heart only felt like the giver, the healer, the mother. Now I also feel my heart is the receiver, supported and empowered by my lower three chakras. Healing my solar plexus changed my orgasms, I began feeling my orgasms rise and fill my heart center with an utter expansion of love.

My yoga and spiritual practices are no longer separate from my sexual life, they inform one another, and improve one another. I dedicate my yoga and nervous system work to opening up energy channels within myself.  These open channels transform the little “sneezes” of tension orgasms into full body bliss – and not just in bed! In return, that bliss helps me to live a heart centered life filled with more compassion, forgiveness and patience then I have ever had before.