YS 132 | Kuṇḍalinī in Body, Text, and Context 17 February – 14 March 2025

CourseYS 132 Kuṇḍalinī in body, text and context
HostYogic Studies
Dates17 February - 14 March 2025 synchronous or recorded asynchronous
Registerhttps://www.yogicstudies.com/ys-132

YS 132 Kuṇḍalinī in Body, Text, and Context

While a foundational concept in yoga, Kuṇḍalinī is also one of the most mysterious. Kuṇḍalinī is often described as a snake-like energy that lies coiled, sleeping at the base of the human body. Practices of yoga are intended to awaken Kuṇḍalinī, either to remove her blocking the central channel, or cause her to rise up through it. The rising of Kuṇḍalinī is considered a key technique of yoga, demarcating spiritual experiences and even facilitating the liberated practitioner to transcend their body. Yet this simple summary belies the varied ways in which Kuṇḍalinī is described and experienced across textual, cultural and contemporary accounts. This course sets out the history of Kuṇḍalinī as concept and experience—but cannot dispel the mystique. 
The four-week course delivers a chronological history of Kuṇḍalinī alongside attending to the embodied experience to which these sources point. We start with an overview of Kuṇḍalinī in the cultural context of nāga or serpent lore as well as introducing concepts of the esoteric body. The second session situates the early beginnings of Kuṇḍalinī in tantric Śaiva context, drawing on Sanskrit textual sources, where Kuṇḍalinī is associated with creation and the alphabet goddess. The third module details the emergence of Kuṇḍalinī in the Haṭhayoga sources and her increasing importance over the corpus: not named in the 11th century Amṛtasiddhi, by the 15th century Haṭhapradīpikā Kuṇḍalinī is the support of all teachings of yoga. The final session considers the reception history and popularity of Kuṇḍalinī as a concept with trans-global spiritual relevance by asking, does Kuṇḍalinī travel? 
This course is research-led and based on primary textual sources (knowledge of Sanskrit is not a pre-requisite for the course). While rooted in textual sources we will attend to the embodied nature of Kuṇḍalinī and the felt-experience that the sources appear to communicate. Thus, rather than reach for transcendent explanations we remain in the material and messy matter of the body.