Hello everybody. I m an occasional meditation practitioner who's struggling with meditation side effects since a few years, and i hope i can find somebody able to give me useful information in this forum.
I already tried to contact persons and associations through e-mail, i spoke
with an important Yoga master who lives here in Italy, and contacted a few
Yoga teachers and a chi gung teacher in my city , all without results. The
vast majority of them simply denied (like the Yoga guru and the TM teacher
who followed me) that such a practice as meditation could do any kind of
harm, a few admitted the fact but simply told me that i did the things in
the wrong way without explaining me how to fix things once they are messed
up, others like the teachers in my city simply told me "sign up to my
course" without giving me any response.
No way i could establish communication with Doctors. Just an internet
support group called "Kundalini support group" suggested to me that i could
effectively have had a case of Kundalini arousal and suggested to me to do
"microcosmic orbit" and Chi Kung.

I must explain myself.
In 2009 i began to practice TM from a book and a cd (the meditation consists
on repeating mentally ,staying in a comfortable seated position, a syllable;
in my case the syllable was "RAM"). I never had interest in spirituality but
i was in an awful psycological condition and suffered of fatigue since a few
years and i was disposed to try anything without letting my preconceptions
conditioning me. I had tried years of psychotherapies without success,
medications without any benefit; instead since 2006 even my physical health
had begun to decade with general malaise, weaker immune function, loss of
physical strenght and persistent tiredness despite i used to practice sport.
As in 2006 i was 29 it seemed absurd to me that this was simply the result
of aging.
So i tried meditation without expectation as i was very skeptical about such
things. But to my big surprise after 3 weeks i began to feel generally good,
mentally and physically, as i never felt since a long time. This seemed as a
miracle to me. Unluckily almost immediately i began also to developed sleep
problems. As weeks went by i felt better and better, and my personality
itself seemed almost changed, i was stronger and most confident, physically
and mentally. But sleeping was a problem for me.
I began to have strange experiences during my meditation sessions, mainly
while i was in the deepest states of contemplation. At first i used to
notice since the first weeks of my meditation practice that i used to react
to relaxation induced by meditation with sexual arousement. This seemed odd
to me and quite contradictory with my idea of meditation or yoga effects...
this was particularly strange considering that i suffered since long time of
lack of libido. One of the benefits of meditation on me seemed to be a
restoration of my libido, that was now very strong. But this wasn't the
oddest thing.
Sometimes during the moments of deeper meditation i felt as a hot sensation,
like energy, like a stream of adrenaline but very pleasant almost like an
orgasm that rose through my back, passed throught my neck and reached the
head. I didn't give any importance to that though..

I began to feel too much energised. During my Gym hours my stamina seemed
limitless. I began to enjoy to run fast and for long time. I was nervous,
always full of energy and desire of doing things but i could not simply stay
still for a moment and used to do everything in an accelerated way, like a
maniac. I began to have difficulties controlling my behaviours, during
conversation with people my enthusiasm was excessive and i simply couldn't
stop to speak. I also was easily irritable and unable to control my anger. I
was generally wildly emotive and could change during a conversation from
happiness to crying for a minimum reason.
I began to alternate period of meditation practice to period without
practice because i was still very skeptical and couldn't believe that such a
simple thing like meditation could create such effects. As i was under
antidepressant i initially thought that it was the effect of the medication.
But the effects disappeared when i stopped meditation every time, and
reappeared with it.
In summer 2010 i had another pair of odd experiences. I had stopped
meditation practice since a few monthes and i felt terrible. So i decided to
start again. After 5 days of meditation i began to feel so energised that i
didn't feel the need of eating more than 1 lunch for day, no need for sleep,
and i was in a persistent condition of violent sexual arousement. After 5
days i collapsed from lack of sleep. I know that this would seem the report
of a cocain abuser, but the foolish thing was that all that was simply from
moderate meditation practice (no more then 20-30 minutes twice a day).
Another day, a morning, after a few minutes of starting meditation i felt
the warm sensation rising in my back then i felt a strong pain in my bladder
and urinary tract and began to feel cold and nausea like if i had the flu. I
felt asleep for 1 hours and when i woke up i felt no more malaise. But after
2 weeks i developed a bladder infection that i had to cure with antibiotics.
The side effects worsened. I began to suffer of chest pain, and short
breath. I began usually to have involuntary muscular contractions (tics)
during the day, sometimes in the legs sometimes in my face. Nights were
nightmares, every minimal noise would make me literally jump in my bed. I
was hypersensitive and intollerant to lights, expecially car's lights, tv
and monitors. I sometimes had headaches during meditation. I began to have
frequent and long lasting flues.
I now known many of these was the effects of meditation, but i was afraid to
return to my previous suffering as a consequence of stopping meditation
practice. I contacted the assistance of the association who sold to me the
booklet. I ve been in contact with them for 2 monthes but they weren t able
to understand the nature of my problems and began to deny them.
I began to do researches on the Web, i contacted a few ex-TM-teachers who
told me stories of serious side effects from TM. Then, i casually read about
a thing called Kundalini syndrome. I noticed some of the symptoms were
similar to mine, exept that i never had any visual or auditory
hallucination. I tried to speak about that to my Chi Gung teacher (i
practice medical chi kung since 4 monthes) but she tend to dodge my
questions, i suspect she simply doesn't understand my questions, or have no
responses to give me.
I definitely stopped practising TM more than 2 years ago, but the disturbs
are not totally gone away. Instead during the last 4 years i developed
several health problems that i developed 'strangely' in the same time even
if they are medically unrelated to each other. A few of them seem to improve
with Chi Kung.
The problem is also that, in fact, as a life long depression and anxiety
sufferer (my school career has been ruined by this problems since i was 16
and so my youth) meditation has been the only thing that ever worked for me
and not being able to continue it it s quite tragic. So even if in fact
stopping meditation practice didn't eliminated totally the disturbs i
developed (but reduced them enormously) the other problem is that simply
avoiding meditation would mean for me losing the only thing that ever helped
me consistently. To this day i still hasn't been able to eliminate
completely insomnia and chest pain; plus i developed other health problems
that i cannot demonstrate are related to meditation practice but they could
be.
I wonder if meditation practice in my case could have mobilized energies in
my body in an improper way messing up things. All the persons in my city who
claim to be experts in some form of traditional eastern medicine like
chinese or indian medicine or teachers in yoga or qigong never even tried to
put the question in these terms, they never gave any importance to the
symptoms and never gave to me any explanation for what it happened to me,
exept for generic responses. i suspect they were simply too ignorant to
understand my issues and giving me a serious response. I also tried Reiki: i
did just one session, in the morning. During the day i felt very tired and
in the evening i started to feel awfully like never before untill night. So
i got scared and never continued. I have to point out that the reiki healer
didn't notice any problem inside me during his 'check up', so i supposed
that he simply didn't have any idea on what the hell he had done on me to
make me feel terribly like that.

It s now almost 2 years i totally stopped TM. Recently i hoped that after
such a long time of rest i could have maybe been able again to practice
meditation without disturbs, so i tried to start again but very slowly and
with caution. I began with only 5 minutes x day... just the first day about
half an hours after my 5 minutes of meditation i began to feel strange and
feeling a burning sensation in my urinary tract. With minutes passing by i
felt worse. It happened the same exact thing that happened to me in 2010 (i
wrote it at the beginning of this letter) and as in 2010 i felt a general
malaise with nausea and cold and felt the need of sleeping , i did it also
this time and after 1 hour of sleep the disturb disappeared. I think this is
the definitive proof that this meditation moves something inside me at a
physical level, and that something is still messed up since those years.

Hi Trollo, and welcome. Having a name that contains the world "Troll" might not be the surest way to a response, but nonetheless...

Looks like the kundalini-cat is out of the bag. You write that when you practice the kundalini symptoms gets worse and when you stop they get better, but then your mental health suffers from the lack of practice. What exactly is this practice you are currently doing?

Remember that kundalini can also be affected by your physical health, and not just the other way around. Have you been checked out by a physician?

Are you perhaps a highly sensitive person? If this is the case, it would also make your more sensitive to kundalini symptoms and you would want to take this into account when deciding on your future choice of practice. You should also adjust frequency and intensity accordingly.

What are you doing in terms of non-spiritual practices to alleviate this imbalance? Things like exercise, diet, sleep schedule?

hi trollo and welcome,
i see that noone has ventured to answer you yet so i will give it a go. it seems that you have already made a pretty good correlation between meditation and some less-than-desired side effects of it. you are the best judge of that correlation but another good tool to keep track of it is a meditation diary, or log which you can use to more easily see the cycles of cause (meditation) and effect (your moods, sensations etc.). you could start a log on this site.

anyone here will tell you that meidtation brings results; some good, some not so good; some short term some long lasting. your journey will be unique and it is up to you to use experimentation to decide what works best for you.

since you seem to be very sensitive to even very short exposures to formal meditation some of the techniques which are often written about here MAY be a little too agressive, but may be not too. there is a pretty common school of thought which goes something like this: if you are sensitive to sitting meditation then you need to ground yourself in the body first.

this means that when you sit to meditate and all is stilled, you will naturally go into all sorts of mental paroxcisms and psychological maelstroms. by doing excercises like those suggested on the AYP Website you move more slowly through some of the inevitable stages of insight giving your mind / body more of a chance to become familiar with some of the vicissitudes which can be unsettling.

most people here have read Daniel Ingram's Book "mastering the core teachings of the buddha" and use it as a guidebook along with some of the techniques suggested in it. i reccomend it and it is available here.

starting a practice log here will allow other experienced people to chime in and hopefully help if and when problems arise.

i wish you good luck and much fun.

tom

The practice is TM that means Transcendental Meditation. I stopped to practice it 2 years ago. It consists on repeating mentally the syllable 'RAM', it s a mantra meditation. Unluckily also pranayama exercises gave me side effects.

The highly sensitive persons page on Wikypedia seems to speak to something similar to a mild Asperger syndrome. I suspected in the last year i could have a mild case of Asperger, but as an adult there are no psychologist willing to analize me 'cause all psycholigists that do it basically work only with children. However the 'Asperger' syndrome, as well as this 'highly sensitive person' one look to me more like concepual traps; basically there are a lot of persons on which one can speculate if they are Aspergers or HSP, but basically there is not a definite way to know it, neither it would be useful anyway.

Also the symptoms that meditation triggered, and those that still persist, are not really dependent on enviromntal stimuli, i can feel extremely calm and in a good mood but still have chest pain or insomnia. Instead insomnia get worse when i feel a better mood and more energised.
In fact the first thing i thought about my disturbs was that they were some precedent health problems that meditation triggered. i tried to treat them with various approaches: drugs, vitamins and nutrients/diet, exercise. As i said i also use a grounding device.

Anyway approaching all my issues medically could be an extremely complex and expensive path, and very few profesionals would do such a thing, considering that many of my issues look unexplicable for doctors. Also this do not solve the question about: Why meditation triggered feelings that seems so similar to what is already known as Kundalini awakening? Is it a coincidence? It could be a mild case?

Well, I have some things I consider straightforward and clear answers, some guesses, and some aspects I don't have any great guesses on at all.

I will begin with the things I consider easy: The heat, movements, energy, and the Kundalini stuff, as well as the hyper-sexuality: at least some part of that is clearly the stage of the Arising and Passing away, aka 4th insight stage, aka 2nd vipassana jhana. It is common, comes and goes, gets more intense with practice, lets off with less practice, at least for most people.

There are aspects of the way you describe how little sleep you got and how jacked-up you were that remind me of a manic episode. Here's the problem: manic episodes and the A&P can overlap and look a lot alike. Here is my brief blurb on that:

Bipolar Disorder and The Stages of Insight

I wasn't there, am writing at a distance, have never met you, and so any clear sorting of this is beyond my abilities, but some part of this is clearly explanatory to some degree, I feel.

As to any meditation practice freaking people out: all of them can do it. The more mental the practice, such as imagining a mantra or an image, the more likely you are to freak out, but even extremely physical practices can at times cause similar problems, so it is more shades of grey than absolutes. I agree that physical practices, such as meditation on the breath and yoga with a high degree of mindfulness of the position of the body and the breath are likely to be more helpful than things where you use a mentally created object. This is just an educated guess, and you will have to do the experiment for yourself.

You definitely need a good meditation teacher who has had Kundalini stuff happen to them and who can actually know you and get a sense of you on the ground where you are in person. I can't imagine there isn't one in Italy somewhere: keep looking. They must be there. I would beware of those who just try to get you to pay and won't help you with straightforward information. I can't be sure they don't know what they are doing, but something in that does tend to raise my red-flags. This may be my own bias.

What do you do in the rest of your life? Are you working? What do you do with your mind all day long?

Things to do about Kundalini stuff: plenty of people here have gotten something out of the AYP stuff: might contact some of them and ask them their thoughts on it. Search on threads for AYP and see what you get. Energetic practices are a mixed blessing: they can both clean and clear out energy channels and also cause some real energetic craziness. Chuck Kasmire is a grounded guy who has done a lot of those practices and might be a good person to contact: try the Messaging tab above and wait a long time after each click, as it is REALLY slow, like you can't believe-how-slow slow.

Heavy foods tend to help when it is at its worst. Orgasms can unload some energy. Heavy physical work and exercise (done safely and without hurting yourself) can help ground things down. This is standard advice. Try to sleep every night even if you don't feel you need to. Definitely eat 3 meals a day even if you don't feel hungry: lack of sleep and food is a quick ticket to crazy-land for many people: avoid this if you are prone to more extreme effects. When practicing, work to just settle in, to keep the energy calm and to train the mind to that first. Work on other things later, as it sounds like that basic, settled, clear aspect is not well-developed. Gently reign things in. My teacher Bill Hamilton would practice this way, spending hours just settling the mind, calming it down, gently restraining it until it was stable, well-behaved and able to then proceed with less trouble.

Consider a trip to Asia to talk with a senior meditation teacher about this, someone who has trained thousands of people, one of the big dogs, such as a senior Mahasi-style teacher, and see what they say. Their experience with handling this sort of thing will be vastly beyond most of what you will find elsewhere.

Those are my initial thoughts. You need someone who can actually get to know you as a live person who knows this territory. It sounds like you are looking for them and haven't found them yet. They are out there. This stuff is somewhat rare but definitely not unheard of. You might also contact Dr Willoughby Britton at Cheetah House. She studies the dark side of meditation and may have some contact information and suggestions.

Cheetah House

Hello Daniel. I'will responde to all your questions.

"at least some part of that is clearly the stage of the Arising and Passing away, aka 4th insight stage, aka 2nd vipassana jhana." as you may have alerady noticed i never been inside these things or inside buddism or eastern spirituality, so technical wors like those are like arabic for me. Same for words like 'AYP'...

About your 'mental illness vs spiritual emergency' inquiry: First i don't believe the question is so simple, i mean it's nott all black or all white. As example, in a corollary of symptoms, some can be caused by spiritual practices and others can be caused by mental illness (also it s quite aleatory the definition of 'mental illness' itself). In my case (as i think it should be clear from my long explanation) i already known what were my own 'psychiatric' symptoms (from a long experience of years) i was able to distinguish them from the issues created by meditation. They are actually quite the opposite, cause my previous disturbs were the ones of a classic unipolar depression or dystimic disorder. I never had bipolar and never been diagnosed with it. Also i'm intelligent enough to understand the cause-effect connection between simple occurrences: if simply with meditation i begin to have issues i never had before, and these issues go away every time i stop it, and when i start it again they come back, then even an idiot would understand the connection. And i m not an idiot. Obviously YES every Hyperexcitation state can be easily described with the psychiatric term of 'mania'. 'Mania' it s only a word to describe a symptom, it doesn t say anything about the cause.

Be careful with discussion like that http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/105357 i know you did it with good intentions, but there are plenty of cases of people that had psychotic-like episodes triggered by spiritual practices who has been trapped into the easy psychiatric misinterpretation and their life have been destroyed by hospitalization. This would be also the perfect dream for every bad meditation teacher who would see all their responsibilties toward thier students erased with the 'psychiatric sponge'.

"You definitely need a good meditation teacher who has had Kundalini stuff happen to them and who can actually know you and get a sense of you on the ground where you are in person. I can't imagine there isn't one in Italy somewhere"
This would be a miracle, if i find one. Unluckily most of the Master i contacted seemed more interested in their own interests in terms of money and reputation and did no feel any sense of involvement in the damages that their colleagues may have done.

"I can't be sure they don't know what they are doing, but something in that does tend to raise my red-flags. This may be my own bias." It raise my red-flags as well.

"What do you do in the rest of your life? Are you working? What do you do with your mind all day long?"
As a lot of persons with cronic disturbs, i don't have a full life, and my financial situation is precarious. I don't focus 24 h x day on these topics, but when you are handicapped with such issues (i don't mean only meditation issues) there is not more things you can do exept focusing on how to overcome your problems.

"Orgasms can unload some energy. Heavy physical work and exercise (done safely and without hurting yourself) can help ground things down. This is standard advice. Try to sleep every night even if you don't feel you need to. "

Ironically i've been suggested in the 'Tao bum' forum from a user that my issues could have been triggered by the fact that i used to masturbate in the period i did meditation, so his suggestion was to practice abstinence.
I always did gym in these years but recently i had to stop because i suffer with back pain. Also i already tried to manage my sleep hygiene as well as my dietary habits. I'm actually adressing the issues from other points of view as well..

Dear Trobollo,

Sorry about the use of lingo. AYP means Advanced Yoga Practice and is the microcosmic orbit stuff and the like.

They are found here: AYP Site

The Arising and Passing Away is described many places, could start here:

A&P in MCTB

Also check out the stages before and after, as you will likely recognize much of what you find there.

As to the point about not making meditation side effects pathological, it is a very good point, and this is something very much on all of our minds, as we see a lot of things that are not straightforwardly either but have elements of both, or to it seems, and then it is not entirely clear to anyone exactly what to do with that. Sometimes more practice actually really helps. Sometimes more practice really screws people up. It varies by the person and the day sometimes, as you have noticed. This is murky territory, as you have noticed.

I am glad you are already on the diet and sleep and all of that. Exercise need not hurt your back: plenty of exercises are back friendly. It is still probably a good idea, even if gentle, and done with a good dose of body-centered and body-grounded attention to just what is going on there. The nice end of yoga that is not all macho and instead is more gentle and light and heart-based embodies this well.

The orgasm debate is an old one, but consider that most of the AYP people are looking for power, special effects, more energy and the like, as they don't have those, whereas you have special effects and energy when you practice in overflowing abundance and are looking to moderate and slow down those effects so that you can integrate them with more comfort and ease and less trouble, so that is something totally different. They are right that it may gum things up: that is what you want.

Have you ever done Brahma Vihara practice, meaning The Divine Abodes, meaning things like Loving-Kindness and Equanimity practices? While they are mentally-created things, they are the really safe end of mentally-created things, and feeling them as feelings in the body really helps. Trying to avoid a thicket of terminology, see links:

The Brahma Viharas at Access to Insight

Guided Meditation on The Brahma Viharas

A Whole Retreat of Dharma Talks on the Brahma Viharas

You might just start with a very low dose, as you have done, and build up gradually and see what it does. You might practice this laying down so the energy doesn't get as high, as sitting is a higher-energy posture than laying down.

The problem with the really high-energy stuff is that is feels really good, but it sounds like you have the capacity both to really lack steady energy when in more depressed modes and also to really ramp the energy up to very high levels when in a more hyped-up mode: plenty of people can't fly that high, but they also don't sink that low. Advice for you will need to be different, as you have both capacities. It is normal to really revel in the energy after it has been gone a long time, but the question for you is: can you put on the breaks enough when it starts to rise and resist its pull enough to keep things more in realms of balance and sustainability and moderation and not go flying into the non-sleeping, hyper-sexual, manic-seeming end of things. This may take very skillful moment to moment monitoring of the energy level and a real desire to avoid the runway that leads to liftoff, as the problem is that the runway and liftoff are fun, but learning to fly is best done in a much more controlled way.

See if any of that is useful.

Hello Daniel, i received this response from the Kundalini Research foundation:



Dear R*******,

I sincerely believe that you have, indeed, awakened
Kundalini. What Yoga teachers and other fail to understand
is that Kundalini is the "Mechanism" responsible for human
evolution. If the person is mentally and physically perfect and
awakens Kundalini, it can definitely lead to genius and Enlightenment,
which are evidence that the brain and nervous system has evolved
through the Kundalini process. The woman or man who fully
awakens Kundalini and allows the process to continue through
its normal course of approximately 18 months, he or she most
likely will become a genius (spiritual genius) and Cosmic Conscious.

Generally speaking, those people are the sons and daughters of
exceptionally gifted parents or grandparents, men or women of
very high intelligence. Think of your own mother and father, uncles,
aunts and/or grandparents. Were any of them highly gifted, highly
intelligent? On, on the obverse side of the same coin (Kundalini), were
any prone to mental illness, i.e., schizophrenia, depression, mania?
If so, you may have inherited those genes.

Please cease all meditation practices. There is no reasonable reason
to continue any of them. TM is not meant to cause healthy evolutionary
activity. TM is only meant as an aid to relaxation. It can never lead to
genius or Cosmic Consciousness (i.e., Enlightenment).

Don't meditate! Allow your brain to relax. Do not over-tax your
brain by any form of mental concentration, deep reading, even long
periods of watching television. Remove all pressure on your brain.
If you occupation requires a lot of mental concentration, stop it.

Always keep something in your stomach. Always have your
main meals at the same time every day. Always try to have periods of
relaxation throughout the day. Always get at least 8 hours of sleep
per night. In other words, regulate your life. Regulate! Exercise is
good, but do not over-stress yourself. Treat yourself like you would
treat an infant. Kundalini is called the second birth. You become
like a child, because in fact you are a child. Kundalini changes a
person 100% You will become a different person. A different
personality. You need to have a mother help you through the
process. If that is not possible, then you must be your own
mother. Kundalini is nothing like what yoga teachers think it is.
They know NOTHING.

When Kundalini is forcibly awakened through mental
concentration *i.e., meditation, it reverses the reproductive
system. Instead of the orgasm flowing outward it flows
upward through the spin as a highly volatile radiation. It's
purpose is to supply fuel (i.e., nourishment) to the brain.
The brain requires that "fuel" for the evolutionary process.
Without that fuel, one can go insane.

Most men, upon a spontaneous full awakening, produce
copious amounts of semen and they feel that they must
masturbate in order to stop the erotic sensations in the
groin. But they must not. They must not, because that is
the fuel required by the brain after the process begins.

Yoga teachers know nothing. Don't talk to them.
Think for yourself. If your brain and nervous system
demand extra nourishment (fuel for expanding consciousness),
it stands to reason that an external orgasm would rob them
of the vital nutrients they (the brain and nervous system)
desperately require. Therefore, you must always keep
some food in your stomach. Otherwise, the flame of
Kundalini will lick up everything in the stomach, including
the gastric juices and the stomach lining. Therefore,
eat snacks between meals. Your diet must be high in
protein. It is protein that builds new brain cells and
synapses. Do not neglect high-grade protein in your
diet.

Treat yourself like a baby. That is what your
are, because Kundalini strives to transform you into a
new personality, a genius and an Illuminati. It is not
a simple thing. That is why you cannot speak to any
ordinary yoga teacher. He/she will only lead you in
the wrong.

Read this email more than once and follow this
advice. Nothing happens overnight. It will take time
for you to return to normal. Do not take up meditation
again. Allow Nature to tell you what you need to do.
Kundalini has always, for many, many thousands of
years, been called the Goddess. Kundalini is the
Goddess. Kundalini = Goddess. Pray to Her for
help and guidance. I cannot stress this more. She is
your savior, your mother, your guide. Do not
waste your semen. It is the one essential fuel for
saving your brain and sanity. The reason why your
libido or sex drive was low or lacking previous to
meditation was because it was already flowing slightly
upward. Nature was already preparing you for
higher consciousness. Then you succumbed to the
urge to ejaculate. Big Mistake! You must not waste
that vital fluid during the Kundalini process.

Do not seek advice from anyone who has not
lived through the entire Kundalini process. The greatest
man who ever lived was Pandit Gopi Krishna, the Sage
of Kashmir. He died in 1983. He was the onlty person
in recent centuries to have rediscovered all of this
knowledge about Kundalini. He went through the
entire process.



Now, i don't know how much reliable is this person, but the mail is a bit unsettling... but actually yes when meditation triggered my libido i actually used to masturbate more, and in fact during those 5 days of total frenzy, i wrote about before, i masturbated even for 2 hours continuously. One month later, when i felt the warm sensation in my back again i actually got that awful urinary pain.

That is pretty dogmatic.

Plenty of people here, including myself, have had tons of Kundalini stuff happen and come out on on the other side.

I still think that orgasm can help slow things down, but getting to consensus on this is not going to happen.

Their advice about diet and moderate exercise is good. I do believe that there are some gentle meditative things that can help.

This seems to be a rather standard response for kundalini oriented practicers (more on the physical side like yoga and emphasis on a sentient energy that can be activated and travels up through your spine) that if any negative side effects from meditation, then stop meditating and that it is risky to meditate after kundalini is activated. I've heard that many times from many sources. Whereas seems rather standard advice (as far as I can tell) in meditation oriented practices (more emphasis on what you think and feel in your mind) that one should continue to meditate even during negative experiences. I don't know the answer myself and maybe there is not just one answer anyways. Actually, after investigating here and there on the net for some months now, this is the first time I have heard the word 'kundalini' mentioned in a meditation forum such as this so it doesn't seem to be a hot topic of discussion in these types of venues. After attempting to absorb as much info as I could on jhanas, paths, A&P, cessation and other tons of terminology (there is a LOT of lingo to learn!), I was wondering where kundalini, chakras, etc are believed to fit in with that if at all.

Your symptoms are just plain old sexual desires and needs of a normal human being coming to the foreground because of meditation. Because the animal in you can't act on them in a civilized world, they are causing the symptoms of chest pain etc.

Just start accepting your basic animal instincts and be aware of them as they arise and slowly and surely the other negative symptoms will start to go away. You can learn to balance the energy and spread it throughout your body instead of it being concentrated in one small part and making the muscles contract too much at one place. Once you are able to do that, you will have whole body bliss rather than orgasmic concentration at one small part of the body at one point in time and then the cycle starting all over again.

When you are able to balance the energy and it spreads throughout your body, your senses will become super sharp and mind will be flexible.

Daniel, i wrote to Yogani of the AYP site and he responded that he believe it's a case of Kundalini arousal caused by mantra meditation over-sensitivity. What do you know about him?

I don't think you have read my first post accurately.

Might want to read this

Understanding kundalini energy:

http://www.ascendedmasteranswers.com/spiritual-path/spiritual-practices/162-understanding-kundalini-energy

(Dho, sorry for samppimg links)

I read your first post again and I did read it accurately the first time. My impression remains the same. Your libido was gone before meditation and meditation is known to increase the libido which happened in your case as well. You started feeling energetic also.

No you didn't, sorry. If you did you would have noticed i listed the return of libido as a positive symptom caused by a generally raised mood and energy. I mentioned 'hypersexuality' just refrring to a 4 days period during wich my libido was clearly pathological, as was my general hyperactivity. This wasn't caused by any hypothetical psicanalitic mechanism but only from meditation. The disturbs i complained about anyway were mainly hyperactivty, agitation, insomnia, and they were caused by meditation.

Also, basically i never considered the libido issues as a problem (exept for those 4 days) rather a good thing, and i don't think chest pain was caused by it. Otherwise chestpain and libido would have always come togheter, and it was not. I recently began to suspect instead that chsetpain could be caused by esophagitis caused by the general agitation that meditation triggered.