Falling in love with life: what a concert taught me about Kundalini energy, anxiety and the difference between the two

On 28 May I went to a concert.

Not a festival. Not a spiritual event with a specific intention. Just music. Aware Music, if you want to look them up, because what they do with sound is worth knowing about.

I had cacao before. Water throughout. And then I just let the music do what music does when you actually stop managing your experience and let it land.

What happened next I want to tell you in details because I want you to feel it, not just understand it.

The energy I felt was beyond any comprehension I have for it. It moved through me like a Kundalini Activation session. Not because I was trying to activate anything. Not because I was in a container designed for that. But because I was fully myself. Fully present. Not looking at who was around me, not managing how I appeared, not thinking about what came next. Just flowing. Just there.

I fell in luv.

Not with a person. Not with the musicians. With music. With life. With myself.

Afterwards I told my daughter. She asked immediately, with daddy?

I said no. With music. With life. With myself.

She did not get it. And I stood there thinking, why do we assume that falling in luv only means falling in luv with someone else? Why is luv for life, luv for yourself, luv for the simple fact of being here, so much harder to name than romantic luv?

It is actually the most fundamental luv there is. And most of us have never felt it properly. Or if we have, we did not recognise it for what it was.

What my body felt and why it matters

During the concert I felt something I want to describe as honestly as I can.

A warm, slightly pulsating, breathing sensation in my uterus.

I want to say that again because I want you to really hear it. I am a mother. And in regular daily life I do not feel my uterus. I do not think most women do. It is just there, doing what it does, quietly, without announcement.

But at that concert it was alive. Warm and breathing and present in a way I could not ignore and did not want to ignore. It felt ancient. It felt like something that had been waiting a long time to be noticed.

That sensation is still with me now. Calm, relaxed, settled. Not anxious. Not alarming. Just quietly, beautifully alive.

This is the sacral chakra. The seat of creative energy, life force, the feminine, the ancient mother energy that lives in every woman whether or not she has given birth. And when it opens, when it actually opens rather than just being talked about in a yoga class, it feels exactly like this.

Warm. Pulsating. Breathing. Like something remembering itself.

So how do you tell the difference between Kundalini energy and anxiety?

This is the question I get asked more than almost any other. And I understand why. Because from the outside, or even from the inside, some of the physical sensations can feel similar.

Heart racing. Tingling. Waves of energy moving through the body. Heightened sensitivity. Emotions arriving without a clear story attached.

Both anxiety and Kundalini energy can produce versions of all of these.

But here is the difference that matters most.

Anxiety contracts. Kundalini expands.

Anxiety pulls you into your head, into worst case scenarios, into the future or the past. It makes the world feel smaller and more threatening. Your chest tightens. Your breathing shortens. Something in you wants to escape.

Kundalini energy, real life force energy moving freely, does the opposite. It brings you more here. More present. More connected to your body rather than less. The world does not feel threatening, it feels alive. You do not want to escape, you want more of exactly this.

What I felt at that concert was expansion. Pure, full, embodied expansion. My body was not contracting in fear. It was opening in luv.

That is how you know.

And the sacral sensation, that warm breathing aliveness in my uterus, that is not anxiety. Anxiety does not feel like that. Anxiety does not make you fall in luv with life. It makes you afraid of it.

When to get support

Not every intense experience is pure expansion and not everyone who feels strong energy in their body is having a beautiful opening.

Sometimes what feels like Kundalini energy is the nervous system in genuine distress. Sometimes the two are happening at the same time. And both can be true, energy moving and the nervous system needing support to hold it safely.

If what you are experiencing feels scary rather than expansive, if it is interrupting your sleep, your relationships, your ability to function, if it feels like too much rather than more, please reach out to someone who understands this work. Not to be told something is wrong with you. But because energy that moves faster than your system can integrate needs a container and support.

This is why I care so much about how sessions are held and what happens after them. The opening is one thing. The landing is everything.

If you are not sure whether what you are experiencing is energy or anxiety or both, read this: Why Kundalini Activation does not work for everyone. And if you have had a session recently and are trying to make sense of what is moving through you, the integration blog goes into exactly what to do and when.

What the concert reminded me

You do not need a mat. You do not need a facilitator. You do not need a specific container.

You need to be fully yourself. Fully present. Fully allowing.

Life force energy is not something that only happens in sessions. It is what becomes available when you stop managing your experience and let yourself actually be in it. The music did not give me that opening. I gave myself that opening. The music just created the conditions where I finally stopped standing in my own way long enough to feel what was already there.

And what was there was love. Ancient, warm, pulsating, alive love.

For music. For life. For myself.

My daughter will understand one day. And I cannot wait to be there when she does.

A question to sit with

When did you last fall in luv with life itself? Not with a person, not with a plan, not with a future version of yourself. With this. Right here. Right now.

If you cannot remember, that is not a problem. That is just information.

And it means something is ready to open.

“

The most common form of despair is not being who you are.

- Søren Kierkegaard