My Shaking Energy Brought Me Home to Myself

And even led me to my Twin Soul

In my 20s, I was involved with a group of Buddhists in East London and used to go to regular meditation evenings a few times a week. On one of these evenings, I glimpsed a young woman whose body was shaking during the group meditation. I was intrigued. During the tea break, I went up to her and asked her about it. She seemed quite nonplussed, simply saying that it always happened during her meditations — but only for a short period. She said that she didn’t really think about it that much and didn’t know what it was.

Who would have thought — certainly I wouldn’t have thought — that a few years later this would be me. Also experiencing this shaking during meditation. It is so interesting and strange that I was drawn to notice a fellow meditator shaking and then being curious enough to ask her about it. A part of me must have known that I was one of those — whatever one of those was (or is).

I can trace the emergence of the shaking in me back to an experience that I had during a Tai Chi class some time after the experience at the meditation class. I had discovered Tai Chi a few years earlier and had got totally hooked — going to classes as much as I could and practising on my own intensely — sometimes for several hours at a time. I was nearing the end of performing the usual short form exercise, when I felt a subtle, tingling, rising energy coming from the base of my spine. The energy felt partly sexual, but I wouldn’t categorise it as that. I remember feeling scared and immediately pushing the sensation (feeling) down. I denied the energy in me. But, already then, I had a sense of: It’s open now. That’s it. Once it is opened, it can’t be closed. And so it was to be.

So that’s how it started. And now it is now and I have lived with the shaking energy for many years. It has been a tortuous, sometimes torturous journey. Let me — from various angles — share what happened and what I learnt.

First of all, I use the word shaking — but that’s actually my catch-all term for a bunch of involuntary movements such as jerks, rotations, shrugs, tremors, shivers, shudders, and…shaking.

Let me describe what it ‘looks’ like. I sit down to meditate. I get still and, typically, after between 10 and 20 minutes I start to feel energy moving in my abdomen. I am used to it now, so I just relax and after a while the energy builds up and starts to move my body. Again, I relax into it — rather than resisting. And just let the energy move me. The energy travels up my body and will typically shake my head. I just let it shake me — top to bottom. The more I relax the better. After a few minutes, it subsides and I am left in a calm state, sometimes a blissful state. Sometimes the energy will start up again during the same meditation session.

The energy can activate and set off shaking at other times too. One example is when I am in a meaningful conversation and I or the other relays a deep truth. Another example is during intimate sexual communion. A third example is when I become connected to the core of me during writing or when in nature.

It is not like I can’t control the shaking. I can. So, I can always stop it if I need to. But, I guess, over the years — I have come to accept the shaking as part of me so I tend to let it arise and go through me whenever it comes up. It is as close to me nowadays as seeing, hearing, or smelling.

But it hasn’t always been like that. If I look back I can see that I have been through 4 major phases. The first was denial and stopping the energy. Trying to control it. This proved to be futile. The second was accepting it, even experimenting with it — but all the time feeling like there was something wrong with me. During this phase I did a lot of exploration to find out what the shaking was. The third phase was softening and embracing it. The fourth phase was fully integrating it. That’s kind of where I am now.

Phase 2 lasted about 20 years. So let’s talk about that and my explorations to try and find out what was going on. I was trying to answer questions like: What is this shaking? Am I weird? Is it dangerous? Is it some process? Is there anybody who knows about this? Is there anybody who has this too?

I was into all-things Eastern so pretty quickly I came across the term Kundalini — which I understood as some kind of spiritual life energy located at the base of the spine. It is conceptualised as a coiled-up serpent — and I had no trouble relating to that. Books on Kundalini seemed like a good place to start if I wanted some kind of explanation into what I was experiencing. It wasn’t long before I came across the book Living with Kundalini: The Autobiography of Gopi Krishna. I tell you now, the book was not comforting. In honesty, the book scared the hell out of me. What Gopi Krishna went through — and described in vivid detail — steam rolled through his normal life causing chaos. My experience wasn’t really like his and definitely wasn’t as intense — but I did worry that this would be me some years down the line.

I remember — bizarrely and serendipitously — finding a disciple of Gopi Krishna who lived in a suburb outside Stockholm (where I was living). I went to see him, and he was not in good shape. I tried to make the most of the opportunity and asked him a lot of questions, but in truth I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

From what I was reading and seeing, all those who awaken this so-called Kundalini energy go through years of turmoil and upheaval before settling into a more stable condition.

My explorations continued. I discovered that the Indian mystic Osho built shaking into some of his meditations to prepare the body for sitting. I started practising his Kundalini meditation, which involved 15 minutes of shaking, 15 minutes of free dance, 15 minutes of sitting meditation, and 15 minutes of total letting go. What I was doing here was exploring my shaking and, kind of, trying to find places in human society where it was normal — I guess, so I could feel normal.

I kept my shaking very much to myself. I was living in some kind of bubble of fear, shame, and desire to understand. I continued with my explorations. I was becoming very alone in my search. I desperately wanted to be met. I wanted to connect with somebody who had the same thing, who understood.

I stumbled across a book called The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves by the American writer Siri Hustvedt. It seemed promising at first, but no — it was more about nerves than what I was experiencing. It didn’t help. I sought out depth psychologists and spiritual teachers and shared to the extent I could. But I never seemed to get the help or support that I wanted.

After some years, I came across this book: Shaking Medicine: The Healing Power of Ecstatic Movement by Bradford Keeney. Surely, here I would get some answers. I read the book. The author clearly knew about shaking. It felt like a real breakthrough. I wrote to Bradford telling my story and sharing my fears. He wrote back — but, strangely, even from the one who wrote the book — I still didn’t feel met or understood. I was still alone.

One quite obvious idea that I explored at this time was that stress and tension in my body was causing the shaking, that is, when I meditated the inner energy would start moving and any resistance would cause me to shake. But what was causing the stress and tension? This led me to investigating trauma and how it is stored in the body: Waking the Tiger : Healing Trauma by Peter A. Levine and Ann Frederick.

I also started looking into Chakras (centres of energy in the body). I had a sense that the shaking energy was going through my Chakras one by one — activating and tuning them. For example, a year or so working on the heart Chakra another year on the throat Chakra. All the time, unblocking me, freeing me, healing me.

Because of this, I started exploring further into energy practices, breathing techniques, and body work. I read a lot of Taoist Master Mantak Chia’s books. And got curious about sexologist and performance artist Barbara Carrellas who combines these two skills to use her breath to have full body orgasms on stage.

For all my explorations, the bottom line was that I still felt very alone in what I was going through.

It was such a strange and uncomfortable situation. I had this thing going on that wasn’t really within societal norms. But I wanted, needed, to normalise it in some way in order to move on. To do that, I felt I had to find others who were similar, who understood. I wanted to be met in my unusualness. But I simply couldn’t find anybody, anywhere.

Then I met the woman who is now my beloved and life partner. She was running a natural health and therapy clinic in Stockholm called Vibera. The name Vibera attracted me — perhaps this was someone who understood vibrations I thought. During my second session, I told her about my shaking and she casually said: “Yeh, I’ve had that. I know what that is.” And bang. Met. My 20 year search over, right there. In the simplest of ways. A visceral feeling of relief. Finally. I looked into her eyes. Deeply moved. Tears welling up. I can’t remember what I said exactly but it was probably a much shorter version of the above several paragraphs.

After this episode, I was able to start moving into phase 3 — softening and embracing. And then phase 4 integration.

Nowadays, I am able to step back and understand my journey. The word Kundalini is not from the Western culture, of which I am a part, and I know that I can’t prove its existence — but the clearest way I can describe what happened to me is this…

In my 20s, through meditation and Tai Chi, completely unintentionally, I woke up the Kundalini energy. Once awoken, the Kundalini cannot be put back to sleep. It is demanding and I could not help but surrender. Although, to some extent, I could control the pace. It’s relentless purpose is/was to bring me home to myself. To the God within if you like. And in my case, the first major destination was the meeting with the beloved. It is ever-present in me and continues to demand that I am true to myself, to the Self or God within. The shaking is the friend who brings the drunken me home.

During the last years I have started to get a deeper understanding about my shaking thanks to various teachings from Eastern traditions.

Firstly, there is a name for it: Kriyas. Search for Kriyas on YouTube and there are plenty of people demonstrating their involuntary energy movements — if “demonstrating” is the right word. I also recently came across this well-written article: Energy-caused Involuntary Muscle Spasms or Kriyas.

And then there are the 5 Koshas (or 5 Sheaths) from the Vedanta tradition. The Koshas describe the total human being and consist of — starting from the outer circle — the physical body, mental body, energy body, wisdom body, and bliss body. At the core is the Atman or Self. This maps very well to my experience when meditating. And puts my shaking in a context.

During, say, a 40 minute meditation session, as I relax and go deeper — first I experience the physical body, then the chattering mind, then the energy (the shaking) comes, then I settle into a place where insights and inspiration can arise, and then sometimes into a feeling of contentment and bliss. It is not common, but sometimes I could go on from there to experience the Self.

I went through a lot of the above alone and it was tough. I was going through something that is not really part of our Western society — so I didn’t really have anybody to turn to. Reading Bradford Keeney’s book helped me to see that shaking has been part of many traditions throughout human history — but it took more than that for me to find peace.

What I needed was to connect deeply with somebody in my own life who understood and could meet me and my shaking energy. The Kundalini energy brought me to that person.