Kundalini

Kundalini (कुण्डलिनी, "the coiled one") is, in the tantric and Hatha-Yogic systems, the latent energetic potential at the base of the spine — depicted as a serpent coiled three and a half times around the Muladhara chakra. When awakened by sustained practice, the serpent uncoils and ascends through the Sushumna (the central energetic channel) to the crown.

The ascent is not a single event but a graded refinement. Each chakra along the spine is a transformation point: the energy is refined at Svadhisthana, again at Manipura, again at Anahata, and so on. By the time it reaches Sahasrara at the crown, what began as densified reproductive essence (shukra or rajas) has become ojas — the most refined form available to the human body.

The channel system

• Sushumna — the central channel along the spine; the route of the ascent
• Ida — the lunar channel, weaving to the left, terminating at the left nostril
• Pingala — the solar channel, weaving to the right, terminating at the right nostril

Ida and Pingala interweave around Sushumna in a double-helix pattern (the same form depicted in the caduceus). Balancing the two side channels via nadi shodhana (alternate-nostril breathing) is one of the preliminary practices that prepares Sushumna to open.

Primary sources

• Sat Chakra Nirupana (16th c., translated by Arthur Avalon as The Serpent Power) — the canonical Sanskrit treatise on the chakra-channel system
• Hatha Yoga Pradipika, chapter III — the practices for kundalini awakening
• Yoga Yajnavalkya — older systematic source on the chakra system

In motion

• The redirection mechanism is the technical heart of brahmacharya.
• The seed-drop that ascends is bindu; what it becomes at the crown is ojas.
• The Taoist parallel — the microcosmic orbit — performs the equivalent circulation through different conceptual language.