Kindling Effect
Some of the conditions for the initiation of kundalini appear to be:
Hyperactivation of the thyroid and parathyroids.
Hyperactivation of estrogen and testosterone
(plus metabolities of T. eg: Estradiol).
Hyperactivation of the sympathetic nervous system
(adrenaline, norepinephrine).
Hyperactivation of the stress hormones
(corticosteroids eg: cortisol, DHEA).
Hyperactivation of opiate systems
(endorphins, enkephalins, anandamide, phenylethylamine).
Kundalini awakenings are likely if hyper-arousal of the nervous system is
kept going for several years and conditions of perpetual irritation to the brain
neurons occurs. The particular blend of hormones and neurotransmitters reduces
the threshold by which kundalini passes through the body. Like a river of fire,
kundalini forges its own effluent cascade through the nerve tributaries and sustains
itself through the changes it induces. In recent years there has been some attempt
to correlate the phenomena of kindling with kundalini.
Kindling in epilepsy was first discovered accidentally by researcher Graham
Goddard in 1967, while he was studying learning in rats. He found that a sustained,
periodic, low-intensity stimulation of the limbic region of mammalian brains
eventually sets up a cumulative resonance which increases in magnitude until the
entire organism is in sympathetic resonance. Eventually these bursts of electrical
activity induce similar patterns in nearby brain regions, and the seizure threshold
progressively lowered. While normally the electrical stimulation he used was too
low to cause any type of convulsing, he discovered that repeated exposure of brain
areas to small electric shocks seem to make subsequent episodes of spontaneous
seizure-like electrical events more likely to occur. After repeated stimulation at the
same intensity, their brains had become sensitized to electricity, and even months
later the rat would convulse when stimulated.
The name kindling was chosen because the process was likened to a log fire.
While the log itself is very hard to set afire in the first place, when surrounded
by smaller, pieces of wood, kindling, soon the log itself will catch fire. There is
evidence that the more mood episodes a person has, the harder it is to treat each
subsequent episode...” thus taking the kindling analogy one step further: that a fire
which has spread is harder to put out.
The kindling sensitization hypothesis suggests that initial seizure episodes make
it more likely that future seizure and depressive episodes will occur. Spontaneous
kindling is more likely if there has been early damage to the brain through
chemical exposure, childhood sexual or emotional abuse, or if one has inherited a
sensitive nervous system. If reared in an abnormal, deprived, stressful and socially