Kundalini, Blood, Pleasure, and Oxygen

[tamasaburo]

I've mentioned some weird health problems I've had lately a couple of places on the forum. They were seemingly brought on by taking a small amount of a supposedly innocuous vitamin, called vitamin k2 (menatetranone). (funny that it's called "vitamin k"...)

What was weird about this vitamin was I noticed it immediately made me feel great and full of energy. What's more it seemed to increase my ecstatic conductivity. My pranayama was super-ecstatic, as was kechari, and other mudras/bandhas.

Everything seemed great until I started noticing that my heart was palpitating and my usually low-normal blood pressure was through the roof. I could also see some veins standing out in a creepy way I hadn't noticed before, so I stopped taking the vitamin. Right around that time, I also developed a retinal hole, which doctors tell me probably had no vascular cause, but which I have trouble believing them about. Since then, I've had a ton of floaters and a shimmering spot in a corner of my vision that worsens with exertion. When I do a back bend I see lightning bolts in my vision (seeing the veins in the eye), like too much blood is rushing to the head.

It makes me think back to my initial "awakening" (or my first experiences with ecstatic conductivity, at least--I'm not sure my kundalini is advanced enough to be called "awake"). One thing I noticed besides a big catharsis of emotions and a sudden appearance of ecstatic feelings during meditation and sometimes during the day, was that it seemed like my blood circulation had changed somehow... like it had become more "mobile." Like, if I stood on my head, a lot more blood would go to my head than usual. For a little while after my first awakening I even had trouble with cardiovascular exercise because it would make me feel faint. It seemed like I wasn't getting enough oxygen or something--or like the newfound energy and ecstasy was burning it up faster than usual and demanding more, or something. I remember feeling especially ecstatic when I'd take a hot shower or bath, because the tingly feeling of blood vessels expanding on the skin was intensified.

I also remember a period a few years ago when I first developed floaters, which corresponded to an increase in ecstatic conductivity and probably a little overdoing of yoni mudra kumbhaka. These fortunately went away on their own.

Anyway, now that I think about it, the symptoms caused by this vitamin k2 (WARNING: THOUGH IT INCREASED MY KUNDALINI, I AM NOT RECOMMENDING ANYONE TAKE THIS VITAMIN--IT'S TOO RISKY. IF YOU WANT TO TRY UPPING YOUR K2 LEVELS, JUST EAT SOME GOUDA CHEESE OR A BIT OF NATTO) are very reminiscent of the symptoms I first got during my initial energy "awakening," none of which ever caused real problems until now, with the eyes.

It makes me wonder more generally about the relationship of kundalini and prana/qi to blood: in TCM they say "qi leads the blood," meaning that where energy goes, blood follows; as a corollary, where blood flow is increased, energy flow tends to increase. I think this part of why Yoga so loves the headstand.

Related, Yogani has, of course, mentioned how "holding back" something (like oxygen) can cause a compensatory boost in energy (as with kumbhaka). I've never dared to try this (and don't plan to, and don't recommend it), but I'm pretty sure the reason kumbhaka works is related to the reason people do erotic asphyxiation (people claim strangling themselves during sex or masturbation intensified the pleasure, and several people die each year as a result). I wonder if it might not also be a case of me just suffering from some kind of periodic anemia or blood problem, possibly exacerbated by the vitamin, which causes me not to get enough oxygen, which I mistake as a good thing, as my kundalini gets riled up in compensation?

I wonder, though, is there any risk to all this? I'm not saying kumbhaka is equivalent to erotic asphyxiation, but where I used to just think "more blood flow=better," I've lately come to realize that, as we age, we don't want to put too much stress on our blood vessels--it can lead to varicose veins or worse (Swami Vivekananda died at a young age of a ruptured blood vessel in his brain, and Yogananda also died rather suddenly of heart trouble, if I'm not mistaken--I'm not saying Yoga was the cause, but it does give one pause...).

More generally, have others noticed similar connections between blood flow and kundalini expansions? Is there a way to safely push the envelope without increasing risk of scary problems? Thanks for any insight or experiences.

[tamasaburo]

Looking into it some more, I am starting to think that what I've experienced had to do with nitric oxide, somehow, perhaps as described here: http://biologyofkundalini.com/article.php?story=NitricOxide

This is because when I took l-arginine, an amino acid which is a building block for nitric oxide, a month ago I had an unusual bad reaction of feeling like I was struggling to breathe and my heart was pumping too fast (I had previously taken it with no adverse effects). Also, apparently vitamin D (which is regulated by K2 somehow) has some effect on the creation of nitric oxide, and excess nitric oxide can lead to eye problems, such as increased intraocular pressure. There are even rare cases of men going blind from taking viagra, because the same chemicals that relax the blood vessels to your penis may increase the pressure in your eye and damage the nerves there.

This also explain why I have felt a great increase in kundalini at such times: increased vasodilation and sexual arousal. Though I practice brahmacharya in the sense of not ejaculating more than twice a month, I do notice a strong correlation between my sex drive, ecstatic conductivity, and overall mood/sense of well-being. This could be why the jump in NO possibly elicited by the K2 made me feel great until it started creating weird problems.

It also makes me think about how kundalini, in some ways, seems about bringing your body to the point where it thinks it's about to die--seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and all--but without actually damaging it. The irony seems that people are most alive living on the edge of death. Not to say that great yogis are in bad shape, physically, or apt to die at any moment, but rather that they have gradually amped up their biochemistry to the point where they function almost like they are. We've all heard of the grandmother who lifts a car off a child in an extreme state--this could even have something to do with where siddhis come from?

Anyway, I would not recommend trying to increase NO through chemical means, as I have gotten really burned by trying to micromanage my body chemistry, but it's very interesting to know. I'm not sure what exactly this means--maybe the more awakened among us have habituated their bodies to operating with a higher level of nitric oxide, or maybe it's just something that can spike in some people at times of high kundalini activation, but also something to be careful of. Maybe a tiny contribution to understanding of the biological component of kundalini.