When the Body Remembers Before the Mind Does
Art by: Paula Loomis
There are certain moments in life when I feel hollow in a way that words cannot quite explain. Not sad exactly. Not broken. Just paused. As if something inside me is waiting for a signal, a permission slip to begin again.
It is usually in those moments that Kundalini yoga finds me.
I do not go searching for it with intention. It appears. A class suggestion. A memory resurfacing. A quieter inner nudge that says, try this again. And every time, I am a little surprised by how precise the timing feels, as if the practice knows something about me before I do.
I am both a student and a teacher of Kundalini yoga, and yet I do not live inside the practice. I move away from it. I forget it. I do not always teach it, and I do not always practice it. Still, when something inside me begins to stall, when my inner world tightens or grows quiet, it finds me again. Not as a demand, but as an invitation.
Kundalini yoga is often described as a spiritual discipline, but for me it feels more like a conversation with the body. A way of asking questions without words. A way of listening through breath, posture, and sensation rather than thought. I come to the mat not seeking answers, but willing to witness whatever begins to move.
At first, the experience is unmistakably physical. Breath shifts. Muscles stretch, tremble, contract, and release. Heat builds. The spine feels alive, as if energy is learning how to travel upward again. The nervous system responds before the mind has time to interpret.
What I slowly began to realize is that this practice is not only moving my body. It is reorganizing my brain.
The chemistry shifts. Neurons fire differently. Signals travel new pathways, altering how my body prepares to move, respond, and orient itself in space. Muscles engage with less force and more intelligence. Bones feel carried rather than commanded. Even the impulse to act arises from a different place.
It is mind-blowing to witness how breath and posture can influence the most microscopic processes inside the body. How something so ancient can reshape something so modern as neurological patterning. And yet, this is only the beginning.
As the body reorganizes, the mind expands. Thoughts arrive with more space around them. Old mental loops loosen their grip. New perceptions emerge quietly, without announcement. I feel my consciousness stretching, refining, noticing. It is as if I am receiving a new template for thought itself.
I am not forcing transformation. I am watching refinement happen.
Through breathwork, meditation, and repetition, I witness myself shifting. Not becoming someone new, but returning to something more original. My internal frequency changes, and with it, my experience of reality. The way I interpret situations. The way I respond to uncertainty. The way I trust my own inner signals.
This is where the experience becomes exhilarating and unsettling all at once.
Because when your inner world recalibrates, your outer world responds. Relationships shift. Desires refine themselves. Old expectations dissolve. Life begins to reorganize itself around a deeper alignment, and suddenly, the familiar no longer feels true.
And beneath all of it, there is a quiet request.
Pay attention. Breathe. Notice.
The deeper I go into these practices, the more trust is asked of me. Not blind faith. Not certainty. But embodied trust. Trust in my breath. Trust in my intuition. Trust in the intelligence moving through me that does not need my permission to exist.
That trust can feel intimidating. Because once you begin to listen, you cannot unhear. Once you feel the shift, you cannot unknow it. You are asked to move through the world without the old maps, guided instead by sensation, presence, and an inner knowing that grows stronger the more you honor it.
Through Kundalini yoga and breathwork, I have come to experience a force moving through us that cannot be controlled, yet can be met. Some call it God. Some call it Source. I experience it as a living intelligence, flowing through the body, responding to attention, breath, and willingness.
The breath becomes an interface. A bridge between the physical and the unseen. Between brain chemistry and consciousness. Through it, I experience both the illusion of control and the deeper truth of alignment.
I do not write this to convince anyone to practice Kundalini yoga or breathwork. I write it as an offering. A reminder that the body remembers what the mind forgets. That wisdom lives beneath our habits, our fears, and our carefully constructed identities.
Sometimes transformation does not arrive as a breakthrough. Sometimes it arrives as a quiet internal reorganization. A soft shift. A subtle return.
And sometimes, it begins the moment you notice your breath. The moment your body pauses. The moment something inside you whispers, try this again.
If you are reading this now, take a breath. Feel the weight of your body. Notice what is moving beneath the surface. You may find that what you need is already here, quietly waiting for you to see it.
#KundaliniYoga #BreathworkJourney #EmbodiedAwakening
