Shared Transformation Issue 16
Panic Attacks
Rereading Larry Dossey's Recovering the Soul (Bantam Books, 1989), I came across some affirming data. There is a common perception that people who have psychic and spiritual experiences are other-worldly and eccentric at best; the less charitable sentiment is that they are crackpots, far more psychologically unsound than those who do not venture into such strange waters. But when sociologist Andrew Greeley of the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center tested such individuals, including those who claimed to have had profound mystical experiences, he discovered just the opposite was true. These people had top scores in the standard tests that measure psychological health. Greeley reported that far from being "religious nuts or psychiatric cases," most of these individuals demonstrated higher than normal intelligence and somewhat less religious involvement than average. In fact, Dossey notes that according to Norman Bradburn, one of the psychologists who developed these tests, "no other factor had ever been found to correlate so highly with psychological balance as did mystical experience."
Our cultural religion of Materialist Science would have us scoff at the idea of mysterious energies that could have physical effects on the body. Yet this same science has had to humble itself many times over the course of its expanding view of the universe. Dossey reminds us that "Galileo condemned Johannes Kepler's views on gravity as 'the ravings of a madman' when the latter proposed that invisible forces from the moon, acting across gigantic distances, were causing the earth's tides." True science is more interested in exploring what IS than in defending old theories against new knowledge. The information in the following audiotape gives me hope: The Dancing Partners: Kundalini and Panic Disorder with Bronwyn Fox & Jasmin Arthur-Jones (available from Perpetual Motion Unlimited, 1705 14th St., Suite 396, Boulder, CO 80302 - (303) 444-3158)
When these two Australian researchers finished their presentation at the the Kundalini Research Network Symposium 1994, members of the audience exclaimed that their data was "stunning." What they have uncovered is that since 1980, when the criteria for what Fox calls "the myth of panic disorders" was added to the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual accepted as law by most psychiatrists, mainstream therapists and insurance companies), individuals experiencing classic Kundalini symptoms have been told, in effect, that they are mentally/emotionally ill and have been medically [mis]treated accordingly.
From Fox's and Arthur-Jones' findings from their two scientific studies (which they are trying to get published in a mainstream medical journal), it would appear that a third to three-quarters of all people diagnosed with "panic attacks" are, in fact, undergoing Kundalini awakenings! Apparently, as more people experiencing involuntary and unrecognized Kundalini awakening in the 70's flocked to doctors and psychiatrists for help, the medical authorities decided that these patients were having "uncued panic attacks" (i.e., they were having episodes of extreme fear with no provocation). All the Kundalini symptoms were explained away as effects of excessive adrenaline in the system brought on by the allegedly unprovoked terror these patients often reported.
In truth, Arthur-Jones explains, the fear they experience is a perfectly normal and sane response to unknown (to them) and overwhelming Kundalini experiences, including: feeling rushes of electric, hot prickly or vibrating energy throughout their bodies; spontaneous out-of-body experiences (which psychology calls "dissociation"); experiencing inner sounds and brilliant inner lights. Additional symptoms and sensations most commonly reported by these individuals (which they say are "constantly changing" and which many of them experience 24 hours a day) are: depression, shaking, trembling, headaches, lower back pains, temporary paralysis, neck aches, diarrhea, extreme exhaustion and fear, abdominal pain, hot flashes, sciatica, night sweats, migrating unexplainable body pain, recurrent pelvic pain, unexplainable rashes, chronic and temporary pains all over the body, sensitivity to light, acute hearing, difficulty breathing, burning sensations in the stomach. Sound familiar?
The majority of these people have never meditated, and seriously fear they are dying, going insane or losing control when these experiences and symptoms occur. 74% of these so-called "panic disorder" patients said that their nervous system was functioning differently than it had before their first "panic attack." 33% reported kriyas, which they called "spontaneous physical jerking" which occurred most vigorously at night in bed. A third or more reported the following mystical experiences during or after their "panic attacks":
(1) Seeing a white or golden light
(2) An overwhelming sense of love
(3) New understanding of spiritual truths
(4) An emotional flood of devotion, joy or reverence
(5) Expansion of consciousness
(6) Intense feelings of peace
(7) Overwhelming sense of wonder and awe
Doctors on the whole dismiss these spiritual experiences (and equally common reports of increasing psychic abilities) among these patients as delusional and a side effect of their pathology! In working with these individuals (none of whom seemed to have been helped much by the standard plying with medications approach), Fox and Arthur-Jones found what was most beneficial for them was teaching them meditation as a way of releasing their fear of the process, and encouraging them to allow the symptoms and sensations to occur. (Before, due to fear or belief that they were crazy, they had tried to resist and fight off these manifestations of the process.) Although what is being called the "panic attacks" -- i.e., the Kundalini experiences -- do not stop, "recovery" is defined as the lack of fear of these manifestations.
The most helpful therapeutic technique was helping these patients work through inner issues brought up by the process itself -- i.e., healing past trauma and making personal adjustments for their own growth and wellbeing.
Fox has pointed out that the newest DSM-IV has made some progress in recognizing that these so- called "uncued attacks" are a different syndrome than phobias, post traumatic stress, and anxiety attacks, which rarely involve Kundalini symptoms. (However, the manual still fails to recognize that this is indeed the Kundalini process even though it now includes a separate categorization for spiritual emergence experiences.)
Elsewhere: the Research Update section of Colorado's Nexus journal (May/June '95) mentions possible "unpleasant side effects" of meditation. Medical researchers studying symptoms such as "a racing heart, muscle tension, head pain and perspiration" that are sometimes triggered by meditation have dubbed this process "relaxation-induced panic." Neither the researchers nor the author(s) of this newsbrief realize that these are possible signs of Kundalini activation and not simply a product of fear! But at least they acknowledge that meditation is not a guarantee of spiritual smooth sailing. The writer quotes Nathaniel Mead (who mentioned this research in the March/April '94 Utne Reader): "When a meditator is led to expect stress reduction and instead comes face to face with his true self, the result can be anything but relaxing."
The word "panic" originally meant terror of the nature god Pan, who had been demonized
by the patriarchal church. In fact, Pan is Greek for "all;" the great Pan was believed to be omnipresesent
in the natural world, much like the goddess Kundalini is said to be the lifeforce. In this sense, the word "panic"
was first used to denigrate the direct, inner connection to primal, sacred forces. History repeats itself, alas.
-- El Collie
© El Collie 1995