Adi Shakti: The Primordial Power Within
Kundalini yoga and Sound Healing in Mallorca | Lumina Sound by Anna Caldwell
There is a force that underlies all of existence and, as the ancient teachings tell us, existed before form, before thought, before even the first breath of an organism like you and me. This energy/ force goes by different names depending on the tradition and the philosophy we are speaking about. In the ancient Vedic and Kundalini traditions, this force is called Adi Shakti: the primordial creative power, the original energy from which all of life arises and to which all of life returns. Adi — primordial, first. Shakti — power, energy, force. Together, these sacred works describe the source before the source and power that set everything in motion.
Adi — primordial, first. Shakti — power, energy, force.
Kundalini: Adi Shakti Within
In the Kundalini Yoga tradition, Adi Shakti and Kundalini are the same energy understood from two vantage points. Adi Shakti is the universal, cosmic expression, the force behind all of creation. Kundalini is her individualised form, the same primordial power as it lives within each of us.
The word Kundalini comes from the Sanskrit kundal, meaning coiled. When this energy stirs through our practice (through yoga, mantra, breath, sound and meditation) she begins to rise through the central channel of the spine, the Sushumna Nadi, awakening each chakra as this energy ascends. As Kundalini rises, everyones experience can be quite unique. One thing is sure, though, is that she removes the veils of illusion, allows our mental limitations dissolve and in the process our nervous system is nourished and strengthened. When we experience the awakening of this energy, we can feel an expanded sense of awareness + connection between self and other, between individual and divine energy and between our finite and infinite forms.
When Kundalini finally reaches our crown chakra, the Sahasrara, she unites with Shiva , the still, witnessing consciousness, at the top of the head. This is the union the entire tradition is oriented toward. … not our postures, not even the meditation but this moment: the meeting of the individual soul with its own infinite nature. Guru Vashistha, in the ancient Upanishads, declared that Kundalini is the seat of absolute knowledge and that the awareness of this primordial energy within the human body was the highest knowledge a person could attain.
One of the most beautiful teachings in the Kundalini tradition is that your Kundalini is not an abstract force. She is entirely personal. She has recorded everything … every aspiration, every wound, every prayer. She rises because she wants to give us our second birth, and she moves at exactly the pace that we are ready to receive a opening what is ready to open.
This is why the tradition speaks of Kundalini as the Divine Mother. Loved. At the level of the soul.
In the Vedic Tradition
The understanding of Shakti as the supreme creative force is one of the oldest teachings in human history. In the Vedic scriptures, among the most ancient sacred texts ever written, shakti is described as the fundamental energy behind creation, preservation and dissolution. The primal movement of everything.
In this tradition, Shakti and Shiva are inseparable. Shiva is pure consciousness (vast, still, unchanging) and Shakti is the dynamic force that animates that consciousness and brings it into form. She creates the world, she sustains it, and she dissolves it back into herself. In Tantric philosophy, this interplay between stillness and movement, masculine and feminine, is the very mechanism of existence.
Adi Shakti, the primordial form of this energy as mentioned above, is not one goddess among many. She is the source from which all goddesses arise. Kali, Durga, Saraswati, Lakshmi each is an expression of the one primordial feminine force, known as Adi Parashakti: the supreme, transcendent power! The ancient sages understood that this energy does not exist only in the cosmos but lives in the human body coiled at the base of the spine, in the triangular bone at the root of our being that the ancient Greeks called the sacrum, meaning holy. It was considered so sacred that many ancient traditions believed it to be the last bone to dissolve after death, the seed of resurrection, the seat of the soul's creative potential.
The Five Faces of Adi Shakti
The Kundalini Bhakti Mantra calls upon five different names of this primordial force. Each name is a doorway into a different quality of the same energy:
Adi Shakti — the primordial power, the source before the source
Sarab Shakti — the unlimited creative energy as it flows through all of existence
Pritham Bhagvati — the creative power as it manifests moment to moment, in each instant of life
Kundalini Mata Shakti — the feminine creative force as it lives within each individual
Mata Shakti — the mother energy that creates and cares for all things
To chant these names is to call upon and play with that creative energy alive within each of us. Namo Namo — I bow, I bow. Again and again! A gesture of surrender, of recognition and of return to our primordial origin. You can check out one of my favorite recordings to chant to by Nirinjan Kaur HERE.
If you want to go deeper into the science and practice of sound, mantra and kundalini yoga, my retreats are where we explore all of this and more. Or, if you’re not quite ready for a training or retreat, Lumina Sound Circle online membership is your sanctuary for sound healing, mantra and immersion into sound medicine/kundalini practices.
Love,
Anna
