Within the boundaries of the genital hole there is the sensation of nothingness, of voidness, of no existence. If the person senses or looks deeper, the nothingness deepens and expands. The hole expands into more of the pelvis and later into the rest of the body. Under normal circumstances, awareness of this hole in the unconscious body-image is defended against through many different means. The most obvious is physical contraction, tension. Typically there is a tension around the pelvis, centered at the sacrum and the perineum. This ring of tension is normally accompanied by another tension ring around the head, especially around the ocular region. We recall that the genital hole is one end of a column of emptiness running through the body, so we see then that there are tensions which block the two ends of this column or tube. There are other tension patterns in the body relating to the column, but the pelvis and head are the major and most frequently encountered ones.

We are not referring here to physical energy, which is part of the physical world. Rather, we mean the vital energy necessary for living forms, referred to in Sanskrit as prana or shakti. This differentiation is important because we can think of the human organism as the confluence of a physical body, an energy body (referred to sometimes as the astral body), and the soul, which includes her essence. The energy body is the dimension of vital energy necessary for life; we can access it through the activation of the chakra system. This system of energetic centers uses the vital energy—prana or shakti—for its functioning, an energy that the organism partly acquires through the breath. It is this energy that yogic systems utilizing kundalini for their practices try to cultivate and direct. Kundalini is the name given to a reservoir of dormant energy, visualized as a serpent coiled in the first chakra at the perineum. By awakening the kundalini, the shakti is activated, which then rises up the spine activating and energizing the chakra centers. The chakra centers become doorways to deeper spiritual experiences and dimensions.