Spiritual Awakening Practices Glossary: What Each One Is

Two years into this whole thing, a friend at a dinner party asked me the difference between Kundalini Yoga and Qigong, and I just sat there. Mouth slightly open. Fork halfway to my plate. I had done both -- paid for both, actually, more than once -- and I could not tell her which one involved the rapid breathing and which one involved the slow arm sweeps without pulling out my phone and scrolling through old notes.

Here is the thing: nobody hands you a glossary when you fall into this. You just start collecting practices the way you collect open browser tabs, and at some point you owe it to yourself -- and to whoever you're trying to explain this to at a dinner party -- to sort out what's actually what. So this exists for that. Who's credited with starting each practice, how long a session actually runs, what the number on the label really says. Not vibes. The boring, checkable version, because the boring checkable version is the part I kept getting wrong out loud.

A caveat before you use this as your syllabus: I am not a teacher of any of these. I'm a person who tried most of them, in roughly the order a stressed-out illustrator with internet access tries things, and one -- I'll get to which -- did not go well for me at all.

Glossary of Spiritual Awakening Practices

Practice Name Origin / Key Figure Primary Methodology Key Technical Data
Vipassana Ancient India; popularized globally by S.N. Goenka, who was authorised to begin teaching it in 1969. "Insight" meditation involving systematic mental scanning of the body to observe physical sensations. Standard introductory courses run a 10-day residential period (12 days total once you count arrival and departure days).
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, at UMass Memorial Medical Center in 1979. A secularized synthesis of mindfulness meditation and Hatha yoga designed for clinical settings. Structured as an 8-week program with weekly 2.5-hour sessions.
Transcendental Meditation (TM) Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who began publicly teaching the technique in 1955. A silent mantra-based meditation intended to settle the mind into a state of "pure consciousness." Practiced for 20 minutes twice daily while sitting comfortably with eyes closed.
Kundalini Yoga Introduced to the West by Yogi Bhajan, who gave his first Kundalini Yoga class in Los Angeles on January 5, 1969. Combines asanas (postures), pranayama (breathing), and mantras to activate "Kundalini energy" at the base of the spine. Utilizes specific "Kriyas"—sets of exercises designed to achieve specific energetic outcomes.
Holotropic Breathwork Stanislav and Christina Grof, developed in the 1970s while the Grofs were in residence at Esalen. Uses rapid, controlled breathing and evocative music to induce non-ordinary states of consciousness. Sessions typically run 2.5 to 3 hours and are conducted in pairs (breather and sitter).
Self-Inquiry (Atma Vichara) Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950). A direct path of focusing attention on the source of the "I-thought" to realize the non-dual nature of the Self. Central technique involves the constant internal questioning of "Who am I?".
Tai Chi (Taijiquan) Chen-style, founded by Chen Wangting (1580–1660); legendary origins are also attributed to Zhang Sanfeng, a Taoist figure traditionally dated to the 12th century. A "soft" martial art characterized by slow, fluid movements and deep diaphragmatic breathing. Standardized forms include the "24-posture" Simplified Form, developed in 1956.
Qigong Ancient China; the earliest physical evidence of related exercises is the Mawangdui Silk Texts, dated to 168 BCE. A system of coordinated body posture, movement, and meditation used for health and spirituality. Comprises many distinct styles, schools, and lineages rather than one standardized system.
Shadow Work Derived from Carl Jung's analytical psychology, laid out across works published in the early 20th century. The process of identifying and integrating repressed or disowned parts of the psyche (the "shadow"). Jung described the shadow as "that hidden, repressed, for the most part inferior and guilt-laden personality" formed from whatever the conscious mind refuses to own.
Centering Prayer Thomas Keating, William Meninger, and Basil Pennington, three Trappist monks at St. Joseph's Abbey (1970s). A modern Christian contemplative practice focusing on interior silence and "consenting to God's presence." Recommended practice duration is 20 minutes twice a day.

Last verified: 2026-07-11

Field Notes From My Own Practice

I need to be honest about something: reading a table like the one above and actually sitting with a practice are two completely different experiences. So here's what a handful of these were like from the inside.

Vipassana was the closest thing to an editing pass I've ever done on my own mind. You know that stage in illustration work where you stop adding lines and just look -- really look -- at what's already there, without immediately fixing it? Ten days of body-scanning felt like that, except the thing I was looking at was every uncomfortable sensation I'd been outrunning for two years. I cried on day six for reasons I still can't fully explain, and nobody around me so much as blinked, which told me something about how normal that actually was.

Transcendental Meditation I liked in theory and quietly let go of in practice -- mostly because paying a certified teacher for a "personal mantra" felt less like ancient wisdom and more like a subscription I couldn't justify on a freelancer's income. Twenty minutes twice a day is a genuinely lovely rhythm, though. Brushing your teeth for your nervous system.

Then there's the one that didn't work. I did a Holotropic-style breathwork workshop about a year into all this -- the rapid, no-pause breathing kind, not the slow stuff -- expecting some big cosmic download. Instead I got a racing heart, tingling hands, and a facilitator gently telling me to slow my breathing while I quietly panicked on a yoga mat in what used to be someone's living room. Nothing opened. I just felt like I'd sprinted uphill. I looked up the contraindications afterward out of curiosity -- I don't have any of the conditions on that list -- and it still wasn't for me, which was a useful thing to learn about my own nervous system even though the workshop itself was a bust.

Self-Inquiry is the one I return to on bad writing-and-drawing-block days, if I'm honest. Sitting with "Who am I?" and not answering it -- just letting the question sit there, unresolved -- scratches the same itch as staring at a blank page until the actual shape of a drawing shows up instead of the one I was forcing. Uncomfortable for the first few minutes. Then, weirdly, not.

A Note Before You Try Any of This

None of what's above is medical or mental-health advice, and none of it has been proven to work the same way for everyone -- it's a record of where these practices come from and what a handful of them were like for one specific person. If you're dealing with real psychological distress, dissociation, or anything that feels less like an awakening and more like your nervous system genuinely struggling, please talk to a licensed therapist or psychiatrist instead of a stranger's glossary page. And if you're considering anything with fast, forceful breathing -- Holotropic Breathwork, Kundalini's breath-of-fire pranayama, anything in that family -- know that facilitators screen people out for a reason: epilepsy, pregnancy, uncontrolled high blood pressure, and cardiovascular conditions are the ones that actually matter here, and "I've heard breathwork is powerful" is not the same thing as "my doctor has cleared me for it."

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