From a ring to an atom

In Sanskrit, kuṇḍala is a ring: an earring, a bracelet, the coil of a rope.

From it comes kuṇḍalin, circular, spiral, winding, and kuṇḍalinī, the coiled one. In Śaiva and Śākta tantras the word came to name a power described as coiled and at rest in the body, able to rise. Scholars place its first uses in early medieval Śaiva texts; which text comes first is still debated. From around the fifteenth century, with the Haṭhapradīpikā, kuṇḍalinī became central to haṭha yoga.

Kundalino is none of this history. It is an Italian diminutive: -ino makes things small and close at hand. A small kundalini, its atom. The name came from yoga circles, as a nickname, and stayed, the way words do when they are used.

It is not a school, a lineage or a method. In particular it is not Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan, a system with its own history and its own trademarks.

What it keeps from the word is an image: a coil at rest, which can open a little. Small coil, slow wake.