Autism, Seizures & Spirituality

I want to share my experience with autism, seizures, and spirituality…

Over the last few years I have moved through confusion, curiosity and fear as I experienced intense bodily episodes which eventually led me to question what was happening beneath the surface.

This is a reflection on my experiences and the process of trying to make sense of events that felt medical, emotional, and deeply spiritual simultaneously.

If you are experiencing similar episodes, I’m here to talk. I felt absolutely insane and I have met so many wonderful autistic souls in the past year who have experienced the same thing.

You are not alone.

I tried to write this article exactly 1 year ago today…

I had just been on a journey for the past 3 years which had led me to grow a deep fear of seizures, a lack of control, being autistic in spiritual spaces and breathwork.

Finally, this weekend, after being led to go back to that same event which had instilled so much fear and curiosity in me, I have the answers to my own questions.

This past weekend was what solidified my inner knowing. An experience that made the truth incredibly clear for me after a year of research, endless reading and training as a kundalini yoga teacher in search of alternative methods.

In case it is not obvious, I am not a health professional and these conclusions are from my own experiences and learning only.

So, here’s what happened…

Around 4 years ago I lay down on my bedroom floor and my whole body started to shake, I’m talking hands curling up, body as stiff as a rod, jaw locked shaking.

I was terrified of it and so when I felt the sensation rise up, I suppressed it. I was overwhelmed by the feeling that something big was about to happen and I was pretty certain it was a seizure of sorts.

I would get the strong urge to lie down more and more frequently. I began to lie on the floor and move in spasmic movements. I felt the urge to put on tribal drum music after coming home from university in my bedroom.

I knew it was weird…

It felt primal and strange and I had no idea what it was… I never spoke about it but it felt so right and sometimes it would last an hour or even longer. Sometimes I would cry, or sometimes I would feel ecstasy. Sometimes I would see memories and sometimes I would see visions of the future.

All very strange and needless to say, I didn’t tell anyone about it.

Fast forward a year or two, I had moved to Bali.

I somehow ended up going to breathwork events in Bali, which I didn’t know much about. I was so overwhelmed by these events. I always mentioned I was autistic when I walked in and that I was extremely sensitive and they told me to take things at my own pace and to breathe slower than everyone else… but that was about it.

These breathwork events brought me to the edge of full on seizures. I always ignored the instructors and did about a quarter of the breathing they instructed. That’s all I needed to shoot off into the 5D.

Whilst everyone else afterwards seemed okay…

I couldn’t stand,

My whole body was buzzing

I couldn’t see properly

My hearing went muffled

My hands seized up

The lovely instructor from my first breathwork (who is now my bestie) took me for a coconut afterwards to help me balance my body out (this really helped in case it ever happens to you).

A series of strange events happened when I was working in my home in Bali. I’d drunk a small cup of coffee whilst I worked online. I can usually tolerate a small amount of caffeine.

I felt this surge of energy rise up me and I started gently pacing and regulating myself thinking,

“I’ve just had too much caffeine… it will pass”.

I thought it was odd… as I’d only had a few sips… My whole body began to violently vibrate from my toes to the top of my head.

My throat started to close and my vision started going. I called my landlord and he sent round a local woman who sat with me and massaged my hands as I screamed and my whole body convulsed.

I could not stop the shaking and the only way I felt I could breath was by doing this weird kind of hum-screaming where it felt like the vibrations were relaxing my throat. My heart went out of the roof and I thought I was going to die.

I begged to be taken to the hospital and the Balinese lady looked white as a sheet. She told me the next day she thought “I was a goner.” However, the landlord and lady decided I had to get to the water by the ocean, not the hospital (imagine).

I was convulsing and they got me into the car and I could not walk, only scream and gasp for air. When I got to the beach, I remember not being able to breathe and everything being a blur and looking up at the sky which was beginning to be a bruised peach colour. There was a huge full moon and I prayed a secret promise to her in return for surviving this (I kept the promise).

I continued shaking for 4 hours. They brought me fresh coconuts and put me in the water. It would come in waves and I would beg for it to stop, I can’t express how scared I was.

I got back at 1 in the morning and called my mum and sobbed. I had no idea what had happened…

Was it anaphylaxis?

Was it MCAS?

Was there something wrong with my brain?

I was terrified to go to sleep and I booked a flight back to the UK in two days time. I wanted to be near healthcare, just in case.

When I got back to England they had to call me another ambulance as I was having the same experience during the night and the paramedics had no idea what was wrong with me. I was exhausted and it took me months to recover.

My whole life upended, my job, my home, I moved country AGAIN, literally everything. It seemed the episodes happened and then something big would happen. I got shingles the first time the ambulance was called, all up my hips.

Another time, after a breathwork session, I got chest pains and asthma-like symptoms.

I began to connect the dots that each episode led to a certain energetic centre having a physical release in the form of diseases. I could see the energy was almost moving up me? From my hips up to my chest and throat.

6 months after arriving back in England, my bestie from Bali invited me to go to a three day breathwork event in London.

At this point however, I had stopped letting the energy surges go through me on my bedroom floor. Everytime I felt the buzzing feeling I would do everything in my power to stop it.

A phobia had absolutely developed.

I travelled to London, and I’d made an agreement with myself going into the breathwork that I would only breath to the point where I felt comfortable and I didn’t want to have the buzzing.

I was lying on the mat in London and gentle breathing was enough for me to slip into the 5D as usual and have profound visions and all that jazz. Ancestors, angels, you know how it goes.

When I came out of the session and opened my eyes, the girl right in front of me was having a seizure and I froze. I was terrified!

My worst fear was right in front of me. Watching her was triggering me so deeply and I felt so much anger that this was happening, that the people who were running this event had let this happen to her.

But to my surprise, the next day I saw the girl had come back, looking unphased.

My other autistic souls will know, when you meet another autistic person… it’s pretty obvious. I had clocked this particular girl on the first day and so I was not surprised that it was her who had had the seizure.

Now I was more adamant than ever!

Suppress the buzzing. Avoid at all costs.

After I got back to my home in the forest, although I’d completely stopped breathwork, I was now mysteriously waking up in the night buzzing from head to toe.

This motivated me to spend the next year expanding my nervous system. After a year of dedicated kundalini yoga teacher training, I noticed I could breathe a lot deeper without going into the pre-seizure feeling.

So fast forward to this weekend, the worst happened…

This past weekend I was in London. I was feeling wildly optimistic, my nervous system can handle so much more and I was really excited to do breathwork – I was not scared about having a seizure, the buzzing rarely happened now and I kind of felt like I’d nailed calming the feeling.

My first beathwork session on the first day was blissful: visions, euphoria, hope, release.

My ego was cockily celebrating – we’ve done it!

No more scary seizures on the floor! Ha!

The next day I avoided the breathwork. I knew it was going to be a lot and I wasn’t ready for it. Emotions were stirring inside of me and I was avoiding.

Then on the final day, I said… I’m going all in. I was so sick of my own patterns of avoidance and I needed answers..

I lay down on the mat and I was honestly so deeply exhausted physically and emotionally. I had forgotten a blanket and mask and had every excuse to not do it but I was sick of my avoidant patterns.

I breathed deeply and from the first round I felt my body buzzing all over.

I thought, “I’ve felt this so many times since Bali and nothing bad has happened so let’s just keep breathing.”

No bliss this time…

…just inconceivable sadness in my heart and I had no idea where it was coming from.

I breathed deeper into the second round and I felt so much sadness in my heart, in my hips that I thought I’d die.

It didn’t feel like my own sadness, it felt so painful like I was feeling seven, no, twenty peoples’ heartbreak in my womb, my heart, my hands and soul.

My limbs curled up and I managed to put my hand up for help and no one came and the sadness poured over me at how alone and scared I felt, how alone my ancestors had felt. My hands started to cramp intensely and I kept breathing into round three.

I kept my hand in the air and I told myself, the only way to release this is through, don’t avoid it.

My brain went to suicidal thoughts which I know from my job helping other autistic individuals, is what happens when our bodies cannot handle the emotional pain we are feeling.

Knowing this, I pushed through, telling myself my body is safe to feel this. That’s when the visions appeared and I saw things, felt things that horrified me and suddenly I couldn’t breath. I felt I was being suffocated and my whole body began to cramp and convulse and I realised it was finally happening…

I just let go.

A lady at the breathwork event grabbed my hand and she held onto me whilst I had the seizure. I was out of consciousness and all I remember was searching for a tree in my mind and begging the leaves of a tree above me to make it stop. The pain in my heart was too much and I kept telling the tree I was scared and I wanted it to stop, I couldn’t take the pain.

I remember then Daniel (the lovely Mexican medicine guide) was with me and he was telling me to open my eyes but I could see him so I was confused.

He pulled off my blindfold but I couldn’t stop. He was asking me my name and I didn’t know where I was.

I was back in the forest. And I ached to be back to being one with nature again, in death, or at least not in this human experience.

Daniel placed some herbal smelling salts under my nose and I was back in the real world and suddenly violently aware that I was convulsing and my jaw ached and my lower back felt on fire.

He put his shawl over me and he sat with me whilst the convulsions continued and I had no choice but to let it happen. He reminded me that my body knew what it was doing and slowed my breathing down. He uncramped my hands and pressed firmly on my chest and stomach.

Eventually, the convulsions stopped and Daniel lay down with me. My whole body ached, I felt deeply sad and I struggled to sit up for a long time. I asked Daniel what was happening to me and he explained that polar bears shake after being chased by helicopters to rid the trauma from their bodies. That scientists have been perplexed by polar bear seizures. He explained that, like the polar bears, it needed to be released from my body.

The shaking has continued this morning and small tremors continue to thunder through me but now I do not fear them. I let them rise through me and relax my mind.

They feel overwhelmed, and I’m really exhausted and sad… but not scared.

As I am writing this I can feel something has shifted, what it is I don’t know. I am still processing but I feel relief that my biggest fear transpired.

So… what do I think?

I have talked to a lot of other autistic people who have tremors and seizures, particularly spiritually inclined autistic individuals, and their experiences vary from fearful to going to the forest and letting the convulsions happen naturally..

What if seizures can be the body releasing generations of trauma from your body, soul and DNA? Because that’s how it felt, emotional pain so indescribable coursing through me that my body had to literally turn off my brain to shake it out.

What if autistic individuals are more prone to seizures because they are incredibly energetically sensitive and have less filters? Just like stimming, seizures rid the pent up overload in our nervous systems?

I read a great book that talked about western cultures pathologising a lot of naturally occurring human conditions that are particularly prevalent in autistic individuals, such as schizophrenia and seizures.

The author talks about how in other societies, these conditions are sacred. You are considered a psychic, a visionary, a dream walker. I’m not saying that all health conditions are spiritual gifts, but I do believe in many cases, they can be once fear is removed. Well at least, in my case this was true – my body was trying to tell me what it needed to do but I kept resisting.

A lot of peace has come to me this weekend in trusting that my body knows what it’s doing. Just like stimming, the shakes, although intense… seem to do the same thing.

Releasing the energy, however terrifying, has led to a more regulated nervous system, a better life and more capacity in all senses.

I have to say, a year ago I wrote in my original article that

“I couldn’t help but feel that for autistic people, breath-work was being treated like sex with no foreplay.”

It is intense and I do believe that there should be more awareness about autistic nervous systems in breathwork spaces. They need less to achieve large results.

It took me a year of extreme focus on regulating my nervous system to be able to handle intense breathwork.

I can imagine it would be really scary for a lot of autistic individuals and for breathwork practitioners who are not aware of what is going on.

There is a link made time and time again between seizures and profound, often life-altering spiritual or mystical experiences. It is documented that neurodivergent individuals experience “ecstatic seizures” and when I was reading, I saw that these “ecstatic seizures” produce feelings of intense bliss, mental clarity, omniscience, and a “oneness with the universe”.

I believe fully that this is something I continue to experience.

I believe autistic individuals have an easier time connecting to the spiritual/energetic realm.

Where I witness others taking deep inhales during breathwork and only accessing a few visions, I would (and other autistic individuals I have talked to) access these visions after simply closing our eyes and tuning in.

When I finally took the same breaths as the people next to me, it felt like the trauma of my ancestors, in my cells, in my bones and DNA were being shaken out of me.

I am not done with this exploration of this idea.

I wonder to what extent autism is a manifestation of these generational experiences. I wonder if it’s a combination of a gifted sensitivity and pent up energetic bodily state.

I’m not sure.

I felt last year that if I spoke about these things that I would be crucified for suggesting such ideas. But after this weekend, after taking a year to really think and explore this idea. I really feel it in my bones.

If my opinions change, I will write another article. But for now I will share my views and opinions in hopes this reaches one other autistic person like me who was having seizures in their bedroom absolutely sure there was something about me that was possessed.

I now know deeply in my soul through experience and through knowledge that there is nothing wrong with me or you, autistic soul.

Shake your bones for your ancestors, find your community and set yourself free from fear. God is love, you are love and anyone that suggests otherwise is projecting their own fear and crookedness inside onto you.

Autistic feral-ness is an absolute blessing. The more I tap into it, the more alive, sensual and energised I become. Trust it, allow it, explore it and find communities that allow you to express it freely.

All my love,

Liv xx