A serpentine manifestation of kuṇḍalini, unspoken in practice but conceptually immanent, permeates the South Indian martial art kaḷarippayaṟṟ˘. It is evident in the tantric underpinnings of the kaḷarippayaṟṟ˘ body, its training shrine and its rituals, and is strikingly visible in the internally defined 'spinal nature' of kaḷarippayaṟṟ˘'s movement forms. This paper explores the panel's question around the embodied experience of kuṇḍalini through a consideration of kaḷarippayaṟṟ˘'s explicit process for generating a cycling wind whose key driver is a point in mūlādhāram, which the kaḷari texts define as the seat of kuṇḍalini. I discuss the facilitation of this wind-generation through the sensual dimensions of a practice which includes the sensory and protective full-body application of oil, followed by the tactility of moving and sweating on and in contact with packed earth. When a practitioner enters the kaḷari (training-shrine) the first homage given after the kaḷari's presiding deity is to the nāga dēvata, a reminder of the historic importance of Kerala's serpent grove-temples. This paper considers, as an example of hybridity and local adaptation, the tangle of Kerala's history of serpent veneration with a later tantric imbrication, and asks how a serpentine kuṇḍalini is made specifically manifest in a localised expression of cycling winds and undulating spines.