If you like stories and lessons learned from life, this blog is for you. On the one hand, it is an invitation to engage in self-discovery on the order of bija mantras for the chakras. And on the other hand, it encourages you, the seeker and the practitioner, to not take anyone's word for granted but to seek and discover the truth for yourself. 

The Buddha taught:

"Believe nothing because a wise man said it,
Believe nothing because it is generally held.
(and there'e more to this quote below...)

It was called Y2K: the year 2000. People were terrified that something terrible would happen at the turn of the millennium, particularly around digital clocks not resetting and the chaos ensuing. But, paradoxically, my life was getting exciting. Just the year before, I had recorded my album Nada Yoga at an incredible studio deep in the California redwoods. Kenny was an engineer who recorded the Grateful Dead and many other greats. I was excited about a multiple-album contract with a New York...

We can use any mantra for healing. However, understanding a mantra and, more importantly, cultivating a relationship with the power or intelligence behind the mantra can further the healing process.

Where does one begin with mantras and healing?

One way is to invoke the God of Healing: Dhanvantari.

Here are two variations:

om namo dhanvantaraye
or
om dhanvantaraye namaha

Learn more about sacred sound

In the video below, I share the pronunciation for this mantra for healing along with some chanting and other information.

Below the video, you will find reflections to help deepen your mantra practice around healing along with some questions for journaling.

Click the play button on the video below:

Questions for journaling and reflection:

When we need healing, we follow directions. What's the mantra for healing, we ask. Someone gives us a mantra, and we say it with faith.

What is it then that heals us: our faith or the mantra? Is the mantra a vehicle for our faith? Or is our fa...

What is oneness, and why do we desire it so much?

I believe oneness is our blueprint for spiritual homeostasis, a natural return to balance, harmony, and unity. However, the tendency to move out of this original state is part of our naturalness, as well. That's the oneness paradox we must learn to manage with skill.

PARADOX

In other words, losing the oneness experience is part of regaining it. When we grasp this paradox, we start to appreciate oneness as a unity that embraces diversity and differentiation. Oneness does not need to be a homogenous mushy soup of unity.

HOMEOSTASIS

The key is awareness of oneness lost as it is lost. If the desire to restore oneness begins when we lose it, a different process ensues in contrast to recovering or restoring oneness after the fact. We learn that there is no need to lament this loss but be present in the unfolding process and be willing to guide its return back to spiritual homeostasis.

PERFECTIONISM
The loss of oneness is the explication,...

As humans, we seek and value experience. Our experience is best when it involves all parts of ourselves. The more of ourselves we include, the more fulfilled our experience.

Imagine a family sitting around a table to partake of a meal, like Christmas or Thanksgiving. If there is an argument between a couple of individuals, the rest of the family cannot enjoy the meal.

This dynamic happens to our experience when there is an internal conflict going on during our experiences: for example, watching a movie. Although we might be doing something enjoyable, we are not enjoying ourselves.

This dynamic happens during spiritual practice, as well. We are doing something supposed to make us feel better, but we feel dead inside. There is not enough juice in our experience to fulfill us.

Tantra is a path that teaches us how to have full experiences. We learn to include the disparate parts of who we are by pulling them together into the cohesiveness.

Sometimes, it is not so much that parts of ou...

These are undoubtedly challenging times for everyone in the world. But I want you to know that there is always hope. And a way to address our inner conditions.

When speaking of spiritual practice in the unprecedented circumstances of our time, we have to weigh every word we utter. In addition, our methods have to address the anxiety and depression resulting from so much uncertainty.

No superficial practice will cut it. What is happening in our world is not simple. So we cannot expect a simple solution.

For example, if you want to calm your mind and the nervous system quickly, I suggest chanting "Om Namah Shivaya" with Gnana Mudra. You can reference the mudra in the blog image above. The combination of sound and gesture is powerful. You are grounding and energizing simultaneously.

However, sustaining spiritual consciousness during challenging times requires stamina. Mantra practice will lend itself to the process, but we must learn more than just mantra practice. That's where this c...

Over many millennia, humans have used sound and music for healing in cultures around the world. Shamans are the perfect example. With their rattles, drums, and vocalizing, they invoke a spirit or take the person in need of healing into a dimension not known in ordinary states of consciousness. In the 1600s, the western world learned of such conditions through trance-induced yogis who could sleep on a bed of nails and offered cures to various ailments. Later, in the 60s, non-ordinary states of consciousness were associated with psychedelic drugs such as LSD used by hippies. Unfortunately, neither of these examples does justice to the healing power of non-ordinary states. At the same time, we need to take care not to be quick to assume that any non-ordinary state achieved by any means can be helpful to our healing. Finally, we might like to add that a certain maturity is necessary to approach the process with integrity. This article is about such maturity and integration.

In psychology,...

First published in Common Ground May/June 2021 as "The Yoga of Sound: Mantras and Creativity"

When repeating a mantra is boring,
here's how to enliven your practice. 

Today, there is widespread interest in kirtan and in mantra chanting, especially within the yoga community. It is as though Western yoga has discovered its soul through these expressions. And there is a lot of creativity happening with mantras, which while good in some ways, can compromise the power and potency of mantras on the other. Creativity, however, is important! It is in itself a form of healing. Mantras too are a form of healing. How then do we bring the two together—mantras and creativity?

Health, we are fast realizing, is not simply the absence of disease: it is a condition of soul that invigorates our being, enabling us to derive the most from life. Also, the effects of yoga as well as of sound vibrations upon our health and well-being have garnered credibility in recent decades. What if we can combine t...

In this blog, you understand when devotional mantras are helpful to the healing process and when they are not a good part of the solution.

Devotion, from the human perspective, is our ability to appreciate the presence of another. In this sense, a husband might be "devoted" to his wife, a mother to her child. In eastern spirituality, there is also devotion to a guru, a teacher who can be seen and heard.

However, the most profound form of devotion in spirituality is developing a relationship with the unseen, the invisible. How, though, do we develop such a capacity? One way, and a somewhat effective way at that, is to develop devotion in and through our voice.

Bhakti is the cultivation of devotion through the voice, but relating this sensitivity to something hidden and mysterious. While there are "forms" in Bhakti, the forms only serve to mediate that which is formless.

The Bhakti approach to mantras is a specific category or stream within the overall sacred sound system in Indian s...

What if someone told you that your voice is the barometer of your Soul? Would you agree that every condition and quality present in your Soul is reflected in the sound of your voice?

The difference in life experience in an elderly person's voice and a teenager's voice immediately registers upon us, no matter what they say. An elderly person may say something frivolous, yet, we sense maturity in that voice. A teenage, on the other hand, may say something profound. However, we still hear the immaturity of life experience in that voice. Of course, there are always exceptions, moments when something profound comes through a person's voice, no matter what age.

When we examine these moments of profundity closely, we notice a quality of presence that accompanies the voice in these instances. We want to work towards such a quality of presence in ourselves that is a refinement of self. And we discover this more significant presence, this sense of Soul, through the expression of a voice that i...