Yogic Mystery School ™

The human voice, a truly unique instrument, has always fascinated me. Its preciousness, however, became even more apparent in the face of the widespread violence and bloodshed that plague our world today.

Did you know hearing is among the first human faculties to develop in the womb? And hearing is postulated to be among the last of our senses to leave us as we die? Hearing leads to the development of our voices. If our eyes are the gateways to our souls, could our voices be their bodies? In all their diversity, our voices are the universal embodiment of our souls.

The human voice, a unique blessing of life, characterizes our aliveness. The voice can express itself through the body and be heard through the ears, a manifestation of sound moving in the air medium. This aliveness of sound sets the human voice apart from all other sounds, making it a truly extraordinary instrument.

Unlike the mechanical sounds emitted from electronic music synthesizers or everyday equipment, the human...

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 faith...

Please join me in a daily practice of speaking (or chanting) a beautiful mantric prayer for 11 days. It takes less than a minute, and you can easily add it to your regular prayer and meditation.

As the war in Ukraine enters a new phase, we need to use our voices to do all we can to build a better world. One voice we can use is the voice of prayer.

Friday is a sacred day to begin a new undertaking with the grace of the goddess. And this is the start of the Tamil New Year, too.

In the video below, you can learn to speak a mantra. Vedic mantras are beautiful prayers often offered for the welfare of the whole world.

Although this mantric prayer captures the spirit of the Vedas, it is not from the classic Vedic tradition. It is, however, easy to learn.

sarveśāṁ svastir bhavatu 
sarveśāṁ śāntir bhavatu
sarveśāṁ pūrṇaṁ bhavatu
sarveśāṁ maṅgalaṁ bhavatu
oṁ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ

Mantras might offer us enhanced consciousness in a world...

Mountains have always been a draw for those who seek higher consciousness. Like spiritual practice, climbing mountains require effort. But not everyone wants to see spirituality as something that requires action. For instance, healing through relaxing or meditating to destress is often the draw. 

Here are three reasons why mountains inspire spiritual practice:

1 Effort: First, mountains (like spiritual practice) require effort. Not everyone wants to put in the effort. Most people like things to come easy their way.In Yoga, effort, abhyāsa is the essence of the path. 

2 Detachment: Second, we can only carry what we need to climb a mountain. The rest we must leave behind, which requires detachment, a willingness to let go of all except the essentials. In Yoga, this is vairāgya.

3 Mystery: Finally, mountains move us away from the familiar. We are journeying into the unknown, into the mystery. Most people prefer the familiar, which prevents authentic spiritual...

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...

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....

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...