The Power of Chanting and Mantras

“Your mind is malleable, adjusting to the “shape” of whatever dominates your consciousness. While fixation on unworthy objects degrades your mind, worthy ones elevate your awareness”.
– Kurt Bruder, Ph.D

What is it about chanting that draws in so many people? What is really going on in the brain and in the heart when we give ourselves over to chanting? Through this post I will describe the different affects that devotional chanting and mantra have on the brain and the heart and how it can be used as a tool for creating higher states of consciousness and promoting overall wellness.

What we think reflects how we will feel. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, our thoughts are not necessarily useful or beneficial to our well-being. Our mind is a creature of habit and the thought cycles can be hard to adjust after they have been there for so long. However, the upside to this is that once we do change the “program” to be a healthy one, than it is more likely to stay in place as well. Chanting and using mantras to focus one’s attention can help quiet the mind. In the book Following Sound into Silence, Kailash states “Paradoxically, selective attention to sound is the vehicle for realizing silence”. Through giving the mind one thing to focus it’s attention on you can effectively turn the volume down on all the myriad of thoughts going on simultaneously and have a more focused sense of awareness. Since our thoughts and words are electromagnetic we are then picking up on the energy in the sounds we are making. This gives us a great ability to change old thought patterns and create new realities through mantra.

Through mantra, one’s sense of self can sometimes seem to disappear. When the awareness of the self disappears, it is usually due to being so engrossed with the activity at hand that your actual self slips your minds awareness. In this way, devotional chanting can be a way to investigate dualism of “ordinary consciousness”. Kailash explains that you can actually distinguish three different aspects of yourself:

1) The subject, (which includes you the chanter and you the observer of the chant)

2) The object, you as the one who is being observed by the witness.

3) The something that seems to incorporate each of these of aspects of our self as it transcends them- “the perfection addressed and made present by the mantra being chanted”. This is the perfection that you are becoming by performance of devotional chanting.

As one becomes more comfortable with the act of devotional chanting, it becomes easier to let the “dualistic orientation” relax. One can let go of the self-consciousness of how they sound compared to others, and worries about correct pitch, volume, etc. The effects of devotional chanting are cumulative and can help with “reprogramming our mind-stream with the very sound form from the Divine” – (Kailash- “Following Sounds into Silence”)

“You become what you love”. – Kailash. Devotional chanting helps one prioritize their objects of affection. It is important to actually identify what your ideals are and can then use mantra to become these very ideals. It is not just your voice that is being sung and embodied during the chanting process. It is every part of your being. This includes your body, your mind, your thoughts, your field, your auric levels. You can use mantra as a means to rejuvenating and becoming your divine archetype. Through repetition and heart centered intentional chanting one can start to really embody the qualities he/she desires to attain. Of course, these are attributes that we already do attain. In my opinion, chanting is a way of remembering our true nature. Remembering that we have always had the qualities we are looking for now. Chanting can help us get to the place of stillness that allows us to see and remember our true nature that is already awakened!

The love and caring devotion we put into a chant can help with emotional absorption, also known as bhava samadhi, a state of one pointed passion. The amount of love and devotion you put into your chanting will affect the overall value of your experience. Surrounding yourself in sounds that are beautiful to you can be healing in and of itself. When you are the one making the sounds they become an offering to yourself. They are in essence love songs to your self.

Through your breath, you breathe life into the chants. Because sounds can affect matter, it is important to remember how much power can be found in the form of chanting a mantra. This doesn’t mean you have to chant to any certain deity. There are all sorts of mantra and chants that just use simple sounds that can put the mind in a state of peace and that bring the heart into a state of grace an ease. There are also the languages that we can make up that are unique to each person. These can be equally powerful as long as there is single-pointed attention and devotion behind them. Using the ancient chants that have been around for thousands of years can also be powerful because of the fields of love and energy that have already been well established around them. It is ultimately up to the individual to learn or make up whatever chants work for you. Thoughts and sound affect matter so chants have the power to alter and change your reality!

Resources used:

“Following Sounds into Silence”, Kailash (Kurt A. Bruder, Ph.D)
Janis Arch’s chanting classes
Randy Masters lectures
Erik Larsens lectures

seeing through new eyes every day

today i saw the San Francisco bay for the first time. the first time through my perception as it is now. as perception and consciousness changes, so does the way I experience the world. this seems self evident but its helpful to take note of. when we revisit things again and again with "new eyes" it helps to fully see the progress we have made. my understandings of music, of lyrics, of poetry, of flowers, of fear, of joy, of love deepens over time creating an ever richer landscape in which to explore again and again.

the light reflecting off the peaks in the water caught my attention first. not fixing my gaze for too long on one spot opened up this whole universe of stars twinkling in the day time. bringing tears to my eyes. feeling a sort of sadness that I had not experienced the beauty of this simple but awe inspiring scene in this way before.

wondering what else have I been missing out on? how long have I been partially sleepwalking? every day, I get more into my body and every day, i can let the beauty in even deeper. sometimes it feels like it could tear me apart. the opening hurts just as much as it is joyful. the tears come from a place of complete awe and child like wonder at what else is there to see now?

"cultivate radical curiosity". this was a suggestion I received a couple years ago by a woman I respect deeply. this has stuck with me over the years and I want to put it out there to whoever is reading this blog. we all have an inner child. it is that part of us that never wants to stop seeing new things, experience new places, eat new foods, taste new chocolate. it is vital to feed this part of us! without doing so, creates a mundane and boring adult existence lacking uncontrollable laughter and food fights! do something spontaneous today. do something new each day or each week that you have been wanting to do but have thought, "no, i can't do that! that's too silly". if it's silly then it SHOULD be done. now, this is just one way to "cultivate radical curiosity". the one that sounds good to me today. life is TOO short to not laugh every day. i'm going to stop before this totally sounds like an inspirational speaker blog posting. eh what the heck. i don't really care. maybe people need motivation like this. enjoy your radical curiosity cultivation!!!

Trust

the body is a learning tool. the mind is a learning tool as well but in order to take action we must integrate the learning into our bodies. all the intellectualizing in the world falls short of success if we don't know how to execute what it is we are learning. this has been the missing piece for me. it seems accurate to say that we need to first build the solid foundation of inner trust before we can leap into the unknown. if i am weak in trust, how can I take action? i will not get off the ground because my bones are felt as feeble and may break on the way back down. if I am solid and stable in my bones, in my body, then I am only wondering how high can I jump, not how it may hurt if and when I land. I trust my body can and will support me. I trust that I may not land where I thought I was going to land but it's ok because I am supported by my own strength. although there are outside influences that can support us, it is ultimately up to our own inner strength and trust to make these leaps and strides that we know we want to make. where does this trust arise from? practice doing the things that scare us? how do we initially do something that scares us? what I am learning is that our bodies have the answers but that I haven't been listening to it. I have been looking to my physical mind to make certain decisions for a long time. this has usually left me in a state of frustration and confusion. there is an inner tug of war that goes on. there is an impulse to move and take action and then there is mind and thought that immediately goes into fear mode.

in building this foundation of inner strength and trust i can act without the mental noise being so loud that it inhibits the action my body instinctively knows that it needs to take. no longer is the mind (as visualized in the head) the only thing that I appear to be moving from. i am remembering that mind can be and is found in all parts of my body. my hand has consciousness. my feet have mind. the totality of our being does not feel aligned when moving from our brains alone. this is what has felt off. where are we looking for the answers to guide us? we can start to look within our entire being. trusting that we can move and act from a place with more confidence because it feels aligned with our body mind.

what is it that holds us back? self doubt? lack of self confidence? Fear? check in with yourself. where does the fear come up? is it around every turn? every decision? waiting in the corner to jump out right before you are to make a move that could change your life as you know it? why does this fear come up? and how can we start to move from a place of trust into the unknown? the illusion that anything is ever going to be known before it happens is just that. an illusion. we can set up things just so in our life so that our life is predictable is most cases. we understand that there is cause and effect. judging by past experiences we can get pretty good at doing one action to get a desired effect. some may say, yeah this sounds good! i would like my life to be without surprise so that I feel safe and supported and not scared anymore. if everything is set up "just so" than i don't need to worry and fret about the future and I can finally breathe. does this really feel true though? to me, this feels like building the illusion to be even stronger than it was before. humans are incredibly intelligent and underneath the most thought out plan is the reality that we don't ever know how the next moment is going to be. we don't know that tomorrow we are going to have our job, our partner, our cat, our car, our sanity, our sense of sight. why am i going off in this tangent? it all comes back to trust. trusting that where we put our next step will be the one leading us in the direction of our potential. do we want to walk towards the unknown that our soul is gently nudging us to?

Carolyne Myss says, "our biography becomes our biology". What does this mean? The stories we tell ourselves, the events we experience in our lifetime, the resistance or welcoming we may experience to certain events, people, times, weather, smells, music, etc, becomes integrated into our bodies. experiences are felt and sometimes can pass through. and sometimes they don't pass through, they stick.

So, my focus is to continue to cultivate trust in myself so that i may start to listen more closely to my entire being, to listen to my soul's gentle whispers on why it is I am here. ah! the big question! don't we want to know what the heck we are doing here? (more on that large topic later!) So, I pledge on this blog my commitment to trust. that i may start to move from my entire being, trusting it to guide me. knowing that there will be fear in some places but as the trust develops so does the fear diminish. our beings have so much potential to let fear inhibit what we can do in our lifetimes. the ultimate goal here for me is to reach my maximum potential and then beyond. the maximum potential continues to increase as we keep hitting the maximum threshold! how exciting!

being in my bones

an excerpt from Lisa Rafel's poem "The Room":

"I know nothing in this room
everything and nothing
time waits here to make my music
any instrument I want
no sound
but i know
like the lightswitch on the right
it's all the door"

As I heard this poem today, it struck a deep chord within me. it's the same concept I have been dancing around for a while but this time it penetrated me, flooded me with a real understanding all the way through. it's all the door! using someone else's model won't work for me. a mentor would be nice. however, i cannot continue to do things as i have been doing them and expect to get a different result. or no result as the case may be.

feeling my bones, really getting into my bones, not my heart, not my veins, not my skin, but my BONES. this has been a life changing event. i am not the same as i was this morning. i am more here than i was before. ready to actually be present and feel all the way through.

the quality of the sensations in my body is different than before. why am i writing this and making it public? as an inspiration and an invitation to whoever is reading this. an invitation for you to feel your bones as you never have before. an invitation to inhabit your body as fully as you can. the joy of being in a body can be the greatest joy if we make friends with it. no longer trying to run away from feeling all the way through. if my bones are strong enough, i have the capacity to feel anything all the way through. in this solidity and from this stable place, we can be guided. strong enough to walk into the darkness of a room. trusting that there is light beyond the darkness. there is access to light always. i have the ability to trust myself, my bones, my value, my worth and to trust that my body can guide me to the "instrument" i chose to make my music.

my soul guided me to be here. my brain can't take the credit for that one.