om spirit
“O
mmmmmm” hummed my brother with index
finger and thumb held together in a mudra,
eyes closed, back straight, standing in the
kitchen at my parents’ house where I was living,
before bursting into a fit of laughter, the rest of
my family laughing with him.
You see, back in those early days of yoga, I was the source of
much hilarity what with the chanting they could hear from my room
when I was practicing. My brother had actually started practicing
yoga at the same time as me, but chanting was a stage too far for
him and they all thought I was a bit crazy.
In fact, this yoga thing was a bit of a shock for my family. I
became hooked immediately and the transformative nature of my
daily practice affected me rather quickly so that my life changed
considerably in the course of two years. You can understand,
perhaps: there is so much stigma attached to chanting, I guess they
were expecting me to join a cult next.Diving deeper
I must admit that in those early days I did not really understand or
indeed ‘feel’ the whole chanting mantra thing. Over here in Guernsey,
where I live, I had limited exposure to chanting mantra aside from
the occasional ‘Om’ at the end of a yoga class, which was just
something we ‘did’, something ‘yoga’, rather than having a meaning
or an effect as such. It was not until my teacher training course in
Australia, two years into my practice, that I was exposed to chanting
mantra on a deeper level.
You see, the world is a vibration, all around us and within us, at
every moment; the world is vibrating with energy. A mantra is a
sacred sound – a Sanskrit syllable, word or phrase, which has a
vibration and energy all of its own. The repetition of the vibrations of
various mantras can help you to tune in to the different frequencies
of energy in the universe in order to effect and transform energy on
this level of consciousness.
Thus, not only will chanting a mantra help to clear negative and
stagnated energies within you and within the world, but also help
to expand the mind and free it of obstacles – literally clear the
mind of mental clutter. Essentially, then, chanting mantras is a
conscious method of controlling our moods and, in turn, our
frequency and radiance.Mantras and malas
Each morning at sunrise all the students on my teacher training
course would join together in the yoga shala and chant the Gayatri
Mantra. It is a beautiful mantra that is said to bring us from the
darkness of suffering into the light. Not that you have to believe
in the meaning of the mantra to feel its effect. While I did definitely
feel something from chanting this mantra, it was not until 18
months later that I really became aware of the profound effect of
chanting mantra.
On that occasion I was helping out on a yoga teacher training
course, which happened to be held at Govinda Valley, a spiritual
retreat centre run by Hare Krishnas, just outside Sydney in Australia.
Each morning at 5am I joined the devotees for their daily morning
Japa meditation practice where mantra is used as a tool to assist in
meditation – quite common in Eastern philosophies.
In the practice of Japa Yoga, mala beads are used to help in
counting the repetitions of the chanting of the mantra. So, each
morning, I sat with the devotees as they repeated the Hare Krishna
mantra while moving their prayer beads between their thumb and
index finger to count the number of times they were repeating themantra. It was also to infuse their prayer beads with the energy of
the mantra:“Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare. Hare Rama,
Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.”The devotees recite the Hare Krishna mantra per bead, 108 times
(backwards and forwards) 16 times each morning. On my first
attempt I only managed two times; it definitely takes practice.
The founder of the Hare Krishna movement, Srila Prabhupada,
has said that: “We have practical experience that any person who
is chanting the holy names of Krishna [as above] in due course of
time feels some transcendental pleasure and very quickly becomes
purified of all material contamination”.
In the evening everyone would come together for Kirtan, which is
a congregational singing of mantra accompanied by the sound of
traditional Indian musical instruments and a form of Bhakti Yoga –
yoga of devotion, of universal love and offering to the Divine. It is
such a heart-opening and uplifting form of yoga that I floated to my
bed each evening with a big smile on my face.Profound effects
In fact those five days of chanting were profound for me. Not least
the energy at Govinda Valley from all that chanting, but so too
the effect within me. We can practice asana for many years and
avoid any connection with the spirit, with Prana, with the Divine,
which permeates everything. But here, chanting mantra, wow, my
connection to the Divine was stronger than ever; I felt the presence,
my heart and soul were alive, I was vibrating with the very essence of
life. It was mind-blowing.
I was fortunate to experience this incredible energy a few months