Eat, Pray, Love

I’ve been practicing this Yoga. When I try to repeat Om Namah Shivaya in my head, it actually
gets stuck in my throat, making my chest clench tightly, making me nervous. I can never
match the syllables to my breathing.
I end up asking my roommate Corella about this one night. I’m shy to admit to her how
much trouble I have keeping my mind focused on mantra repetition, but she is a meditation
teacher. Maybe she can help me. She tells me that her mind used to wander during medita-
tion, too, but that now her practice is the great, easy, transformative joy of her life.
“Seems I just sit down and shut my eyes,” she says, “and all I have to do is think of the
mantra and I vanish right into heaven.”
Hearing this, I am nauseated with envy. Then again, Corella has been practicing Yoga for
almost as many years as I’ve been alive. I ask her if she can show me how exactly she uses
Om Namah Shivaya in her meditation practice. Does she take one inhale for every syllable?
(When I do this, it feels really interminable and annoying.) Or is it one word for every
breath?(But the words are all different lengths! So how do you even it out?) Or does she say
the whole mantra once on the inhale, then once again on the exhale? (Because when I try to
do that, it gets all speeded up and I get anxious.)
“I don’t know,” Corella says. “I just kind of... say it.”
“But do you sing it?” I push, desperate now. “Do you put a beat on it?”
“I just say it.”
“Can you maybe speak aloud for me the way you say it in your head when you’re meditat-
ing?”
Indulgently, my roommate closes her eyes and starts saying the mantra aloud, the way it
appears in her head. And, indeed, she’s just... saying it. She says it quietly, normally, smil-
ing slightly. She says it a few times, in fact, until I get restless and cut her off.
“But don’t you get bored?” I ask.
“Ah,” says Corella and opens her eyes, smiling. She looks at her watch. “Ten seconds
have passed, Liz. Bored already, are we?”
Eat, Pray, Love