Yoga Talks Live: The Power of Mantra

Transcript

[Music] hi and welcome to yoga talks live I'm your host Ashley Sargent and today I'm here with Steph shorts one of our teachers and we are going to be talking about the power of mantra we also have Jacqueline here Jacqueline's gonna be receiving your questions and giving them to us directly so let's start off talking a little bit about mantra and what mantra is one of the ways that I really first connected to mantra was I'm very kind of like Hedy like intellectual space I need to like understand what everything is before I get really into it so the definition of mantra that I that I received that I really loved is you know the the first part of the word mun means it comes from the word Manas and Sanskrit which is the mind and tri means to kind of traverse or to expand and so a mantra is something that is used specifically to expand the mind you know to expand our individual thoughts you know the kind of on and on and on thoughts that we always have going on you know that seemed to be ceaseless to transform those away from this internal focus just on ourselves and just on you know the busyness of the mind and expand into a connection with something greater something more than than just ourselves and and really using the power of sound to be able to do that how about you what you you chant a lot and I know that on our yoga everyday series usually bring your harmonium here and this is what we wanted to do this particular show with you so how would you tell me a little bit about what do you love about mantra what is it for you that you know kind of got you hooked and and what does it do for you well to tag on to what you said about the mind expanding our thought processes can make us feel really little and just focused on one thing and the mantra for me is just a vehicle to drop the mind into the body but ultimately to feel what's happening in the bigness of the heart and of the spirit and so when I first signed up for teacher training I am I don't really like public speaking I have a fear of public speaking so I tried to quit teacher training that very first night and I'm actually singing and playing music you know in classes which I never would have imagined I have what the mantra did for me was it really helped me bring a tool for myself which ultimately was beneficial to our whole group to sing to get out of the littleness of my mind thoughts oh I'm not good enough I'm afraid to sit up here and speak in front of all these eyeballs staring at me and it helped me in the beginning initially to drop in so I could share the gift of teaching and then ultimately what it does is in our classes that I share with people it helps everyone feel that we're all in this together so I'd rather I'd much less be that person on the pedestal I'm trying to like drop myself down to this level where we're all in this together and it's a way to get connected it's not only that personal connection but it's a way to feel connected in community without having to do too much around that yeah yeah I mean I think we all can in some way connect to an experience of having a piece of music that has moved us piece of music that has that we've had a shared enjoyment of it with someone else and how even just like having that shared experience can help us feel more connected and you know I think there's so many ways to do that and I love that you know this is a part of the yoga tradition that not as many maybe Western or modern yoga practitioners necessarily know about more feel comfortable with yeah so I think really understanding and and like you said just feeling into the shift that it creates is the most important thing yeah and what's the first thing that a friend says when you say hey come take yoga they always say I'm not flexible enough right and you say hey come to a kirtan oh I can't stand my voice you know but it's about something bigger it's about feeling that big s in the south versus a little s that we spend most of our time and you know and I tell people you could be playing in a drum circle you could be singing at the top of the lungs in your car or in the shower and it doesn't have to be doesn't have to be Sanskrit necessarily at all sure it's a very short umbilical cord to the soul when we're in music when we're in rhythm when we're in some type of a vibration and again it's a way to lose your mind in the moment and to get high on vibes in to feel that oh wait I have abundance in my life I just forgot to look and and feel feel that yeah and realize that beautiful yeah let's see what some of our members are asked tonight Jacqueline you have a question for us yeah we have a great question coming in from Kate she's asking when I use mantra it doesn't take long before I realize that I'm actually not repeating the mantra but instead thinking planning or worrying what can she do about that mm-hmm well I know I have some things I meant about the one you chimed in first yeah and it's great just to watch the process of the mind like where it kicks in where it wants to say all right what am i fixing for dinner going to the grocery store but again it's just about practice and repetition and the more we repeat and persevere within the repetition the more confidence we gain and also I feel just to be kind towards yourself because some days are gonna feel more dramatic in the mind than others and just to ride the waves of what it is and other days you'll be dropping in and you're ultimately building this muscle memory in your system where at some point you know you start out you meditate for two minutes three minutes and then before you know it you're at 20 minutes so it's just about the practice and the repetition and compassion and kindness toward self yeah and I also just say that you know the mind doesn't really ever stop my teacher says that you know the my if the mind is an organ its job is to secrete thought so it's not gonna stop doing its job but rather you know when we do mantra practice or we do meditation practice really what we're learning to do is to be able to turn down like the sound of the mind so that if the the mind was like a radio frequency you're kind of turning down the frequency of the mind and turning up the frequency of the heart that you said or the power of the mantra so you know there's many times when I can feel actually like I'm in really deep mantra practice and the minds they're like it's happening the thoughts are kind of floating around but I'm not necessarily the mind doesn't have to grab on to them or latch on to them or kind of connect to them then follow them down a path it's like we instead can't have those things happening over there and let them rest kind of into the backdrop rest into the background and and keep letting the sound of the of the mantra kind of rise up and support us sometimes it can be deeply quiet inside of ourselves yes that's a good question how about another one we have Jack from Hawaii saying Aloha Aloha sometimes I feel inspired to make up chance do you ever create your own mantras what's the process of creating your own chance mm-hmm I think this is a great question and this is one of those things that like we were talking about it can kind of poke in some sore spots with different traditions yes yeah and so I think I'd like to start off by saying you know one of the things that we know is true is that everything in the universe is vibrating everything in the universe is and because it's vibrating is sound you know the the Yogi's and the ancients and many different traditions knew this already and and kind of created languages particularly Sanskrit the language that these mantras are built in is mostly a phonetic language so it's really all about like the sound itself is actually articulating the very thing that it is we say you know what that's not not amount of here I think you're talking about a dog you think but that essentially when we are tuning in to anything in the universe that everything is is vibrating and so we know now that matter is affected by sound that and this is a study of cymatics and I think it's just always so amazing when like now modern science is really starting to prove all these things that these ancient traditions definitely in the yoga tradition have been using for a long time and so now we've been able to really prove through the science of cymatics and there's some really cool videos that you can check out on gaia and on other places that you can find easily if you search cymatics you'll see the way that sound actually impacts matter so what that means is that the way that we speak like our voices and our words mean something and they affect the world around us and they affect ourselves you know they affect our bodies the way we speak to ourselves the way we think actually has an imprint on our physical being in the world around us and so being able to use mantras like our that are in the language of Sanskrit are really deeply connected to particular frequencies that are healing and that'll help us to resonate you know with the with a greater of consciousness that's you know instead of just our own individual consciousness and so a lot of traditionalists will say that and we'll say oh my goodness you can't make up your own mantras because you know the mantras need to be sung or spoken very specifically according to this language in order to be able to get the full impact of them like some very scholarly traditions will say that and then there's much more room kind of in the bhakti tradition of yoga where it's it's more in my experience deeply connected to the heart and the devotional energy that is behind what we speak or what we sing so in that sense this idea of like creating our own mantras or just like when sound just comes out and wants to move freely from us that there's a deep devotional quality behind it and I think that in my experience that is also the aspect of transformation and has been my personal experience around kind of creating mantra or just like letting something you know come out what's your you know experience around that and I know you are sharing before that you and you have kind of with some of our classes on the site as well seeing maybe some non non traditional yoga lyrics or Sanskrit lyrics and have maybe made it even up your own mantras do you want to talk to that a little bit yeah in terms of the Sanskrit stuff I think what I look at is okay if I'm needing a little help from Ganesha so I talked to I explained it like it's a the mantras are the prices right of the heart when you're using it for specific deities so for instance behind the store we have Ganesha the elephant-headed deity and he's the one who helps us find our center he's the one who helps us maneuver through the obstacles which most often when we look at the obstacles presenting themselves it's our own mind our own self the ego getting in the way looked behind this door oh I'm feeling a lot of lack this is Lakshmi and she allows us to connect with gratitude and abundance Kali is more strong this fierce force and I need to feel strong and my words and solid and confident in my boundaries I speak of it like that and when I write my own chants what I'll do is I'll look for resources that share like Kali mantra like Chamunda a Kali ma or Ganesha om gam ganapataye namaha or Lakshmi ohm shreem Mahalakshmi a and I'll infuse that and into a chant and you'll feel the OL feel the energy of like that certain deity Kali would be in more minor tones and so I perhaps use her with this like more rooted in the first couple of chakras where it feels like okay she's got this the strong forceful energy and the minor tones and from there I might even infuse some English phrases within and sometimes I'll take from favorite songs of mine that have been impactful to me over history what I would like to also add is a munch doesn't have to be in in Sanskrit it could be I am love I am love I am love I am love I'm strong I am strong and I've done that way through you know some of the yoga everyday videos where we work with the personal munch I'm confident in Who I am I am unapologetically me so you know never be afraid to just make up you'll know what you're needing and Trust what shows up for you in the seated meditation when you're building your own chance yeah thanks for that question we have s blonds asking how can I look at chanting as spiritual and not religious chanting feels really religious to me mm-hmm I think that's a great great that's a really great question um why don't you trim in on that I have lots to say but yeah and I have been in situations in a yoga class because I brought chanting into a more mainstream studio environment and I had to figure out how to make it accessible to people where it didn't feel dogmatic and so I do speak a lot to how it just allows you like we learn how to differentiate between religious and spiritual and just by feeling in the body the impact of the chanting and a lot of people do you relate it to church because you grew up you go it went to church however you went and your ritual with your family and it stirs up some of that you know if you weren't you know thoroughly enjoying going to church or you decided to switch from being religious and to more of a spiritual realm but spirituality and religion can combine I'd like to add as well I would say that to step outside of this notion of religion is to feel more in the experience of the body and to notice the residual effects or the ongoing effects of the mantra how it's affecting you in the body versus getting too you know too caught up in the stories around it or the expectations or the labels around it and ultimately it's about connection you know it's really about connection because studies were done in a church but they measured brain waves of people that were singing together and they found it the brain waves connected and the other interesting thing that they found was the heart beats synched up so by the end of the song it was like one big beating heart in the room so what I remind people is it's about this bigger picture of feeling of feeling expansive the mind expanding into the potential of the body and the potential of the spirit yeah I love that and you know having been raised Catholic and having some of my own apprehensions about anything that I felt religious when I started connect to connect back with yoga I really tuned in to kind of wanting to understand the science and the logic and things behind it in order for my brain to be able to tune into that and one of the things that really made it more accessible for me was this understanding that in the yoga tradition we're not talking about these deities or these gods or these energies as as something else that is outside of us of another God that replaces someone else's God battling someone else's God yeah or anything that is other than us because we start in the yoga tradition with the understanding that the same the same energy that kind of moves the tides same energy that causes seasons to come and go creates a big storm that same energy is the energy that moves through us as the energy that moves through everything else in the world and that just like the ancients really connected to the elements of water earth water space the moon the Sun that these inherent energies within the universe around us are have kind of qualities of their own that we seek inside of ourselves maybe the the moon is always changing right the moon is kind of cool reflective the Sun is strong and you know penetrating energy so that when we're when we're chanting to something or tuning into a certain energy we're not tuning into something that's outside of ourselves or kind of singing praises to something that's different than us we're actually acknowledging and attuning ourselves to that which is already there and like you said so beautifully it's like it's a it's the bigger picture you know and so the the mantras are never asking you to you know give away power to something else outside of yourself or someone you know to step away from a religious belief that you already believe in but rather to drop into a connection that's ever-present and always there yeah yeah yeah it's a good question people ask that a line can we have another so we have a question coming in that is asking how important is it to know and understand the actual meaning of a given mantra beyond its vibrational power well like you mentioned before with there might be certain lineages that are very strict about the exact pronunciation but I always let people know that I'm not here to teach them how to exactly pronounce Sanskrit it's about the bigger picture once again so it's about feeling more connected to your heart and it's about feeling that big heart connection to one another and you know when I get into more complicated mantras and I'm leading groups or teacher training groups I always say that if they get tripped up on the words the first thing that will kick them down is a mind right so you know always throw in meow works really well my mom told me watermelon and church would work really well but it's more just about being engaged in the connection piece and in the group experience versus being so worried and concerned about whether you're pronouncing the words right mm-hmm that's a great point and you know another piece like we mentioned before is that the power really lies in the intention and the devotional quality of it like you said and you know I've found you know I've been doing mantra practice for many years and gone through many different experiences of what that is I have to say it perfectly to I don't care what I'm saying but at some point you know whether you because you know the site the kind of the science behind mantra is that like for some examples are like some of these great Maha mantra is like the tram become mantra the Gayatri mantra it said that these mantras are living mantras meaning that many believe that for 5000 plus years it said that someone is always chanting this mantra around the world that there are these these mantras that have been so passed on and so embedded that at any time in any in some place around the world this mantra is living that it's always it's always happening and so this idea that these these sound these mantras have been part of our culture or part of our species for thousands of years maybe longer than that has the potential to have some really profound effects on our consciousness and you know I also often times sometimes find when I'm hearing a mantra it's like an ancient remembering you know that there's a there's a quality of myself that if I can get beyond the mind which we eventually get to let's go of oh my gosh do I need to know this but it's like I somehow know this you know I know this inside of me and the beauty of the mantra is because it is beyond the word itself yeah it is the actual thing that we are chanting that at some point we actually just start to feel the energy shift like you said like something just starts to happen there's an alchemy that happens of the mine kind of quieting a little bit and the energy of whatever we are saying being more prevalent you know like you said with the Lakshmi mantra or you know if you're chanting a Kali mantra that you may start chanting sad scared you know frustrated and then start with the intention of like I'm just gonna chant this mantra and beg and hope for it to maybe help me and you know eventually you may feel like whoa all of that anger or something that I came with is kind of dropped away and I'm dropped into the rhythm and the pulse of of the mantra of the sound of and and and to be clear that we can also be doing them internally we don't actually have to be saying them out loud there is mantra for kirtan that's out that is out loud and there's also mantra internally yeah internal mantra and also I'd like to add that when you're chanting these ancient mantras that each time they're chanted it gains more power so you're chanting with the history of the mantra meaning there's someone there that knew how to pronounce it right you know and you're just tagging on and you're also adding your voice and your energy to make it more powerful each time I had someone explain to me one time when we were talking about that this was particularly talking about the goddesses of the deities and talking about that these are essentially archetypes you know archetypal energy is that we see repeat over and over and over again and human consciousness and so the energy of Kali the kind of fierce warrior is we've see that manifest in many different ways and that the the goddess that the particular energy manifests in three primary ways there's the anthropomorphic form so the kind of physical deity that we see the picture there is the Yantra form the pictorial form and then there's also the Sonic form there is the mantra and for me I was like it's like my brain just like could not wrap around it I'm like science I had to like really look it up and try to figure out to understand and it it really is this is where kind of that concept of cymatics is really cool where you can go and we can actually see the way that one particular sound frequency has its effect on matter and that I was described to me as being like a little mini zip drive so basically like if there's this whole long there's this huge energy or this whole long mantra for one of the goddesses or for one of the energies that you would learn the the bija mantra or you know the seed mantra of something and that it's kind of like this little zip drive packet that with inside this one word this one energetic frequency holds all of this other information and for me it was one of those things like I just wanted to try to like keep looking things up and rationalize it as much as possible and I couldn't and my teacher just like tape book away I was like you just have to sit and experience it and really that's kind of the magic of this process is that it's really all about experiencing it yeah so I know you have your harmonium here and I'm sure we have some questions of people asking about that Jacqueline do you have anyone something that maybe stuff can show us yeah we have two really good questions that relate to each other coming in from s blondes and Kate s blondes is asking how can I ignite my chakras using mantra and should I focus mantra in my head my third eye point or other places in the body so maybe you can give us a little demo - I think it's all about having the experience let's do it a seat sound be jama'ah perfect perfect just close your eyes and take a few moments to allow your breath to settle you into your body and like ashley mentioned earlier the bija mantras or the seed mantra is the seed sounds they hold the power of the certain areas of the body and the chakra system that we're focusing on so what I'll do is I'll cue you the area of the body to focus on and we'll go from the first chakra up through the crown the seventh and I'll give you the bija mantra the seed sound to sing with us and also feel that your voice comes from this area so it's more of an experience of sound and vibration as we run up the system along the shoshone - nadi the main Nadi and this is a way to help cleanse and balance [Music] the base of the spine is the first area the first chakra and it's each a mantra is long L AM which is like a so tame lamb and at your navel Center solar plexus which in the center hi chakras and so with the eyes closed I feel like you're pulling the breath up from the root out through the crown and back down the same way and do that two more times and with from this place of heightened awareness of how you feel a more a present and your body were opened in your heart we're connected to your spirit consider a personal mantra and I thank you for sharing that meditation namaste you're welcome thanks for having me it's a great practice for people to do really any time probably is a great way to start and reminding them and you can do it lat out loud vocally or you can also do it internally yeah will you just go through them one more time quickly just so if someone wants to write them down yeah but which one what they are again how they correspond and each of their chakras first chakra is Lum second third fourth YUM fifth sixth ohm and then the crown is a silent open so it goes based the first chunk or the base of the spine the second the navel Center the third the solar plexus between the navel and the lower ribs then the heart and the throat third eye and the crown yeah and if that gets a little overwhelming to start just with ohm just yeah just go burns yeah and I think a big piece that is easy people to tune into is just tuning into the inner body mm-hmm you know and starting to be connected with sound and have that experience of your your inner self yeah and I've been doing it in class with people sitting upright and a lot of times like in class with them lying on their back so they can actually feel the back body with the experience as a vibration yeah and then it's hard to get them out of shavasana well thank you so much for yourself it's great to sit with you and thank you everyone for joining in to yoga talks live have a beautiful rest of your day namaste namaste you [Music]