Here’s a link to an article I wrote for the May 2023 editor of the Soul Advisor newsletter. Whilst it really only scratches the surface, I hope there is enough in it to encourage your own exploration of this profound science of sound.
The use of sacred sound in the form of mantra is a powerful tool to transform our inner landscape. The invoking of the sounds through the use of certain mouth placement creates an energy which promotes changes within our ‘beingness’.
For example, certain vocal sounds will promote the release of nitric oxide within the body, which has an impressive list of natural health promoting benefits, releasing ‘feel good’ chemicals that aid in stress relief, relaxation, boosting the immune system and building resilience.
The use of mantra is a simple, safe and powerful way to give the mind a point of focus, to achieve a state of calmness to help us enter into meditative states of inner stillness and connection. It’s a tool of personal empowerment, to help us reclaim and direct our energies and sometimes turbulent inner landscape into a place of greater clarity, peace and stillness.
There are many studies emerging about the power of mantra to effect change and make a difference in conditions such as PTSD.
It has been a pathway of tremendous personal transformation for myself, and I love sharing these tools of empowerment with others.
If you’re interested in connecting to find out more and experiencing your own mantra practice for mental wellbeing, please get in touch for an obligation free chat. We can arrange 1-1 or group sessions if you have a few people interested. Currently sessions are via Zoom or phone given the restrictions around movement.
No previous experience is required.
Check the event calendar for upcoming Yoga of Sound group classes using sound frequencies and mantra to support mental health and wellbeing.
Reference Article
Boston University, School of Public Health, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Mantras Repetition Effective in Treating Veterans with PTSD.
At our essence we are frequencies of light and sound. Rather than feeling powerless when buffeted by life’s inevitable twists, we can choose to consciously hold ourselves in an internal space of strength, cultivating inner calm and transforming our energy through the power of high vibrational sound.
Mantra Meditation
Every thought, word and emotion impacts our vibration and creates our world. Mantra gives us a safe and positive means to focus our mind, to use it as a tool for conscious creation, rather than reaction. It’s a mechanism for focussing our thoughts, mind and energy to align with uplifting energy, the essence of the energy of creation, bringing greater alignment between mind, body and spirit.
The Power of the Sacred Sanskrit Sounds
The sacred sounds of Sanskrit hold transformational power. They attune us to cosmic frequencies and are a means of activating our bodies through all the levels of our being. Our body is in essence a supercomputer. Using the gifts of mantra, breath, focus of energy and intention, and precision in the formulation of mantric sounds including an awareness of the five mouth placements and the specific duration for each of the sounds, we can engage our body of sound and awaken to more the fullness and essence of our true nature.
“The petals of the chakras represent an unfoldment of primal sound through the fifty letters of the Sanskrit alphabet. The six lower chakras contain a total of fifty petals, each of which relates to one of the fifty letters of the Sanskrit alphabet. This is the “garland of letters” that shows the vibratory frequencies of the chakras. The thousand petal lotus or crown chakra indicates all possible sound combinations of these fifty letters.” ~ Dr David Frawley, Mantra Yoga and Primal Sounds.
Yoga of Sound (Nāda Yoga)
Sacred and energised sound filled with love, intent and a high vibration can bring deep change, healing and transformation. The practice of nāda yoga is a means of cultivating the essence of listening awareness. Through the use of sound, tone and rhythm we elevate our vibration and open to higher states of consciousness. It’s a journey within, through sound into the silence, the space and essence of our vast and true eternal nature.
Group Classes – Yoga of Sound & Mantra Meditation
Check the event calendar for yoga of sound and mantra meditation experiences online. It’s a great opportunity to relax, reset and lift your vibe. Offered by donation, please register online to receive the Zoom link.
Private Sessions
I offer private sessions online. If you’re keen to establish a mantra practice, or looking to take it to the next level through refinement of the sounds (which will supercharge your experience of the energy), I’d love to work with you. You can book with me for an individual session or a series of 4, scheduled over 40 days via Zoom. This will give us the opportunity to:
• Determine an appropriate mantra to support you
• Learn the key mouth placements, correct pronunciation, timing and svara (pitch)
• Understand the meaning and origins of the mantra
• Connection, insights and support over 40 days.
Insight Timer Meditation
Go within, ‘Into the Silence’ on Insight Timer to support your meditation practice. If you join the mailing list for good vibes to your inbox, you’ll receive a link to download the mp3 file.
Our modern life is awash with a confounding amount of choice and complexity, information and decisions on a daily basis. It’s easy to become overloaded and stressed, and for many we can opt unhealthy ways to numb the noise or seek to escape. This is where the profound and ancient practice of mantra can help.
Vibration shapes our reality
Mantra is an ancient practice of the repetition of high vibrational, sacred sound to attune us to cosmic frequencies, transforming the essence of our ‘beingness’. It’s a means of focussing our thoughts, mind and energy to align with higher vibrations, the essence of our soul and the energy of creation.
Increasingly there is a reawakening to the wisdom of the power of our intention, thought and affirmation, how we hold our personal energy, and how this shapes our reality. The regular practice of chanting is a powerful tool for self transformation.
10 benefits of mantra meditation
- Feel uplifted, clearer and more optimistic
- Decrease stress and anxiety – activate the parasympathetic nervous system
- Still the mind with mantra meditation, defrag, reset & lift your vibe
- Build engagement, happier people, conscious workspaces and connectivity
- Enhance resilience, emotional intelligence, mental and creative faculties
- Cultivate relaxed alertness, improve sleep quality, enhance energy
- Improve cognition and creative thinking
- Oxygenate the brain, reduce heart rate and blood pressure, calm brainwave activity
- Develop communication skills, social connection, relaxation and wellbeing. Mantra meditation has been used to positively impact toxic stress, PTSD, and addiction patterns e.g. alcoholism
- Connect with the field of inspiration, creativity and have fun!
For the mantra enthusiast
If you’re keen to really get the most out of your practice then combining skill and devotion in your practice will deepen your experience. I offer instruction in understanding and experiencing how to produce each of the unique 50 Sanskrit sacred syllables:
- Experience the 5 key mouth placements for more accurate pronunciation
- Appreciate the 50 Sanskrit letters and how to make the sounds
- Connect more precisely with the energy of the sounds to supercharge your practice
A customised programme for you
It would be my great joy to share with you my love for the transformational power of sacred sound and to develop a customised personal program for you. I offer:
- 1-1 coaching, and
- 40 day support program
Your take outs from a session
- Guidance in establishing a mantra practice that you can use to support you in a daily meditation/connection practice
- Identification of a mantra to work with
- Tips for pronunciation to get more energetic alignment from your practice
- Energetic grounding and clearing to help you ‘drop into’ the practice and the heart space
Get in touch
The use of sound, particularly sacred and energised sound, filled with love, intent and a high vibration, can help us effect deep change, healing and transformation. On a physical level it can support stress reduction. Spiritually, it helps us expand our hearts, lift our spirit, connect with others, and align our resonance and frequency to more positive attributes, bringing greater alignment between mind, body and spirit.
The yoga of sound: Nāda and bhakti yoga
Be guided in the formation of specific vocal toning sounds that have a number of health and wellness benefits. Through these sounds we can access deeper states of meditation, connect to the power of our authentic resonance and the greater field that connects all life.
The benefits
- Destress – shift from the sympathetic into the parasympathetic nervous system
- Stimulate the release of nitric oxide – promoting blood flow, supporting the lymphatic system, reduced blood pressure and heart rate, and enhancing the immune system
- Induce calm, enhance sleep
- Still your mind with mantra meditation and meditative voice exercises
- Utilise breathing techniques and simple body movements to support relaxation
- Connect with your authentic and unique sound resonance and vibration
- Lift your resting state of feeling through the use of high vibration sound frequencies
- Align more fully with all parts of your being – body, mind and spirit
- Cultivate listening awareness
- Express your creative essence and feel the empowerment that comes from expressing your unique sound
- Experience vocal practices to enhance fluidity, clarity and resonance in your sound
- Share connection, community and bonding
- Go beyond barriers of race, gender or age
- Connect with the greater field that connects all of life
Chant experiences – kīrtan
Another powerful means of transforming and healing with sound and sacred music is through kīrtan, or call-and-response chanting. Group chant experiences are not only joyful and community connecting, but extremely powerful as a deep means of chanting our inner resonance and lifting our energy and vibration. These sessions are working amazingly well online in the current climate of social distancing.
A professional tailored experience for you
I customise sound and energy wellness sessions suit your requirements, time frame and audience. It’s an amazing way to build connection and community, and facilitate deep transformation, and works well for:
- Conferences, workshops, seminars, functions
- Team building, leadership days, retreats
- Wellness, stress reduction, mentoring programs
- Yoga studios, community events, festivals
- Private or group sessions
Contact me
Deepening your experience of the transformational essence of mantra and the science of the sacred sound can take your chant practice into a whole other dimension, particularly when you’re able to combine skill and devotion in the production of sound.
I love sharing what I’ve learned in this area. Truly I wish I’d known about this years ago. When you realise that there are nearly double the sounds in Sanskrit compared to our Western alphabet, not knowing how to make the full range of sounds is the equivalent of trying to make a complex meal with only a couple of spices instead of a whole pantry. There’s so much more energetically you could be experiencing by connecting more precisely with the sacred sound frequencies of Sanskrit.
Learning the Sanskrit sounds – a customised programme for you
I’m not a Sanskrit scholar, but I have been taught a framework that I love to share – a breakdown of simple steps to understand and experience the key mouth positions, the distinctions between the sounds, including vowel lengths and why that matters. Once you understand this you will be able to interpret any correctly marked up transliterated Sanskrit text. You don’t need to understand the Devanāgarī traditional script to learn the pronunciations.
Experience the vibration of the sacred sounds – what you’ll learn
- Experiential and interactive – feel the unique vibrations as you connect more precisely with the sacred sound frequencies of Sanskrit
- Understand the science behind the Sanskrit language – the journey of consciousness into form
- Experience the five key mouth placements for accurate Sanskrit pronunciation
- Accurately pronounce the 50 Sanskrit letters
- Understand how to interpret the romanised markups, the International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST), to accurately read transliterated Sanskrit
- The body of sound meditation practice – tune your body as an instrument of sacred sound
- Learn commonly mispronounced yogāsana terms and accurate pronunciation for common poses
- Move into deeper states of meditation and silence
Get in touch
If you’re interested in private or group sessions, continuing education for your yoga practice, retreats, workshops or festivals, I can customise a program to suit your timeframe, audience and requirements. Contact me
Mantra, the use of sacred sound, is a tool for the mind, heart and soul, a vehicle for connecting us with our eternal nature, beyond the limitations and noise of the mind.
Throughout the ages across different traditions and varied cultures, people have connected through sound.
Sound, specifically music, can transcend class, language and social barriers, enliven the body and exalt the spirit.
The use of specific sounds, such as Sanskrit, a language of energy and vibration, perceived by ancient ‘seers’, attunes us, vibrational beings, to the qualities of nature and the cosmos.
We are slowed down sound and light waves, a walking bundle of frequencies tuned to the cosmos.
Albert Einstein
Chanting specific sounds such as bīja (seed) syllables can activate subtle parts of our unseen anatomy. They don’t translate into a literal meaning but can create peace and balance in the body and mind.
Emerging studies are showing the positive outcomes from the use of these sounds. Positive impacts include decreasing stress on psychological and physiological systems, improving social connection and reducing anxiety and depression.
A sound such as Oṁ, half vowel and half nasal, has the ‘feel good’ effect of releasing endorphins into the body, as well as activating delta waves that help to calm us. Delta waves are generated in deepest meditation and dreamless sleep and are important for healing and regeneration. So in one sound, there is the potential to manage the physical and mental body.
Reality consists of vibration, which in essence is sound.
Dr David Frawley
My own story has been an amazing journey of personal transformation through the use of sacred mantra and sound – nāda yoga . It is the sharing of a great ‘secret super power’ giving us the capacity to direct our energy and be more conscious in how we can actively engage in managing our vibration. Connect with me if you’d like find out more.
Article references
Sound Medicine: Dr Kulreet Chaudry
SMH: The power of om: How chanting can help your stress and sleep
ABC: Chanting Is An Ancient Practice with Mental Health Effects That Might Apply To Our Busy Lives
Well Being: Find Out the Power of Mantra
Gaia: Benefits of Chanting
Psychology Today: The Healing Power of Sound As Meditation
It’s the next wave in wellness, following on from the physical based forms of yogāsna that have been so widely embraced by the West in recent decades. The benefits of a group facilitated sound immersion and chant experience are myriad, but here are a few of my personal favourites. These sessions are a fabulous means of supporting wellbeing initiatives in workplaces with many benefits:
Shift from fight or flight mode
It’s an amazing practice to alter your brain chemistry and shift you from the sympathetic into the parasympathetic nervous system. Destress, release endorphins into your system and relax.
Experience meditation and healing
We use the sound experience to connect with more our the essence of our true nature. Science tells us that everything is vibration, including us, which we can affect and alter through the use of guided and intentional sound frequency.
Inclusive
Anyone can participate. If there is some reason you’re not comfortable making sound, you can simply sit and absorb the healing vibrations and use it as a means to experience a meditative state.
Community building and engagement
The energy and vibe is palpable as the group comes together to connect in the energy of the experience.
Fun
Yes, it actually is. Most people walk out feeling lighter and happier.
You’re not going to crack a sweat
No need for active wear, unless you’d really like to 😂.
July 2020 update
I recently facilitated some simple sound based practices for the online Being Superhuman Healing Series organised by the Being More Human agency. Why not explore this for your community or workplace?
Get in touch if you’d like to rock your world with a guided yoga of sound and chant experience.
photo credit: Noni Carroll Photography
Feeling blocked, stuck, generally flat, uninspired and maybe even a little depressed can be a overwhelming, bewildering and for those of us that are used to achieving, ticking boxes and accomplishing a lot, just downright not ok!
Sometimes we have decisions to make, we feel the circumstance we’re in is not right, but we just can’t see what the best way forward is. What are some ways to approach points of seeming impasse in life?
Here are some suggestions of things that can help lift your energy and vibration, to help you approach your circumstances in a different way:
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Open the way for flow and spontaneity
I try to take myself out of my regular routine and circumstances. I clear my calendar of my ‘shoulds’ and ‘to-dos’ and my tightly planned schedule, and allow myself to be open to more flow and spontaneity to see what other opportunities and perspectives might arise for adventure during my day.
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Do something fun and different – change your concept of self
I had a period of time that I decided my answer would be ‘yes’ – I opened myself to trying things that I normally would have shied away from as uncomfortable or just ‘not my thing’. Try and experience something fun, interesting or new that might open your mind and spirit to a new experience or a way of looking at things. Maybe it’s something you’ve wanted to do but never prioritised. Engaging in something fun, and perhaps even seemingly with no purpose, is a good way to allow creative expression and expansion to arise. It might be taking a class, reading a book of a genre you don’t normally explore, doodling, cooking, a walking tour. Be different. Break out of your mold and challenge your concept of yourself.
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Time in nature. Defrag. Connect with the stillness and silence
The energy of nature is essential to our sense of wellbeing, health and vitality. Time spent in stillness with trees, or absorbing the negative ions by the ocean is nurturing and uplifting to the spirit. It helps us defrag from our stressful modern lives and additions to always being ‘on’ and busy. Stopping, allowing the stillness and awareness to come to the fore, can provide valuable insights. Your emotions are your guidance system trying to give you messages.
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Exercise
A great way to move suck energy in your system, get endorphins moving, and help you lift your spirits.
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Meditation
Connecting with a place of stillness or calmness and peace when the mind is silent but alert. There are so many articles now about the benefits of a meditation practice and countless apps and classes one can access to help connect more with the stillness. At the very least, just stop, sit and notice your breathing for a few minutes. Imagine breathing oxygen in from the trees, imagine gifting CO2 back to the trees. Try doubling the length of your exhalation to help slow your breath. (e.g. breathe in for the count of 3, exhale for the count of 6).
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Energy healing
We are more than just our physical bodies. As multi-dimensional beings we have energy bodies – referred to chakras, aura and meridians in Eastern traditions. Just like the filter in your washing machine/dryer, these energy centres can become clogged with unprocessed and stuck energy and emotions. A session with a skilled energy practitioner can help shift blockages and open the way for more energy to enter your system, greater clarity and lightness.
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Mantra and chant
The repetition of sacred and powerful sounds, frequently in the ancient language of Sanskrit, can transform and adjust the vibration of your energy and being. When practiced consistently over time it can affect deep and profound change, bringing calmness to the mind, improving the functioning of the nervous system and response to stress, altering our consciousness. Personally I have found this to be one of the most deeply transformational practices. There are many mantras, invoked at different times for connecting with different energies. The chant, Oṁ Gaṁ Gaṇapataye Namaḥ, invokes the qualities of energy associated with Hindu deity Gaṇesh or Gaṇesha – to clear the obstacles that might present themselves on our path. It is also the energy associated with the Mūlādhāra chakra – of stability, foundations, new ventures, and moving beyond duality, to touch on a few other aspects. I play this in my home space, and chant this at specific times when I feel I need extra assistance to move through a particular challenge. You can listen to a sample of it on the Mantra album.
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Do what brings you joy
This was the advice given to me by a spiritual master in India. So simple and yet how complex we can make it. Follow the breadcrumb trail – just take the next step do things that bring you joy! You may be amazed on where all the small steps eventually lead you.
If you’d like any assistance or coaching with meditation, energy clearing or a mantra practice, then please get in touch.
The repetition of sacred sounds is a pathway to awaken deeper soul connection. This practice is found in many of the great spiritual traditions. I found this beautiful quote that aptly describes this practice:
“Mantra is the prime tool for developing consciousness using the power of cosmic sound vibration, out of which consciousness creates and sustains both body and mind. Mantras are seed powers of consciousness, through which consciousness can renew itself, deepen and move to a higher level. The more consciousness we give to the mantra, the more energized the mantra becomes, and the more a force of integration and well-being.”
Source: American Institute of Vedic Studies
This has been one of the most transformational life-changing practices on my journey. I have been blessed by my spiritual teacher to have this awakened and enlivened in me. One of my joys is the chance to share this with others. I offer online coaching sessions – a great way to get started in your practice especially if this is new to you.
Please get in touch if the times offered don’t suit your schedule. You can also access some mantra recordings in the online shop to assist you with your practice. Great if you want to chant along, or play it as a space clearing/vibration setting sound track in your home or office.
Oṁ Gaṁ Gaṇapataye Namaḥ: a mantra invoking the energy of transformation to move through perceived obstacles.
Elemental Balance Bīja Mantra: bīja sounds for each chakra to balance the 5 elements.
Gāyatrī Mantra: a prayer to the Divine light illuminating all realms, to illuminate our intellect.
You can also access my online courses should you be interested in self-paced learning of some of the longer prayers of light: Learn the Durga Suktam | Learn the Medha Suktam | Learn the Sri Suktam.
