Five weeks of sitting in a room learning the correct pronunciation and tonality of mantra. The beautiful practice of chanting in a group is something I unexpectedly fell in love with.
Sound has been sweeping me up for the last couple of years, and I wanted to layer my own practice with mantra. As part of my pranayama training, there's a chant before kriya, and I've been loving it, so, as usual, I wanted to dive deeper.
Why is the Sanskrit mantra chanted, not just read
Each week we sank a little further into the science behind sound, the reason Sanskrit is so potent when chanted correctly, and how the ancients seemed to know the powers of sound more deeply than we do even today. The community of gathering and chanting to a deity can sound very religious from the outside. But we were told it's about calling them in, calling that quality into yourself. If you chant to Saraswati, for example, you're calling in knowledge, wisdom, art, musicality. You're not directing devotion to a religious figure. You're channelling that quality within yourself. That reframe changed my entire relationship with the practice.
What happens in a group chant
There is something that happens in a group chant. An energy, palpable if you let yourself feel it. If you're open to the chant it can take you somewhere. I've had emotional breakthroughs while chanting, the group holding you as the energy moves through. I know how that sounds. I would have agreed with you before. But the release and the softening that follow when you go with it, rather than resist it, are real.
In the west we have classes that skip the OM, studios that prefer teachers not to use Sanskrit, and that is their choice. But I feel I'm honouring the lineage by learning all of it, by understanding more than the poses and the meditations, by having a practice that holds me in this life so I can keep learning what's needed here.
How to lead a mantra chant for the first time
In week five, we each had to lead a chant. I wasn't prepared. Singing into a mic with speakers, hoping I wasn't too far out of tune. It's not about singing, though. You're not chanting for it to sound harmonious. You're chanting to say the words. I did it, and it felt good. I'm not sure I'm ready to take it on the road yet, but it has certainly deepened my sadhana
