If you’re reading this because you have some experience of
yoga, possibly with me as your teacher, you may have been offered a mantra to
chant or listen for at the beginning or ending of class. Mantras are phrases of sometimes
seemingly nonsensical syllables.
They generally have some sort of meaning, though, and you can know what
they mean. But the key to mantra
theory is that you don’t have to know what the syllables mean. (I write syllable, because some of them
aren’t things we’d translate as words.)
You can really only know if it works or not. Some of them are easy to do and hear; they may ground you
and soothe you. Others are more
difficult to say out loud; they may churn you and agitate. The yoga is what you do with that
experience.
In any case, mantra does to you what good music often
does. It takes you to memory. Mantra traverses mind to heart and back
again (manas means both heart and mind; -tra makes it a tool), crossing the
palate to create sound. Both the
sound and the act of making the sound are ways that you connect what has never
been and can never be separate.
Mantra just heightens the resonance that was already there.
For months, I had only been listening to what was readily
available on my phone for my hours-long commutes every day. For being a lady who doesn’t mind to
spend a little dough, I was surprisingly cheap when it came to my music
library. There was very little in
my playlists that I couldn’t just ignore while I flipped through the Vogue or
attended to the Facebook on the train.
I played one of the tracks from Shantala’s Voice of the Esraj or Garth
Stevens’ Flying for savasana at the end of class. I didn’t realize what I was missing – that there could be
more.
An unexpected concert attendance back in February re-lit me
and reminded me of how it could be, how I could feel. And so I bought the album, joined Spotify, and was mystified
by my newfound ability to think of an artist, type it in, and come up with something
that touched my heart again and again.
(I know, I’m a little behind here folks.) For weeks, I’ve been revisiting old songs, remembering
favorite moments. But not just
remembering how I was then, I really
felt like that girl who loves those songs.
At the same time, I’ve begun having new feelings and making new
memories. I’m adding to old songs
and learning new ones.
The difference between an old song from your college days
and mantra is that mantras take you farther back. They take you in to the operating system in your heart-mind,
allowing you to touch the parts of yourself that are otherwise hard to get
to. These are the parts that are
not right before your eyes, but that you’re willing to see with your eyes
closed. And then open. It’s said that if you meditate and
become receptive enough, you’d hear them chanting themselves. And then you can join in.
Every year at Rajanaka Camp with Douglas, we spend some time
learning a mantra. We take
something that’s effective as simply message, information, instruction and
learn enough about it through narrative to give it meaning. Mantras are gifts, and gifts shouldn’t
be burdens. We are reminded of
very few instructions on when and how much to do the mantras. The only instruction is to do it when
you feel like it.
