It’s said that music is good for us.
Mind body art science. That intersection is where mantra lives.
Listen: it’ll rewire you. It’ll move you. It has the capacity to soothe, to carry, to stabilize, to rock, to break you. It can show you god.
Funny thing: the ancient seers knew all of this. They knew what brains are. What humaning is. How difficult. They also knew how prone we are to disaster and suffering and causing trouble and pain. They knew how likely we are to feeling trapped and lost.
And these guys knew how simple practices can be liberation.
The oldest and I think most direct practice was/is chanting. I mean the real, true ‘authentic’ yoga. Thousands of years ago, some folks figured out how to harmonize what feel like the tensions of life. All this other stuff - poses and philosophy, fasts and art, mindfulness and life hacking - is really just a later attempt to repackage or over simplify something that has been true and proven and practicable for millennia.
I can’t possibly tell you how true this is in my body. It’s down in my cells. It’s in my sleep and dream cycles. It seems to have tipped my dangerous tending toward addictive and depressive and hot bio cycles to a roaring symphony.
It tickles my intellectual brain, starts to make all the apparent contradictory things you hear in yoga spaces and life spaces all start to fit. It all starts to fall together.
And I feel like a riptide.
This art science of chanting is vast. There’s a lot of crap out there to wade through. I’ve put together a ‘intro to Vedic chant’ course that will run Tuesday mornings 7 am CST on zoom beginning in September. 6 weeks.
Vedic chant is THE way to take yoga past poses. It is ancient. It is now. It is recognized as a world treasure by UNESCO. It is available to anyone, with the little caveat that you need to be taught how to navigate it. You need a teacher to initiate you. Once that’s done, the doors are wide open.
Anyone can chant. You don’t need musical ability or Sanskrit philosophy or a spoonful of religious dogma. The only ask is commitment, and knowing that I will ask you to unmute yourself and sing on mic and expect you to figure out how to practice for yourself for ten minutes at a time, several times a week.
Quick overview:
Week One invocation and Ganesh start where all things should start, with an invocation to the god who removes obstacles. Discuss what invocation and prayer are in this tradition and for you personally, with a nod to cultural apporpraiton, modernity, post-religious lostness and spiritual longing. We’ll get a crash course on the six (main) rules of Vedic chanting and a primer on how a music practice sparks up the human system in terms of cognitive function, emotional balance, optimism and spirituality, physical balance and capacity, intellect and soul.
Week Two the power and beauty of Saraswati with Ganesha on board, we’ll now learn the invocation to Saraswati, she goddess of the power (I mean force) of learning, beauty, wisdom, creativity, and music. Keep learning some basics about chanting as you start to root around in the basement of your subliminal through a personalized practice. There is so much power and grace and flow and growth to harnessing our learning power and becoming a student. There is so much loveliness and beauty and compelling, attractive power to this whole show. We invoke her, next.
Week Three Initiation exploring THE Gayatri mantra The Gayatri mantra is like the top of the charts mantra for all of human history. It is so popular, has been for so very long, that there is richness and electricity just in the thought of it’s continuity throughout human history. All great teachers will say this is the greatest yoga thing, the only one you need, the start and the source and the heart of all teachings. Yet, partially because it is the one, it has been pop cultured, watered down, misused, abused, and infinitely mistaught. We’ll do some unpacking of harms and restoring of things to their place as you both learn how to do it right (yes, there is a right and a wrong here) respecting the lineage and at the same time plug it in to your individuality, your possibility, your contemporary thoroughly modernized humanity. Bonus: how and what oṃ is and how to hold it right.
Week Four The art of listening. Adhyayanam is the traditional method of transition, or handing on the teaching, or methodology of learning. This is so fundamental to ALL of Yoga that it will unlock doors for you, including the deepest and heaviest ones of your heart. And oddly, it is misunderstanding Adhyayanam that has so mixed up yoga in contemporary spaces and the spiritual marketplace.
Week Five the art and science of personal practice. There is a tensioning at the heart of being human, and of this path that is essentially a question of how to human a little more gracefully. How do we handle the firehose of information and stimulation and overwhelm that is life without drowning? But at the same time, how do we keep ourselves alive and not die of lack? Personal practice is the way. Let’s unpack all that.
Week Six: Unshakeable. Moving on, letting go, stepping forward. There is an art to letting go. And we’re all, every last one of us, control freaks. We’re fortunate and half way there if we are savvy to our personal brand of control freakiness already. As we wrap up this course, we’re both finishing and beginning. Whether you are moving on to study a new thing with me or others, or are simply taking what you’ve learned here home to mull over on you own, it’s important that we close right. Let’s look at closing mantras and the concept of offering, surrender, and freedom in Yoga philosophy and practice. We’ll touch on the imporance and pre-req of inner safety and the safety nets built into the tradition (and ways they have been neglected or ignored in your past or the industry.). We’ll discuss the discovery of safety in sensation, in lived experience, in practices as provided by yoga (in asana, in meditation, in daily ritual or special ritual, in Ayurveda, in sangha, and in your body and breath). We’ll look at the role of all techniques leading to meditation techniques, and how this deep neural plasticity work curates an inner resilience and resolve without you needing to cognitively do it. Let’s not forget to unpack community (healthy, unhealthy, but ultimately the most important thing) and general mindfulness (it’s all yoga!….but don’t forget to practice). We’ll dive a little, little bit into the mental game in the physical body, what’s happening in present moment awareness, letting go of future worries and healing ancient wounds. And letting go wouldn’t be complete unless we also explore the challenges of aging, an unfair world, physical and personal limitations.
FAQ stuff
This is a weighty course so far as impact goes. It will give you the foundation to study and learn forever. It will clarify and answer the super messy confusions out there. It will orient you, initiate you, and begin you. Yet its a relatively light class from your end:
six weeks, a tiny personal daily practice.
Live class Tuesday mornings 7 am CST via zoom for 6 weeks beginning September 3.
Recordings.
Audio and text tools to support your personal practice.
Humongous workbook for your forever.
send 3 recordings of your practice for personalized feedback and support.
$250 bucks.
Get $50 off for you and your friend if you sign up together. Everything is better together. Both of you will need to ask Karin for the discount code to do this.
Sign up on Mighty Networks.