Meditating with Mantras and Mudras in Therapeutic Yoga

Some of the most famous images in yoga are of a silver-haired and wrinkled B.K.S. Iyengar in an advanced posture just a few years before his death well into his nineties, or a pink lipstick-wearing Tao Porchon-Lynch displaying increAfter practicing yoga over a long enough period of time, most of us encounter its more nuanced components that don’t necessarily fall into the category of asana or pranayama. These types of practices are especially of interest to yoga therapists, as they tap into the more subtle forms of using yoga for healing.

In meditation, we sometimes make use of mantras and/or mudras. Mantras are words or phrases that can be repeated aloud or to oneself with the rhythm of the breath, and mudras are the use of the hands to focus the brain. While most yoga practitioners have had some exposure to these concepts, as yoga therapists, we can go a step deeper to understand why they are used and how they can support healing.

What makes mantras and mudras of such interest to yoga therapists is how they tap into the parts of the body that can be most effective for promoting healing. The Homunculus Diagram shows the human body in proportion to the amount of nerve endings in each part. For this reason, when offering a yoga chikitsa, yoga therapists pay special attention to the parts of the body with the greatest number of nerve endings because of their efficacy to support healing – the face, lips and mouth (mantras) and the hands and fingers (mudras).

Thus, mantras and mudras help link physical actions to the functioning of the mind. Especially for active students, those who find meditation challenging, or those who are pitta vitiated, Ayurvedically-speaking, mantras and mudras can be a highly effective point through which to access meditation.

Mantras

Mantras have transcended the yoga community and are commonly cited as ways to enhance performance and in self-help circles. We repeat these words or short phrases to manifest an outcome or send out an intention, reminiscent of a prayer.

In yoga, mantras are chanted or repeated silently. When chanted or spoken aloud, we activate the healing capacities of connecting the brain to the mouth, lips and tongue. Even if repeated silently, mantras can help focus the mind during meditation.

Some common mantras include:

• Kirtan kriya – Four syllables, sa ta na ma, meaning birth, life death and rebirth – make up this classic mantra. The Kirtan kriya can be highly effective in focusing the mind during meditation when it is repeated over and over in a melodic way.

• Peace mantras – Om shanti shanti shanti is a common mantra used to call in peace, often heard at the end of a yoga class or to conclude a longer chant. Another mantra for peace can be more personal, such as breathing in “I am at peace,” and repeating it on the exhale. If “at peace” does not resonate with you, you can substitute another state of being to help bring a sense of ease to the mind and body.

• Devotional mantras – Mantras can also be used to chant devotion to a belief system or deity. One of the most common devotional mantras is the Gaytri mantra, which Sri Swami Satchidananda translates as “Let us meditate on Isvara [God] and His Glory who has created the Universe, who is fit to be worshipped, who is the remover of all sins and ignorance. May he enlighten our intellect." 

Mudras

Given the concentration of nerve endings in the hands and fingers, using them in meditation is said to be the most effective body-based yoga style to improve brain function. It also makes mudras one of the most accessible forms of asana, given the undeniably physical aspect of the practice. If you’re working with a client in a hospital setting, or if you’re working to introduce a more physical practice, mudras can be a great way to ease into asana.

Some common mudras

• Anjali mudra -- The most common mudra most of us are familiar with is Anjali mudra, or bringing the hands to a prayer position at the center of the chest. This is a devotional position meant to bring awareness to the heart’s center and can be found within many other asanas.

• Dhyana mudra – Place the non-dominant hand in the lap, face-up, with the dominant hand resting face-up on top of it. This is a powerful mantra for promoting healing and balance, by symbolically cradling our yang side and allowing it to rest.

Once you’ve introduced mantas or mudras to a yoga therapy client, the next step is putting them together.

• Mala beads – Chanting or repeating a mantra 108 times as you hold a mala is one of the most classical examples of devotion. Hold the mala in your right hand, draped over your middle finger. Using the thumb, touch one bead, silently or out loud speak your mantra, and slide your thumb to the next bead, being sure to skip over the large guru bead. At PYI, we chant “aham Prema” 108 times to honor the divine love inherent to our lineage.

• The Kirtan kriya – Once you’ve learned sa ta na ma, you can add the hands. On sa, lightly touch the thumb to the index finger, bring the thumb to the top of the middle finger for ta, the fourth finger for na, and the pinky finger for ma. Repeat.

Mantras and mudras are well known in yoga, but it’s their therapeutic effects where they really stand out. Ultimately, mantras and mudras are simple and highly accessible tools to deepen a therapeutic yoga experience.

LINKS:

https://www.intuitiveflow.com/the-magic-of-the-hand-mudras/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwRoHC83wx0&feature=youtu.be

https://www.yogiapproved.com/om/mantras-explained-use/

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Hannah Slocum Darcy is a yoga teacher and a student at Prema Yoga Institute. She specializes in accessibility and adaptive practice for many life stages and scenarios.

Poses, Props and Modifications for a Lifelong Yoga Practice

Some of the most famous images in yoga are of a silver-haired and wrinkled B.K.S. Iyengar in an advanced posture just a few years before his death well into his nineties, or a pink lipstick-wearing Tao Porchon-Lynch displaying incredible feats of flexibility before she passed away earlier this year at 101. While most of us see these images and shake our heads, lamenting our own muscle flexibility lost and aches gained over the past decade, they teach us a great deal about the practice itself.

Yoga, as most of us know, was not intended as purely a physical exercise, but rather a holistic practice comprised of eight limbs, culminating in samadhi. In this way, yoga lends itself to being accessible through the many stages of life and the necessary modifications that result. While many forms of exercise and sports can be so physically demanding that they either frequently lead to injury or are difficult or unsafe to practice as we enter a new life stage such as pregnancy, injury, illness or old age, yoga asana – and especially therapeutic variations – has a response to each of these. 

Here are some common poses, props and modifications to address some of the most common challenges that arise in the course of adulthood and ways to leverage the asana practice as a healing mechanism.

Chair yoga – Whether due to challenges with balance, restricted movement, or for clients just beginning a yoga practice, chair yoga is a starting point. So many common asana poses – twists, Warrior series, triangle, backbends, forward folds and more – can be modified to be done from a chair, whether seated or standing behind it and using it for support. All you need is a firm, steady folding chair. You can start to build strength in the chair and then eventually explore poses without using it.

Walls – As we age, the risk of falls increases. The National Council on Aging reports that one in four Americans over the age of 65 will fall each year, often resulting in the need to be treated in the emergency room. Thus, cultivating balance is critical. For clients who struggle to maintain balance, whether because of vertigo or ageing, the best modification is to find the steadiest prop possible and use that for practice – think the wall or floor. These props do not move no matter what, so should be used in poses that can challenge the balance. Think keeping the big toe on the floor during tree pose, or leaning back into a wall for triangle pose.

Yoga for low back pain – Low back pain is the second leading cause of missed work, second only to the common cold. Nearly all of us have awoken at one point or another with a stiff or sore lower back, not knowing what to do about it. The tricky part about low back pain is that its causes are many, and its treatments are just as diverse. Certain causes, like a ruptured disc, ask us not to forward fold, while others, such as sciatica, call for spinal twists. The key, if you are experiencing low back pain, is to visit a physician who can order tests and examine you to assign a proper diagnosis to your pain, and from there, you can work with a yoga therapist to ease your symptoms. Dr. Loren Fishman is a great resource on yoga for low back pain and has contributed greatly to the field of therapeutic yoga through his work.

Patience – Over time, the connective tissues that hold together our muscles and bone structure can dry up and become brittle. A key practice to maintain flexibility, which helps enable pain-free movement in the body and prevent common injuries, is yin yoga. Yin involves holding stretches for three to five minutes, getting deep into the connective tissue, to keep it healthy and supple. Interestingly enough, yin does not require deep flexibility to begin with, but rather asks us to stretch only to about half of our full capacity and utilize props to keep each pose supported, making it a sustainable practice for varying stages of fitness. That’s why you’ll be encouraged to bend your knees slightly in a yin-style forward fold or to back out of the most intense version of a posture to achieve lasting results over time.

These are just a few of the most common challenges we face as we age, and ways to modify, support, and explore them in the yoga practice. Finding a skilled yoga therapist to work with can help you find more ways to adapt your asana practice to your changing needs as you age.

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Hannah Slocum Darcy is a yoga teacher and a student at Prema Yoga Institute. She specializes in accessibility and adaptive practice for many life stages and scenarios.

From Lip-Synching “Om” to Leading Chants: One Yogi’s Sound Therapy Journey

Music and I have always enjoyed a pretty fraught relationship.  I have long been something of a screech owl blundering amongst a watch of nightingales, forever surrounded by the musically gifted but unable to join in their chorus without causing amusement or, more often, wincing.  It’s been my dubious fortune, as someone who literally cannot sing in key, to be a kind of magnet for people with perfect pitch (although I am, at least, consistent: my college roommate—a violist— used to stare at me in a kind of appalled awe as I sang along with the radio.  “It’s uncanny,” she’d say, “you are literally always exactly a quarter step down.”)  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people express appreciation when I sing harmony on “Happy Birthday”—I’ve learned to stop telling them that I’m trying to sing the melody.

But speaking of perfect pitch, my personal euphonic albatross: do you know what percentage of the world’s population has perfect pitch?  Less than eleven percent.  Here is a partial list of the people in my life who have (or had) perfect pitch:

·      My husband
·      My best friend
·      My college roommate
·      My late father
·      My uncle
·      My paternal grandfather
·      My paternal grandmother
·      A seemingly endless parade of my students
·      You get the picture 

Music has a bit of a complicated history in my family: my father’s father, the son of a bandleader, was a ragtime piano prodigy who was forced to tour the Orpheum Circuit with his father from the age of six.  At fourteen years old he quit the band, left home, and eventually became a surgeon and, later, a psychiatrist.  He married a woman with a stunning soprano voice in the style of Jeanette MacDonald, and together they raised four children absolutely devoted to music.  My uncle is one of the very few people in the United States who has made a living playing professional tenor saxophone over the past forty years. 

Many people my age grew up with fathers obsessed with jazz, and I would stake my late father in a jazz trivia contest against any one of them—his knowledge was beyond encyclopedic, beyond obsessive—jazz was, I think, his literal best friend.  NPR’s “The Art of Jazz” played on multiple radios throughout the house every single weekend of my childhood.  My father would often interrupt me or one my sisters from our Shrinky-Dinks or Sweet Valley High books to point at the stereo demand, “Who’s that on trombone, girls?”  It was never someone easy to recognize, like Tommy Dorsey or J.J. Johnson, it was always a hard one. “You mean to say you don’t know Miff Malone when you hear him?!”  Sorry, Dad.

There was also musical talent on my mother’s side. My maternal grandfather, who died when my mother was twenty, was a classic Irish tenor—although I never met him, I have a false memory of his beautiful rendition of Danny Boy, from hearing it lovingly referenced in so many family stories. 

It probably doesn’t help that I spent three years of piano lessons practicing on an out-of-tune piano before my teacher—a local Methodist pastor’s wife whose large family definitely had use for every spare penny—told my mother that she couldn’t, in good conscience, continue to take her money.  I joined Seattle Girls’ Choir in the fifth grade and, over the course of three years, came to tower over my fellow choristers as every girl in my training choir class was promoted to the Intermediate Choir except for me.  Eventually, the choir director echoed my piano teacher in gently suggesting to my mother that I be redirected in my interests, perhaps towards watercolors, or volleyball, or ikebana, or literally anything other than music.

All of which is to say, I am not, at this point in my life, confident about my musical abilities.  While I enjoy many kinds of music deeply, and have always found music and dancing to be a direct channel to spiritual connection, I avoid singing in front of others, and freeze up instantly when a musical instrument is put in front of me.  So you can imagine my reaction upon discovering, during the first day of my Sound Therapy training at Prema Yoga Institute, that by the end of the weekend I was expected to chant while accompanying myself on the harmonium.  Outwardly, I nodded enthusiastically.  Inwardly, I panicked.

Ironically, I am not afraid to use my voice—I taught vocal technique for actors for years at various acting schools and studios in New York City, including the Musical Theatre studio at NYU, where I was, I think, the only non-singer in the building.  The technique I taught, developed by Kristin Linklater, teaches actors to undo the maladaptive muscular habits that prevent them releasing their sound fully and expressively while speaking.  The technique is often referred to a “freeing the natural voice,” and—especially in the beginning—“ugly” sound is not only allowed but actually encouraged.

But I had never encountered “ugly” sound in yoga.  At that point, the only sound I was really familiar with in the yoga world was kirtan: a division of bhakti yoga often involving melodic call-and-response chanting, generally led by a yogi playing a harmonium.  I had attended large kirtan sessions where my imperfect voice could be masked by blending into the wall of sound, and found them to be ecstatic experiences.  But the idea of leading a kirtan myself—of being responsible for the sound element of a yoga class—was beyond daunting: it seemed actually impossible.  How could I expect a class to echo my chanting when it would almost certainly be off-key?

Happily, Jessica Caplan’s sensitive, inclusive teaching gradually made me feel more confident in my ability to lead a class in chanting over the course of the weekend. She also offered a variety of non-vocal ways to include sound in my yoga experience, whether as a teacher or as part of my home practice.  I came away with a practical understanding of what had been, before, a nebulous idea of the concept of sound healing.  I learned about the bija mantras’ relationship the chakras, and how to use them effectively in sequencing a chakra-centered class or private session.  I learned about toning and humming, and how the body responds to vibration and frequency.  (A useful maxim from the manual: “Sound is organized vibration.  Thus, organized sound can organize matter.”)  I was introduced to a variety of simple but powerful musical and percussive instruments (such as singing bowls, hand drums, chimes, and rattles) that I could accumulate and practice with in order to provide, for example, a soothing sound element during savasana, or an invigorating percussive element to a chi dance.  I also learned about the history of Indian sacred music.

Most transformative were the two immersive sound baths I experienced in the training, one a standalone experience and one incorporated into one of Dana Slamp’s incomparable restorative yoga classes. I also had the opportunity to create one myself, in conjunction with two classmates.  I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything as simultaneously grounding and transporting as a sound bath conducted by Jessica Caplan.  The experience is hard to describe, and I would be lying if I said I left the class feeling as if I could instantly replicate what Jessica had created—she is, after all, a professional sound therapist.  But I did leave with confidence in the imperative of my curiosity to explore sound.  I have since started acquiring instruments to be able to create sound baths for my own students and clients, and have begun incorporating healing sound into my own yoga classes, and especially into my teaching of yoga nidra.  I can’t tell you how exciting it was to learn practical ways to begin including sound into my own teaching right away.

Another major takeaway for me was the incorporation of chanting and mantra in to my own meditation practice.  We learned several mantras and were each encouraged to select one that resonated with us and practice it for a week.  I was deeply moved by the Maha Mrityunjaya (“The Great Chant of Healing”) and continue to use it in my personal practice on a daily basis. Perhaps unsurprisingly, consistently chanting in my daily meditation practice has made me more confident in leading chants, and now I am more likely to begin or end a yoga class with Loka Samastah or Om Navah Shivaya, rather than my usual three Oms.  I use an app version of the droning chord created by a harmonium or shruti box (a sort of elementary version of a harmonium that I plan to add to my collection of instruments), so the students with better ears than mine have an accurate pitch to follow.  Surprisingly, though (to me, anyway), chanting nightly backed with an accurate drone has actually improved my relative pitch.

In PYI’s Sound Therapy training, I learned that sound itself can be therapeutic, not just what we conventionally think of as “music” or “singing”.  This was a major revelation for someone who has always thought of herself as musically challenged.  It is not an overstatement to say that the course opened new world of expression and devotion was opened to me through this course, both as a yoga teacher and as a practitioner. 

Prema Yoga Institute’s Sound Yoga Therapy Training runs from April 17th to April 19th.  More information can be found here.

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Molly Goforth is a yoga and meditation teacher and a student at Prema Yoga Institute. She specializes in accessibility and trauma-informed yoga teaching and practice.