In this page, I try to impart how to do one particular form of spiritual exercise that I have found useful. I can't predict how it might work for you, however. Many such methods fail for some people; some could even have a negative effect. In general, I advise stopping an exercise right away if it leads to discomfort ("If it feels bad, don't do it"). And if nothing useful seems to be starting to happen after a reasonable time (people I have learned from have suggested allowing six weeks), maybe another technique would be better for you.
Chanting is one kind of exercise in which one repeats a harmonious sound or sequence of sounds. Chanting is done out loud. An alternative activity is to make the sound or sounds silently, mentally; this is mantra meditation.
To chant, you first need to have something to chant.
As with mantra meditation, randomly choosing a word or sequence of words is generally a bad idea. Your choice may carry bad emotional freight for you, or may be harsh rather than harmonious.
If you have already tried mantra meditation, your choice of a harmonious sound to make in your mind may seem an obvious choice to try aloud. However, you may have been given a mantra with an undertaking by you that you will not reveal it, and unless you always chant in complete privacy others would hear it. Or, more generally, you may feel that uttering your mantra robustly, aloud, would detract from a degree of delicacy with which you have become accustomed to regard it and thus impair its effectiveness.
The "universal mantra," the "sacred syllable," rendered in the Latin alphabet as Om, or, alternatively, Aum (click to see this syllable in the original Sanskrit), however, has no confidentiality attached to it, and I have yet to encounter anyone who became reluctant to use it out loud. So I recommend Om for anyone beginning chanting who has no other candidate chant to try. When I chant, I mostly use this syllable.
Om should be sounded sonorously, with the vowel portion resonant and the consonant prolonged; most people seem to find it best to let the consonant die into silence rather than ending abruptly, but it isn't necessary to make it diminish particularly slowly. It should be sounded in the body and throat, not just in the mouth. It shouldn't be chanted softly, weakly or hesitantly; on the other hand, forced loudness is unnecessary and may, except in privacy, intrude offensively on other people. A single tone is fine; some chanting, particularly Western religious chanting, is a kind of singing, but not that of a syllable like Om. Almost all of the chants I've used as an individual or in a group should be sounded in a similar way.
Other good general, publicly known, choices are the Hebrew Shalom and its Arabic equivalent Salaam. Both mean "peace" as a greeting. Since they are greetings, in languages that are on a planet of increasing cultural mixing likely to have users in many social contexts, they might be taken as greetings or as culturally or politically identifying you. Some discretion may be advisable. That said, I've used Shalom effectively in groups.
More than in the case of mantra meditation, I have avoided using actual words or phrases in English (or another language familiar to whoever is going to do the chanting). The probability of the meaning of the words being a distraction from the act of chanting seems to me just too high. I realize that followers of some religions, for reasons of piety or in times of stress, do repetitively utter certain prayers or declarations, to the point that the meaning of the words may become somewhat submerged in the rhythm and repetition; but I still think of this as praying rather than engaging in the exercise of chanting. And it's certainly liable to become a distraction or intrusion from the point of view of bystanders.
Related to Om is a chant that many people have heard, Om Mani Padme Hum. Two ways to do this chant are:
continuously and fairly rapidly, in a long sequence of words, repetition after repetition until it becomes necessary to draw a breath (if several people are doing the chant, it's most likely that the sound will become completely continous until the end of the exercise).
The pronunciation of Om Mani Padme Hum is "Om mahnay pahdmay hoom," as closely as I, an English speaker, can come. In Om Mani Padme Hum (except in the rapid repetition case), Om, Shalom and other cases with terminal "m" sounds, I find it personally beneficial to really lengthen the "m".
Let's assume that, from the suggestions above or from another source, you have selected a chant to try.
Like many spiritual techniques, chanting begins with positioning the body. If you can, assume a comfortable seated position, or stand comfortably erect, with the spine relatively straight and vertical. Lying down makes chanting quite difficult since it restricts your breathing, but any position in which you can breath is still a possibility.
Closing your eyes is optional. Close them if you find the surroundings too distracting otherwise.
Start chanting. Breath when you need to; between repetitions is a good time to breath if your chant is several words long. Making a breath last as long as possible may be a source of discomfort or distraction, but with experience it can help reduce the frequency of your respiration and add to the beneficial effect of chanting (it can also lead to blood chemistry changes which help some people in reaching an enhanced spiritual state, if such a state is one of your goals).
Enjoy the sound, but try to keep your attention on the single task of chanting. It's not as easy to become distracted by random thoughts as in the case of mantra meditation; but there are still sources of distraction, including in particular the sounds of the voices of others if you are chanting in a group.
How long do you keep this up? Except in the case of experienced chanters with stamina, things will come to a natural end when your voice tires. Otherwise, about twenty minutes is a reasonable limit, although I have known one or two people who have gained benefit from chanting for a much longer time. Don't open your mouth any wider than necessary; this isn't opera, and you want to avoid drying your mouth and the rest of your vocal apparatus so that you have to stop short. For a few moments, up to a few minutes, after you stop chanting, sit or stand quietly feeling the after-effects and the mental echoes of your chant. Then gently open your eyes if they were closed. If this is your main spiritual exercise, do it twice a day until you've been doing it long enough to decide if it has benefits for you, in terms of spirituality, relaxation, energization, destressing or whatever is your goal.
The chief problems people tend to encounter during mantra meditation are those common to many spiritual exercises. The first is thinking, during your chanting, about where you want to go instead of, by doing the exercise, going there. The second is thinking in general. Of course, you will think about other things. You may find you've let your chant go on automatic pilot while you think about the next day's schedule or any of a myriad other things. The prime rule here is, don't blame yourself. Just recall to yourself what it was that you intended to do, namely to chant, and gently return to just doing it and nothing else. Be as patient with yourself about this as is necessary. You're not in a hurry to succeed; hurrying, for success or for any other reason, is what you do the rest of the time, not while you're chanting.
As mentioned above, another problem is that you can fatigue your voice, and if you overdo it enough you can suffer noticeable discomfort. A further problem peculiar to chanting and a few other publicly obvious exercises is that they are -- well, publicly obvious. You may find it advisable to do your chanting in a private place where sound doesn't carry too well to your closest neighbors. The best private places are, as you might be thinking, those with good reverberation. You may not have a stone religious building at your disposal, but there are other enclosures with good echoes -- with luck, even in your own home.
A personal note: I have used Om as a chant when driving long distances, as an alternative to my chief regular exercise of mantra meditation when the latter is inconvenient. I do this since I can do it with my eyes open, and since I find it energizing rather than quieting while I am doing it. Strong caution: this works for me, but might for other people be dangerously distracting from the attention needed for driving, or might slow their reflexes.
Return to "Spiritual Exercises" page to select another kind of exercise.
© 2007 Anthony Buckland,
anthonybuckland@telus.net
last modified: May 12, 2007
Link to
Anthony's home page
