Elemental Yoga: Air Practices

Chanting the Hanuman mantra as I practice Hanuman Kriya

A I R 🌬 Vibration. Mantra. The unstruck sound. Anahata. The heart-mind. Bhakti and jñāna yoga. Spiritual community and the study of the self.

There’s a lot to unpack in the air element. So in this fourth post in the series I’ll focus primarily on the mantra elements of the practice and the anahata chakra, leaving discussion of satsang, wisdom, spiritual community, and svadhyaya to later posts.

Mantra

Mantra is an integral part of the Elemental Yoga practice, as important as any other element. Sadly it’s also the aspect of yoga that presents the most resistance to people who are new to yoga. Many teachers and studios are hesitant even to chant Om as a result. To be honest, this was my greatest point of resistance when I first discovered yoga too. We come from a society dominated by mind. And mantra is a threat to the mind. And, like I said in my Instagram video on mantra, finding something deeply strange often means we’re eventually going to like it.

In Sanskrit, ‘man’ means heart-mind and ‘tra’ means expansion and liberation. So, a tool or technology for working with and expanding the heart-mind.

Mantra works with the fact that all of reality is a vibration, not just sound. “Solid” matter is a vibration, as modern physics has shown us. Light is a vibration. And, perhaps most importantly, our thoughts are vibrations that have real power.

We chant mantras in the Sanskrit language because Sanskrit has Unity Consciousness embedded in it. They say the language arose alongside yoga many thousands of years ago; as yogis were having deep experiences of Unity Consciousness these mantras were naturally arising.

Om is the first mantra, the most fundamental, the sound of Brahma creating the Universe (or the sound of the Big Bang if you prefer your creation myths to be modern and scientific). Every other mantra contains ‘om’ inside it. Lokah Somastah Sukhino Bhavantu. Om Mani Padme Hum. Hare Krishna.

Mantras can influence the subtle body, helping to tune and balance the chakras, and helping prana flow more freely. Mantra can awaken and channel kundalini energy. Mantras can override samskaras in the heart-mind and create new patterns, new grooves for the mind to flow within, thus helping to expand consciousness and release old ways of being.

In short, mantras have the power to transform consciousness. Although chanting mantra out loud is powerful in its own way — especially in a group setting, repeating mantra silently to yourself is also powerful because thoughts are vibrations with real impact on our state and our experience of the world. This is such an important reminder. Your experience is whatever state of consciousness you most consistently maintain. And our minds are wired to repeat. So mantra gives us something higher vibration and transformative to chew on, like giving a dog a really healthy bone.

We use mantra for kriya and kirtan. The Elemental Yoga meditation practice is mantra-based. And we use mantra in japa practice, where you commit to repeating a specific mantra, say, 11,000 times in 2 weeks, using mala (beads) to keep track 📿

You start to understand the power of mantra once you start working with it. Like everything else in yoga, it’s experiential. Some of the most powerful practices I’ve experienced in yoga have been entirely mantra-based. For example, I work with a classical Tantrik practice called the Dasha Mahavidya that is heavily mantra-based and it is the most powerful practice I know.

Anahata Chakra

The heart chakra is the air element. ‘Anahata’ means the eternal unstruck sound. This is the seat of love, devotion, and compassion, where we have access to Cosmic Consciousness, timelessness, and reasonless joy. When we move from attachment, neediness, and codependency by balancing the anahata, we experience greater access to kundalini, bliss, and authentic connection. The bija mantra for the anahata is YAM. The mudra is kamala (lotus).

They say anahata is the strongest chakra, and stronger the more it softens and opens.

Anahata is the home of Lakshmi and Krishna. Abundance on all levels and total devotion. In yoga we practice so we can be love, instead of seeking love. You’re either in love or you’re in fear. Choose love. It’s all love anyway.

Chanting Aham Prema: I am love.