cumulative strength: how a casual approach to chanting helped me appreciate my practice more

When my brother passed, I felt blindsided. It hadn’t occurred to me that such a thing would happen, even though looking back I can see that with that kind of drinking, it was inevitably going to happen. You can’t drink like that and not die of either health or fate. I was too young/new to this– I hadn’t actually seen anyone drink themselves to death at that point. Yikes. But, I mean, I didn’t realize what was going on and I get why: a sour combination of cognitive disonance and inexperience.

I was heartbroken. So often in those moments, I turn to asana and meditation. These were not readily available at that particular time because of an overzealous deadlifting session gone awry. A very real bit of karma from my ego getting the best of me. Anyway, its why the part of actually sitting for a “sitting meditation” practice actually didn’t feel so hot, nor did asana practice. A little bit, foundations did, but not much else.

The thing is, that time was wild. Between a pandemic, Brionna Taylor, and my own brother, I was up to my ears in grief. I can recall the number of occasions my knees have buckled from grief over the years, and the recency of it all still ached. The sharpness of the sorrow still cut, not dulled yet by time. And when it cut, the idea of meditating or making shapes with my body felt ludicrous. What I wanted to do was wail. To scream. To mourn like a surly elephant, full trunk trumpeting. You get the idea.

The thing that brought me incredible relief was chanting. I have a few favorite chants up my sleeve, and some that I pull out when I really need them. I’m the kind of boy who regularly has some song in his heart, and I regularly hum or sing as I’m moving and existing. I like to communicate via grunts. My mom and dad are the same way. So, chanting felt pretty empowering– especially after a year of singing lessons with Dr. Miskie.

I’d never used chanting in the way that I have used practice to transmute poisons into medicine, but without my usual go-to strategies, chanting worked. It let me move the sorrow through. I was shocked by its power, and was grateful for my friend Abby Dobb’s ear during that period, as she too had increased her non-conventional chanting.

I learned a lot, mourning the loss of Trey– but this essay is about cumulative strength and chanting. I learned particularly in that period that chanting can help manipulate energies– and that I have access to it– we all do. It’s wild, that something so simple can be wielded so powerfully. And this kind of strength is borne out of the little bits of realization that led to the capacity to notice that.

A few months ago, I read “Happiness Becomes You” — a book on developing a relationship with spirituality by none other than Ms. Tina Turner. Wanna know how she connected with spirit? You already know: through chanting. Her buddhist journey and trials and tribulations really spoke to me, and the book really had quite an impact.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when I learned of my teacher’s recent decline in vitality. Through the internet and a what’sapp group, we were called to chant the triyumbakam, more respectfully known as the Maha Mrityunjaya Mantra. It’s one of my all-time favorites… it was actually the first chant I ever learned, and it has followed me through life showing up at the intersection of evidence based science Michael and evidence based spiritual Michael.

After all the time, I was prepared to chant in a way I never had known could be possible. Not as a last resort, but as a first. And to trust in its power, unwaveringly. Every morning, every day, all over. Through tears. IN my head. Around the shala. Out loud a lot, more quietly through tears. And I think it worked.

What do I mean by worked? I felt connected to all of Rolf’s other students in a way I had no before. I believe strongly that it was felt by my teacher’s wife (and my own dear teacher) Marci. And when he passed, I think it helped me have a practical experience of the transformation of energies. Very practical, that.

But it was in the chants that I felt connected firstly to Rolf. His chants were so similar to my own– this being due to our own yoga lineages intersecting. Each day before practice, he’d do a few chants. How shocked I was, on that first day, that I knew all of them by heart already. I knew them from my wider yoga history, and they were very much the ones I liked. It helped me feel like I was in exactly the right place, at the right time.

Chanting’s powerful, and it can be done with great precision… but I can say for sure it works great with enough devotion to make up for a lack of precision. If you haven’t found a chant that sticks to your ribs, we have a bunch over at Ashtanga.Tech.