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Sitting in the temple for evening prayers last night, new words came to express the answer to the question I’ve been asking myself… Why mantra and nada yoga?

(After 3 years away from India and a rest from the intensity of my previous personal practice, I’m looking through different eyes and discerning anew my lifelong love affair with learning mantra and nada yoga in India.)
 

Here’s why Sanskrit mantra & nada yoga are so powerful:

1. It's a detailed system of language - musical tones, rhythms, vowels and consonants - which calls into...

I’ve done pancha karma in India several times over the past 15 years.

Some of the most common questions I get from people who want to learn nada yoga and mantra with me -- and from friends/family who know I've been visiting India for 25 years and have gotten several panchakarma Ayurveda treatments in India and countless Ayurvedic massages -- are: 
"Where should I go for panchakarma?"
"What is panchakarma in India like"
"How do I prepare? What should I bring for panchakarma in India"

Yes, people ask me about where to study mantra and nāda yoga in India,...

ATTN all wellness entrepreneurs!
Sound healers, yoga teachers, wellness practitioners, mental health therapists, kīrtan leaders, musicians, Ayurveda counselors, and Jyotish advisors:

This FIRE nerd has some solid gold tax and financial planning for you. (FIRE stands for Financial Independence Retire Early).

If you're a wellness entrepreneur and haven't yet figured out how to make your business into a rocket propelling your dreams, I've got good news!

Sometimes following your heart (deep into mystical power of sound!) can seem like a far-fetched dream. For many people...

Experiencing anxiety and depression can be overwhelming and disabling. I should know! I might seem "spiritual" or whatever, but my nervous system gets tugged in both directions too.

I've been using sound and mantra to self-regulate my nervous system and give my mind something uplifting to chew on for decades now. Whenever Life gets intense, I lean in on my sound-based yoga practices and feel SO. MUCH. BETTER. And I'm not alone...

"I had such a high anxiety week, and NOTHING I tried brought it down, until I chanted with you. The yoga of sound is indispensable...I am...

If you love a daily personal sound bath, we made this healing mantra song just for you!

I've played it at the world's largest yoga festival to a sold-out class of 300 mantra chanters. It's what earned me the nickname "the crying teacher" in Japan, because people would listen to it and shed their worries and fears in the form of tears. IT'S SUCH AN HONOR to be able to use my voice as an instrument this way!

So, enjoy our all-time best sound healing frequency songs on youtube! I still cry every time I hear it, too. In a good way.

It's a healing mantra song with the...

A friend of mine attended a live chant event I led last week, and gushed about how it felt like a sound bath to just listen to me singing, the bansuri flute playing, and hear the group singing along with the rāgas and mantras.

Normally, I try to get people to DO THE PRACTICE with us, because I figure it's like food... you get more out of it when you chew it and swallow it yourself vs. watching someone else eat. That's why I have (stubbornly) stuck to empowering people looking to really train in mantra and nada yoga with skills, techniques, and practices.

While I...

SO many people ask me how to learn traditional nāda yoga in India! There are a lot of confusing nada and mantra trainings out there, so I'll try to help you sort out what to look for. I went looking myself way back in 1997 and have gone down A LOT of unfruitful (even scary) roads before I found teachers I could trust, who led me on the mystical inner path of nada yoga!*

Unfortunately sexual misconduct by gurus is also all-too-common... almost every Western female who has gone to India to study nada yoga and mantra has a story (including me! several!)

So first of...

I shied away from using the term "sound healing" to describe what I do for over a decade, because I thought most people associated it with gong baths or crystal bowls. (That's not the type of sound healing I do or teach.)

However, the mantra and nada yoga courses we offer very definitely explore sound healing training in its most essential sense! It's my opinion that sound that comes from our own unique instrument - our voices - is the core of any sound healing practice for self growth.

Your voice is a one-of-a-kind, highly refined, infinitely sensitive healing...

Wondering how to spell Nāda yoga correctly? Or what it means?

Naad yoga training starts with understanding the meaning of the term (because it's easier to explain than the spelling!)

Whether you spell it Nada Yoga, Naada Yoga, or Nāda Yoga... or Nad Yog, Nād Yog, nAd, etc.

Nāda = vibration, sound, musical sound

Yoga = union, communion

When we use the term "nada yoga" we're talking about union through sound, a meditation on vibration, or communion through music and/or mantra.

Now for the many variations in spelling:

To learn why there are different spellings, first...

Cultivating a musical response to the symphony of dissonant notes screaming for attention in our world right now is not a distant, poetic idea. It’s a tangible, practical skill. Uncomfortable, yes. Difficult, yes. Full of the mess of aliveness, yes. A swift and tidy spiritual bypass would be much easier. But leaning in to listen deeply, to feel what’s truly alive in us, can also make this moment resonant with hope and possibility.

Have you been tempted to write off someone in your life who has (or hasn’t) adopted a particular conspiracy narrative...