Sanskrit Wisdom and Ancient Practices for Modern Times with Dr. Katy Jane

Dr. Katy Jane elucidates the bridge between traditional practices and modern relevance. Dr. Katy Jane is a Sanskrit scholar, Vedic astrologer, and spiritual guide known for making ancient wisdom accessible and relevant to modern seekers.

Our conversation with Sanskrit and Vedic Astrology expert elucidates the bridge between traditional practices and modern relevance. "Sanskrit is a technology for awakening consciousness. It is designed for us to tune into it, so the sounds can awaken our natural intelligence." -Dr. Katy Jane

Anandra had the great privilege to have talked with Dr. Katy Jane. The interview video below was for our Mantras for Peace: A Wisdom Gathering project.*

Our conversation from the interview: 

Anandra: Hello everybody. Welcome to Mantras for Peace with Doctor Katy Jane. So just delighted and thrilled to have you, um, in this conversation today.

Dr. Katy Jane: Oh, likewise, it's—it's so rich already with our preliminary conversation. So I'm excited to continue.

Anandra: Yeah. So I feel like in so many ways, um, you know, you are living and breathing and an instrument of the sacred sound through your work with the Sanskrit, with Jyotisha, know, your work with helping—just helping individuals move through their transformational growth points.
For those who don't know you, um, would you—would you be willing to just introduce, uh, in a—in a snapshot on what you do?

Dr. Katy Jane: I will. I am a counseling Veda astrologer, which means essentially, I use the tool of Jyotisha, or life insight, to help people move through their big transitions in life. And I'm also a Sanskrit scholar and an Indophile like you. Spent my whole life pursuing all things Indian. So, those are—that's who I am in a nutshell, like, in terms of what I pursue externally, pursue internally too in the world.
But, really, I'm a pilgrim. I was born in Vedic astrology with the lucky feet on the rise, and the lucky feet are the feet of the pilgrim soul. So I'm just visiting this planet, I guess.

Anandra: Beautiful. And—helping shine the torchlight for fellow travelers.

Dr. Katy Jane: Yes.

Anandra: Well, there's so many things I'm interested in talking to you about, you know, kind of opening up for our Wisdom Gathering conversation. Maybe just to first, I think you—you have this wonderful, text on your website. How Sanskrit awakens feeling intelligence and because we're all about mantras and those mantras are in Sanskrit, I would love to hear in your words how does Sanskrit awaken our feeling intelligence?

Dr. Katy Jane: Yes. We first, we have to understand what Sanskrit is. When we hear the word Sanskrit, we think dead classical language, difficult to understand. I don't, but no.
And I don't either. Except that I did study Sanskrit in the university, and it was extremely difficult. Sanskrit is better understood as a technology, a technology for awakening and expanding consciousness. And if we look at how the Vedas in Sanskrit are transmitted, this makes sense. So the Vedas are an oral collection of mantras. They're an oral collection of—or you could say a recording of—the intelligent field of the universe as sound, as it unfolds according to its laws. This is an amazing understanding that the ancient civilization of India possessed, this understanding that the universe is sound. And we can tune into it.
In fact, we're designed as humans to tune into that, to co-participate in it, to gain that understanding, that awakening, that there is no separation fundamentally in any point in space.
And this awakening is cultured through a process of education. The Vedas are transmitted orally from teacher to student.
This is the traditional practice of Adhyayanam. Adhyayanam in Sanskrit means to sit in the state of Adhi—in the state of primordial awareness.
But it basically translates to: you sit, I sit, teacher recites, student repeats for hours and hours a day,
until the child is 16 years old. They begin when they're four, at a time when a child loves to mimic, make sounds, imitate, and be loud.
Also, children love to yell at that age. And they're given full permission to experience their voice like this. They're not taught to read.
They're taught to listen and repeat. Listen and repeat. They're not taught to analyze and search for meaning.
But in this process of repeating those potent sounds that are at the basis of creation, the student develops her nervous system to be able to channel the pure light of consciousness by the time her education is complete. So it is a process, learning Sanskrit, of awakening your own natural intelligence.
Sri Aurobindo has this beautiful quote about Vedic education—that it is from near to far.
Education begins from near to far, and that the mind must be consulted in its own growth.
Meaning, from the Vedic perspective, we already contain within our nervous system the capacity to know everything. We have that full ability, except that it needs to be cultured.
It needs to be developed. And that is where that brilliant practice of Adhyayanam comes in—
that through the process of back-and-forth chanting of the Vedas, the child learns so many things.
First, they learn mathematics because they have to keep track of patterns. So they have to learn mathematics.
They learn grammar. They learn geometry because each one of the patterns of chanting that they learn has a shape associated with it.
So they learn so much just by repeating, listening, and repeating. So I don't know if this answered your question, but it led me down that road.

Anandra: Yeah. I mean, it's wonderful to hear your reverence and appreciation for that pedagogy. 

Dr. Katy Jane: I mean, it makes sense to me because it's like you learn it by heart.
There's something about that—by heart. When Alexander the Great was conquering India,
he came upon this village of Brahmins, and he said, oh my god, they're Brahmins.
They're learned. I'd like to get their books.
We've heard so much about the knowledge that comes out of India.
I love the books for my library in Alexandria.
And it's a funny story, and the Brahmin came with a basket full of rotting palm leaves—here are our books.
Right. And he was so astounded.
Like, how can a people—I've heard of India and its knowledge—this is what you have to show for it?
And the Brahmin said, oh, no, no, no, no, all our knowledge is inscribed in our hearts.

Anandra: Yeah. It's all on the inside.
Well, I wanna take it to a quote of Hazrat Inayat Khan, the great Sufi musician, who said: "All that books cannot contain and the teacher cannot teach will come to you of its own through sound.
So, you know, what can be written and what can be even enunciated—what can be formed into language— is only a certain part of the bandwidth of possible knowledge.
There's—as we know as mystics, lovers of the mystic—there's so much that you can't possibly speak or write about.

Dr. Katy Jane: And to try to capture it in a book is—to even remember what you've read...
You know, I mean, I've read a lot of books in my life because of my doctorate. And I tell you, I hardly remember—

Anandra: Let me just pause on how the voice you used from that word “doctorate.”
Well, because it's heavy. God.

Dr. Katy Jane: Well, disgust and—but also, you know, joy and love. It was a beautiful process.
what do you call it? It's knowledge that divides you from that which you're learning and yourself.
I became very tangibly aware of this one year, a decade ago, when I shredded all of my graduate school notes and papers. Took me all day.
They were filling my basement.
And I just shredded and shredded and shredded.
And I realized, like, I don't remember any of this stuff.
The only things that I remember are that which are inscribed, you know, that I've spoken out myself.

Anandra: And it makes me think also of, you know, when—the only thing that we take with us from birth to birth is the sound of our being, you know, the Akash.
Totally. And that whatever you've had the good fortune and good wisdom to intone and inscribe or map those patterns down into your consciousness—
that's what comes to you in the knee-jerk moments, and that's what you take with you when you leave the meat suit behind.

Dr. Katy Jane: There's an expression in Sanskrit that totally sums up what you just said.
As is your last thought, there goes your destiny.
And this is really one of the justifications for Japa.
The constant repetition of the name of God because you don't know when you're gonna go.
And the ideal death is to have the name of God on your lips, like Gandhi.

Anandra: Just a side question of my personal curiosity, and then I wanna get back to something else that you said.
In Jyotishya, can you tell what a person's last thought is gonna be, and then how that imprint actually affects their part of the karma in their next birth?

Dr. Katy Jane: Yes. You can. You can see—I mean, because what Jyotishya is, is a study of time and the evolution of the soul mapping.
It's a system actually of mapping the soul's evolution over time.
But not over a lifetime, a hundred years, but over ages upon ages and upon ages.
The Vedic concept of time is just mind-boggling. It's immense.
And your astrological chart is like a snapshot.
It's a tiny little microcosm of this incredible calculation of time.
And with it, you can see where the person is coming from, what their impressions are, that they're bringing to this lifetime that is creating a particular pattern and leading toward a particular destiny that definitely has an imprint into the future birth. And there's a chart, actually.
It's called the Navamsha that shows the likely outcome of this lifetime's karma. Interesting.
This knowledge is just—it's too good. Everybody should know about it.

Anandra: Well, and I—you know, the more you know, the more you know you don't know. Yeah.

Dr. Katy Jane: That's so true. And that's beautiful too. I don't know. It's, you know—I don't know.

Anandra: I feel constantly inspired hearing very knowledgeable and wise people in any field.
You know, whether I'm listening to a podcast of quantum physicists talking about how much they don't know about time or matter or energy.
Like, actually, I love it when it really comes down to it—we don't know anything, hardly.
We have a sketch as a theory and that's about it.

Dr. Katy Jane: And Neti Neti cries the sage.Not this. Not this. Yep. It's true.

Anandra: I feel—rather than feel overwhelmed by that, I think I feel comforted by the spaciousness and the excitement and the mystery.
A mystic—a mystic with a mission. And that I'm very aware of.
And I actually—I think one of the reasons I was so excited about talking to you, and I'm so grateful that you're willing to go into these topics with me, is that, you know,
I'm in this great project of learning and relearning everything. And really pulling apart for my own self how I have been a party to—directly and/or indirectly—
to everything that's been stirred up in our political world right now.
Nationalism, white supremacy, the arrogance of, you know, my own unconscious traumatic past and colonial—what I've benefited from.
And so I'm just in this—I'm in a massive swirl around that, and letting the, you know, letting the digestive juices flow.
So I wanted to—you said a couple of things when you were waxing so poetically about the beauty of the Vedic pedagogy.
And one, you used the pronoun “her” to describe child.
And—which is interesting because typically women are not educated.
So that was interesting to me.
And then also, you know, as you also know, the Vedic education was reserved for a very few.
Even the Sanskrit language has been used throughout the history of the Indian culture that we revere and love so much—for what it has.
Like, it has been used as a tool of caste violence and oppression.
So I'm really curious—you know, with that long lead-up—I'm really curious what your thoughts are about that and how you see your role as a Western woman teaching. And, you know, what can we as lovers of sound and mantra—how can we view it and what can we do about it?

Dr. Katy Jane: This is a really, really big topic, and I have to admit that I'm really still working my own way through it all. Because—I mean—we're at the beginning of a new world.
We're at the beginning of a spiritual renaissance also.
And this is, a declaration that I'm making based on Jyotisha, based on— I was gonna say you're saying that by the authority of the— but by the authority invested in Patricia.
I'm saying that that yes.
I mean, it it has to do with some very significant transits—Pluto, Saturn, uh, connected with Jupiter. Basically, we're back to 1960 again. And we can see it.
The same kinds of things are happening—civil unrest, civil rights movement coming back in full force to finish what had started but wasn't completed.
In  America, the ERA is up for ratification again. E.R.A. I mean it's like I'm getting goosebumps thinking about it.
I mean, even like the second Catholic president in our history—first was John F. Kennedy, now Joe Biden—
I mean, there's just so much exciting change on the way as a repeat of what 1960 brought the world.
Including BTS. BTS, the Korean pop band.
They're—they're equating them with the Beatles, and I was like, no way, until I listened to them.
And I'm in the love—I'm in the love with BTS.
I'm in love with them. I felt I want to join ARMY, which is their fan club, but I need an ID with two Korean syllables in it in order.
But anyway, that's another issue.
Even the return of the Beatles, return of the high-waisted bikini, Marilyn Monroe bathing suit—
Hallelujah. It's back, ladies.
So we're on the brink of this great social change.
And and then you brought up something that has been preserved in direct opposite of that.
In a means that's directly opposite than that, I should say It's very unprogressive.
The Vedas are not innovated. They're not involved in any kind of overt politics.
Though the recitation of the Veda is very important for the benefit of the whole of society.
But it's always been the custodian of a particular community in India, and all of the aspects of society are under the custodianships of different communities.
But the Brahmins, they control, traditionally, knowledge—the Vedas, and the transmission of the Vedas.
And I use deliberately the pronoun her because it—it isn't true that girls didn't go to gurukula, and didn't receive the—the Upanayanam, the sacred thread. They did.
AndI know this because I got married recently in the Arya Samaj.
In India and in order to get married in Arya Samaj, you have to convert to Hinduism according to the Vedic Hinduism.
So, they've distilled it all down to everything that was authentic in the Vedas.
And they gave me my sacred thread, which was so empowering for me after thirty-plus years of chanting the Vedas—
to actually receive the sacred thread really was like a commencement moment.
it's true that it's traditionally this knowledge is traditionally passed on between father and son, guru and disciple.
It's a male thing.

Anandra: Yeah. I think what I was wanting to where I was wanting to make a distinction there is— I don't wanna cut you off.
Clarify. there's a distinction between for me, there's a distinction between the beauty of the tradition and then how the tradition has been used and is being used to perpetuate caste violence and under a lack of—you know, like prohibit—prohibit women and lower castes from getting educated, from, um, awakening their natural intelligence through the technology for that, you know. I wrote down those words because they were so powerful, and that really kind of sums it up for me.

Dr. Katy Jane: You have to always have to contextualize everything in—in India in terms of what historical moment are we talking about?
And it's so complicated but what we're talking about—what we see is a post-colonial India.
And—and the operative word is colonial.
So, I mean, yes, there is the caste system, but the caste system meets a colonial regime, which had as its educational mission—as per Macaulay—to eradicate the—the—the Sanskrit education.
In fact, the—the power of the Brahmin—because the Brahmin was always patronized by the state.
So the British government also inherited that patronization of the Brahmin to support this kind of educational system and the—the hierarchy of caste.
But then under Macaulay—I can't remember what title he had, if he was the Viceroy of India at the time—they created this reform of education, which was the equivalent of breaking the weaver's arms in Benares to prohibit them from making cloth, you know, thus depriving industrial England—the factory jobs and produce—
that production that they would then reimport to India. That's the whole colonial model.
They  did the same thing with education.
So they ended the state funding.
They ended the alliance of the Brahmin with the ruler.
Which is the whole way it works.
And so the whole system has actually quite fallen apart in modern India.
The only reason why I was taught Vedic Sanskrit is because of this unraveling.
My teacher's son went to America to study engineering.
He wanted nothing to do with the priest's, business because there's no money in it.
There's no sustenance.
So the—I mean, that's kind of the overt reason that my teacher—

Anandra: You got to capture—you got to benefit from what he couldn't pass on to his son.

Dr. Katy Jane: Well, it's kinda—it's an interesting story related to this—this topic.
So, when I was in graduate school, I received a grant through the Ford Foundation and the, Fulbright-Hays organization—
I received grants to go to India to study traditional Vedic Sanskrit.
That's what I wanted to focus on. Except that this is a closed community.
You know, this is, like, yeah, you can't just say, hey.
I wanna—I'm, like, signing up for a yoga class or something.

Anandra: No. It's a life. You're gonna get into that. It's a lifelong commitment.

Dr. Katy Jane: you have to get a teacher. And so I sent out so many letters to so many prospective teachers. They all went unanswered.
And even my teacher, he threw my letter away.
But he said to me—wrote me back in the days we had to mail things—he wrote me back, and he said, I want to tell you that as soon as I got your letter, I tossed it in the bin.
And then he said, but that night, I had a dream.
And in the dream, he said his teacher came to him and said two things to him that convinced him to write me.
One was: if this knowledge had been kept in the hands of women, it would never disappear.
If it's kept in the hands of women, it will never disappear.
And the second was, he said: you can teach somebody who will attract oceans of ladies to this knowledge.

Anandra: Oh my gosh. That's amazing.

Dr. Katy Jane: So that's what he wrote me and ended up accepting me as a student.
So it was actually a very empowered moment, and he was motivated because he was so upset about his son and the ending of the lifestyle—the ending of what, you know, he had received in his life.
And so it opened the door to be able to empower women to use their voice, to culture their voice in this way. And there are other women too.
I mean, Karunamayama from Andhra Pradesh—she brought out all the goddess chants from Sri Vidya and taught women, and women from all over the world.
With the understanding that if this knowledge is kept in the hands of women, it will never disappear.
It will not go extinct because women are the culture bearers.

Anandra: And you know, I think my personal history and your personal history have a lot of parallels.
In that we both have long history in India and, you know, immersion in traditional Guru-Shishya Parampara experiences and, you know, a kind of dharma as a bridge—both as women and between East and West. And I guess the thing that I'm really chewing on these days in particular is—
And I guess it's always been something I've been drawn to—is to parse out the universal from the dogma. So that I am not unconsciously perpetuating the violent aspects of the dogma, like the religious order where the spiritual teachings have been used as a societal control tool rather than an awakening-consciousness, peace-promoting, equality, social-justice, embrace tool.
You know, that's clearly where my slant is.
Right? And so I've been on this— And then for me, as a white—
You know, as a white woman with an American passport, I have all that is whiteness and the soup of arrogance of the American to peel away.
And then in the tradition that I love and that feels like my soul's home, I have discovered that past my romantic, idealized, oh, eroticized, Oriental fantasies of Indian culture—because I'm past the honeymoon stage.
You're laughing because you know what I'm talking about.
I feel like now I also have a duty to peel that back too.
You know, and even though it's not my job, but if I'm gonna be representing my gurus, then somehow it has to be authentic and reverent, but also maybe—
You know, I mean, if every generation contributes to the freshness.
You know, you can't answer my—

Dr. Katy Jane: No. But I have a big thought about this.
And this comes from my religious studies background.
And the understanding of how tradition works.
We think of tradition as something static, something buried even, something deep, something that never changes.
But it's actually creativity. Tradition is more like art.
It's more innovative. And it develops out of tradition—religion, culture develops out of exactly what you said. These two polar things, like on the one hand, there's this incredible deep knowledge that comes out of India. There's this profound tradition.

Anandra: And the universally applicable technology.
Anybody from anywhere, no matter their caste or their gender, can start doing mantra and feel something.

Dr. Katy Jane: Fully. Absolutely.
And there's a science to it, and it's just so—it's so amazing.
So they've got this— And at the same time, there is the contradiction, and there is the extreme opposite.
And I see this all the time. I live in a rural village in India.
It's like the sacred and the profane are side by side in such contrasting ways sometimes that it's deeply disturbing. But this to me is the churning.
This is like the churning of the ocean of milk, that myth of the asuras and the devas churning up.
This is how things develop, things innovate.
If we're going back to 1960, which was also a time of deep unrest in the world, in America, and look what came out of that churning.
We need the opposites like this.
And I think India has always, always had them.
Like, yes, you can say Brahmins are supreme.
But that has been challenged so many times, beginning with the Buddha, if not before—but the Buddha was the most famous critic of that whole hierarchy, and yet it persists.

Anandra: And the mystics are almost always radical social justice activists. I mean, Jesus.

Dr. Katy Jane: That's right. They have to be because they can't maintain their quiet.
Otherwise, people will intrude upon them with things like tax collection and, you know, property insurance and all of these things that force them to have to deal.

 Anandra: Well, I think there's—thank you for even just being willing to have the conversation.
About it. I'm really fascinated by this whole deep topic that is churning right now.
And I think, I guess, where I always take it is that we can lean into the technology and root ourselves in the universal and be willing to have discernment about what's what and how—and then navigate how we move forward in it.

Dr. Katy Jane: And you know, but then you brought up something else.
That I think people might want to hear this—or maybe still wondering about it—which is, like, you know, the cultural appropriation angle.
That's really what you were saying without saying: cultural appropriation.

Anandra: When I was talking about the white American — Yes — taking the Indian culture which I have romanticized and Mhmm. You know, all of that.
So there's like that layer and then there's also.
I felt comfortable talking to you or at least asking you how you're feeling about it because there's also a layer of that, you know, in India.

Dr. Katy Jane: You know, it's very interesting because, yes.
I mean, there's a complication about how you define cultural appropriation, I think.
In India, for example, if you wear a sari and you wear the jewelry and the earrings and the bangles, and you adopt that look —
People are so happy. They love that. They can't get enough of that.
They're so happy. Like, I've had people thank me.
Say thank you for, you know, respecting India and loving India.
And yet, if I did that in America, it would be considered a kind of cultural appropriation.
Like, who's this white woman with a bindi wearing a sari?
That's not her identity. So it's like a — it's sort of a confusing thing.
Like, it's the same thing with learning Sanskrit, Vedic Sanskrit.
That is kind of a — that's kind of a secret club. Like, not everybody can enter, right, because of the caste and the requirements and everything.
My teacher made an exception and taught me, and is that — so is that appropriation on my part?
You know, I mean, on another level, it could say, well, that's not your tradition growing up.
It's not your native thing. But then I almost wonder if tradition isn't also a calling of your heart.

Anandra: Well, and I mean, I think we're you and I are navigating — because we have, both of us, just as whoever's listening to this conversation is privy to —
A conversation between two people with very unique —
Literally like straddling between the hemispheres.
Most of my life, you know, and yours.
And having the blessings and the urging of one's guru —
Yeah. To teach and the mandate to spread it and perpetuate it and share, you know, like that's —
Um, I think we still have to be careful about the way we do that.
But having guru's blessing, it's not a blanket —
It's not a blanket green light, I think.
For me, but I think it's an honor and a duty.

Dr. Katy Jane: I think it's a requirement, actually, if you're going to teach anything sacred.
I think you should have that —

Anandra: I think that's — culture that is not from your own.

Dr. Katy Jane : Yes. Absolutely.
I think — and to really, you know, earn your chops.
I mean, to do your ten thousand hours — It's really necessary.
If we're gonna translate things into hours, it's really — it's really important to take that discipleship really seriously.

Anandra: Definitely. Yeah. And, you know — or to make a very humble disclaimer.
You know, if it's like you're — think — in this Mantras for Peace project, we have like a "Host Your Own Mantras for Peace" event thing and there's a little bit of training and people love doing the mantras and they get together with their friends and they have an evening of chanting and they might teach that mantra as —
I mean, but they can say at the beginning, "Hey.
I'm just learning this, but I love it. And here's what I know so far."
You know, like, just to be honest about it.
And to place things into the context of: the more I know, the more I know I don't know.

Dr. Katy Jane: Oh, so yeah.
And that's how things spread too — organically.
I mean, that's how people share, and people want to share naturally what they love, what has inspired them. But, yeah, also a disclaimer.

Anandra: I wanna just bring back to one thing that I think is so interesting about your history, which I read on your story on your website.
I know we're talking like we're old friends, but just for those of you who are joining us this far —
We've never met before — ten minutes before we started this recording.
but anyway, so yeah, I was reading about your story and it just lit me up and it ticks all kinds of boxes for me, that you — that you came from academia —
And these are my words paraphrasing yours, so forgive me if I go off the rails like, you broke the shackles of the intellectual rigidity and superiority and stifling of the shakti — of the living, breathing, feeling sense of the sound of the language.
And, you know, from — I don't know.
For me, that's — I just want to acknowledge that and honor you for that and the courage that that takes to do that because —
You know, for me, that brings it all the way around back.
Like, that is very — that is a radical, mystical, social justice, you know, gender-generative, equality action that you —
Took, and it makes me really happy that you're doing what you're doing with —

Dr. Katy Jane: I couldn't survive in academia. It was too patriarchal for me.
It was stiflingly so. I mean, I just — especially when I became a professor — not so much at the University of California.
But after I became a professor, it was like, what century are we living in, people?
It was just — and I just couldn't.
I felt like I was denying my femininity somehow in that kind of structure — all in the head, not in the body.

Anandra: And I find that — I mean, I find that that's one of the reasons —
That's one of the reasons why I'm happy to have not gone in that direction in my life.
And it's one of the reasons, you know, that I have wanted to stay —
I wanted the freedom to be able to just be, you know, a juicy nāṭikā without —
Oh, that's really how I should be —
Without someone telling me how I should feel or how I should perform the things.

Dr. Katy Jane: Yeah. They called it rigor. We used to call it ritual scarring.
It was. I mean, because it's rigor. I mean, because of the discipline of mastering a subject from that perspective, you know, all in books.
Yeah. From the left brain.And, I mean, it has a val— I mean, it definitely has the value in terms of being able to research—
like, it taught me how to research something to its core and to have that kind of laser vision and justify it through source, through sources.
I'm glad. I'm really grateful to have become an entrepreneur.
And it suits my free-spiritedness well.
And I just can't imagine now. I mean, it's been years since I was a professor, but just now.

Anandra: Now you are, now you are professing.

Dr. Katy Jane: No. Exactly. Oh my God. That's so funny.
My first guru said to me once, like, um, "Why are you studying so much?" You know, I had to go. I had to leave early to go study for some exam.
And I said, "Well, because I want to become a professor."
He said, "Then just profess."
If you just said it again.

Anandra: The truth of the word is the truth of the word.

Dr. Katy Jane: It's really on its own.
And it's fulfilling in and of itself. So, yeah.

Anandra: Oh, well,  I've just— this is so fun.
And I— I mean, obviously, everyone is gonna go and check out your website: doctorkatiejane.com.
Doctor Katie Jane, and we'll have your links in the—

Dr. Katy Jane: Oh, wonderful— and the show notes and all of that. Awesome.

Anandra: But it's such a pleasure to dig into all this with you.
And, you know, um, to circle back to the Mantras for Peace call to action, you know, um, is there one thing that you could invite a listener who is not learned and using their voice as an instrument of peace somehow? You know, what would be one thing you would encourage?

Dr. Katy Jane: Well, I was thinking prior to voice.
I was thinking of being able to tune into your own natural mantra.
We're all making a mantra when we breathe in.
If you listen as you breathe in, your breath makes the sound so.
And as you exhale, it makes the sound hum.
This is a mantra, and we're making it all the time— we're reciting it: so... hum... constantly.
And when we tune into it, when we become aware of it,
Oh, yeah. I hear that. And you recognize the meaning of so, which is "I am that."
I am the breath. That, to me, is the easiest, most powerful way to tune in through sound to who you are.
And you don't need to be learned.

Anandra: I often felt—wake in the middle of the night—and just circle that consciously on my breath, or the first thing when I wake up in the morning.
Before I open my eyes or even almost before I'm aware of who I am, um, to be observing that.
And that's a wonderful, very practical, accessible tip there.

Dr. Katy Jane: Thanks. I hope so.

Anandra: So wonderful to meet you.

Dr. Katy Jane: I really—this conversation's been a feast. I've really enjoyed it. I feel full.

Anandra: Well, my beloved Mantras for Peace global chant family, let's have a hug and a celebration of the fullness with Doctor Katie Jane. Thank you so much.

 Learn more about Dr. Katy Jane awesome work at: https://www.drkatyjane.com/

Learn Basic Sanskrit Mantra Pronunciation

Free Sanskrit Mantra pronunciation tips lovers of sacred sound! Tune up your chanting, address common mistakes, and increase your reverence and devotion to the power of Sanskrit mantra with this introductory series. Sanskrit Mantra Yoga: Pronunciation (the LEAST you need to know!)

Experience the profound difference when you properly chant using Sanskrit letters and understand "the least you need to know" about Sanskrit to get the most out of your mantra meditation practice. When you chant in Sanskrit, specific mouth and tongue placements result in certain neural pathways being stimulated. Because of this, you don’t need to understand the “meaning” to feel the power of a mantra. The vibration of the word IS the meaning. The name IS the form (or vibrational pattern). I have invited thousands of students across the globe to explore this, and I’m delighted that they all report the same sensations when they explore the different mantric syllables, which perfectly match the esoteric meaning.

Get FREE access to A DOZEN mini sound training resources from Heart of Sound

Designed to help you orient your practice to the heart of sound:
⁠
Discover the best sound yoga therapy, mantra meditation, and nada yoga here: