In the world of yoga, we often focus on physical postures and breathing techniques. However, there is yet one more deep practice that involves both the heart and voice in the same proportion: Kirtan and Bhakti Yoga. Devotional singing and mantra chanting is an ancient tradition that has been finding popularity in yoga circles all around the world due to therapy and spiritual richness.

Regardless of whether you are a novice or an experienced yoga practitioner, geeking into kirtan can open up a new dimension of your practice and get you on the path towards how strong your own voice can be.

 

What is Bhakti Yoga?

The Bhakti Yoga can be referred to as the devotion yoga or the path of love and devotion to God. Bhakti Yoga, unlike the physical practise of Hatha Yoga or the meditative practise of Raja Yoga, is a practise that appeals to the heart with the help of devotional practises. It understands that spiritual travel is not to make the body strong or to calm down the mind, but to allow the heart to be opened to something being greater than us.
Lord Krishna defines Bhakti in the Bhagavad Gita as the best of the yoga, and this is accessible to anyone irrespective of his or her background, education and physical ability. It does not compel you to bring yourself into uncomfortable positions and hours of meditation. Rather, it asks you to come in with everything you have got, everything you feel, everything you say, everything you love into spiritual practice.
There are numerous activities found in Bhakti Yoga and they include prayer, ritual worship, service and most importantly kirtan and mantra chanting. This type of devotional singing has been observed to gain popularity in the yoga community circles of the world and has led to the linking of the ancient tradition to the contemporary spiritual seekers.

 

Understanding Kirtan

Kirtan is the participatory form of devotional music which is founded on the Indian tradition of bhakti. Kirtan is a word that is obtained via the Sanskrit word kirt that carries a meaning of praise, glorify or celebrate. In a kirtan, a mantra or a devotional phrase is chanted by a leader and the crowd repeats the mantra which in turn creates a call-and-response pattern that may last a couple of minutes and even hours.
The uniqueness of kirtan is its availability. You do not have to be a trained singer or have to know the language. You do not have to play perfect notes and know all the words. Offering you just as you are, with the voice you are going to have that day. This community aspect forms strong community events in which people of every profession unite in synchronised beings and purpose.
We observe this tradition at the Bali Yoga School and each month we organise a kirtan night where students, teachers, and people of the community come together and sing their hearts out. These yearly rituals are made monthly events in our group life, and we get to learn to know each other, not only with the divine, but also with one another.

 

The Science Behind Bhakti Yoga and Kirtan

Although kirtan and devotional singing are millennia-old traditions, contemporary science has now proven the immense physiological and psychological advantages of the ancient music. Neuroscience, psychology, and music therapy studies provide interesting results as to why chanting has such an enormous impact on us.

Neurological Benefits
Our brain is in a number of states of consciousness when we are doing repetitive chanting. EEG technology has been discovered to report that mantra chanting could increase theta brain waves which has been associated with deep meditation, creative thinking and intuition. It is because the repetitive rhythm helps to suspend the default mode of the brain where mind-wandering and self-referencing thought processes which typically result in such outcomes as anxiety and depression occur.
Moreover, coordinated singing of the group in kirtan activates the vagus nerve located in-between the brainstem and the abdomen, and is necessary in regulating the parasympathetic nervous system. This is the stimulation that induces the relaxation effect that reduces the amount of cortisol, lowers blood pressure and creates the feeling of safety and belonging to society.

 

The Power of Vibration

Mantras performed in kirtan in Sanskrit are not mere sounds but purposeful vibrations that are said to resonate with certain energy centres in the body. Contemporary physics helps to recognise the fact that all things in the universe resonate at variable rates such as our cells, organs, and energy centres.

Chanting brings vibrations into our body as we develop a vibrational effect on both the physical and energetic body. Throat chakra healing by singing on pitch has been found to be more effective especially at kirtan. Vishuddha chakra is found at the middle of the throat and it controls self-expression, communication, and authenticity. Decades of suppressing the truth or the voice constitute a blockage to this energy centre of many people. Mantra chanting can be a safe and holy method of releasing these blockages and enable a free flow of energy.

 

Biochemical Changes

Singing and chanting triggers the release of endorphins or the naturally occurring body feel-good hormones and oxytocin which is normally referred to as the love hormone. The neurochemicals stimulate the feeling of euphoria, oneness and emotional soothing that the participants tend to feel when involved in kirtan sessions as well as after the sessions.

In addition, the breathing that is required in upholding the chanting exercise improves the oxygen flow in the body and the brain thus leaving one feeling incredibly crucial and mentally clearer. This breathing feature of kirtan connects it with the remaining exercises of yogic repetitions of breath control.

 

Benefits of Kirtan and Bhakti Yoga

The advantages of a regular practice of kirtan and Bhakti Yoga spread universally and cut across physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual levels of our existence.

 

Emotional Discharge and Reconciling

Kirtan forms a secure envelope on the expression of emotions. The devotional singing enables practitioners to gain access and vent their stored emotions without necessarily having to comprehend and interpret them. Most people end up crying when performing kirtan not out of sadness but due to the immense amount of stress they were unaware they were experiencing.

 

 

Reduced Stress and Anxiety

The repetitive chanting in itself has a meditative effect which lowers the level of mental chatter and worry. Practitioners who practise regularly state that their lives are less anxious, more likely to selectively manage stress and that they have had improved emotional control.

 

Increased Concentration and Mental Clarity

Mental discipline is enhanced by the concentrated mind that is needed when chanting mantras. These benefits improve with time to better focus on other life aspects such as work and personal life.

 

Intensified Spiritual Interrelationship

Outside the quantifiable benefits, kirtan provides something that cannot be easily quantified but of great value, which is the feeling of belonging to something bigger than us. This could be the divine, the universal consciousness or even just the collective human spirit but whatever you may interpret it to be, kirtan enables deep spiritual experiences.

 

Community and Belonging

In our highly alienated contemporary society the community-building element of kirtan fulfils a very basic human desire to be connected. There is a connection that builds as a result of singing in common, language, culture, and individual differences. Our monthly kirtan nights at Bali Yoga School have created a strong connection of friendship and a true feeling of sangha or spiritual community.

 

Incorporation of Mantra Chanting in the Daily Practise

Kirtan nights are good experiences that give you strong peaks, but the key is to have the mantra chanting as part of your day-to-day life. This is how we do it at the Bali Yoga School. At the very beginning and end of our classes, we find ourselves warming up by chanting mantras. These bookend practices assist students in entering and leaving their yoga practice and establishing a sacred space and creating intention.

We also introduce students to different mantras and their intended functions through several mantra chanting meditations that we have as part of our programmes. Since the universal Om that is the source of light to the Gayatri Mantra that lightens the way, and the Maha Mrityunjaya Mantra that heals to basic chants of devotion, every mantra has its own vibration and purpose.

Even five minutes of daily chanting will already lead to considerable changes in your mood and state of mind. You might chant when you are preparing breakfast, in your daily commute, and when you are meditating. The only thing that is important is consistency but not duration.

 

Conclusion

In this world that is inclined to make us shrink, to keep quiet, to stay in the same, kirtan is an appeal to become bigger, to create our own sound, to be ourselves. Being heard among chanters is not being special or loudest. It is simply the matter of adding your basic frequency to the vibration.

Either you come to our monthly kirtan nights at Bali Yoga School, or to the classes rituals where you chant mantras daily, or to mantra chanting meditation sessions, you are practising an ancient practice science has now verified to be highly beneficial to the body, the mind, and the spirit.