Why Mantra Has Been My Steadiest Practice This Year
I wanted to share something personal about my practice before introducing the December kriya. I was recently asked why mantra feels so grounding. This is what I have learned through lived experience, long before I understood the physiology behind it.
Mantra has been part of my life, not just in yoga classes, but in my day to day. When I worked in hospitality, I kept mantras playing quietly in my apron pouch. I listened to them while grocery shopping (quiet in my bag or in my ears), driving, cleaning the house, and mentally vibrating the sound during burpees when everything in me wanted to quit. If you looked at my Spotify Wrapped, you would see that mantra is not something I save for my mat.
This year in particular, while recovering from a concussion and injuries from an accident in January, my mantra and mudra practices became imperative. They expanded almost out of necessity, and I am extremely grateful for them. They have been one of my steadiest sources of support over the last eleven months.
We are always running “mantras” in the mind: repetitive thoughts, beliefs, and loops we cycle through without realizing it. So why not consciously choose one that uplifts, clears, and steadies us. Even something simple like mentally vibrating the sound Sat Nam, basic meaning: truth is my essence, can shift us internally. I invite you to try it during a task to find rhythm, or choose any mantra that uplifts you.
More than fifteen years ago, when I took Transcendental Meditation, they gave me a mantra to repeat silently twice a day for twenty minutes. You are not supposed to look up the meaning or share it, and I never have. For me, it was never about the definition. It was about the vibration. I could look up the meaning anytime, but I prefer to allow the experience to be pure, felt rather than analyzed.
That is still how I approach mantra today. I do my best to understand, pronounce, translate, and honor the teachings so I can share them with integrity. But if I fumble a syllable or pronounce something imperfectly, or am learning one I do not stop or shame myself. What matters is the internal shift it creates: the vibration, the sensation, and the way the sound moves through you.
Knowledge is valuable. Experience is what changes us.
In a earlier chapter of my life, I was a commercial flight instructor. Teaching someone the theory of flight is one thing, and of course it is important. Getting into the plane, feeling the lift, the wind, the lightness, that is different. One is information. The other is lived understanding.
Mantra is similar.
You can read about it, study it, or listen to me talk about it, but the real insight comes from doing it, feeling the sound move through you, watching your breath lengthen, and observing your mind reorganize itself without effort.
When I began exploring mantra more intentionally, I wanted to understand why it created such a deep steadiness in my body. I felt the shift long before I understood the physiology. Over time, I learned that the calm, clarity, and sense of returning to myself were rooted in the interaction between sound, breath, and the nervous system, especially the vagus nerve, which responds to breath rhythm and vocal vibration.
In yogic philosophy, creation begins with vibration (Nāda Brahma), expressed through the primordial sound Om, described as the first movement of consciousness into form. Modern physics describes the early universe similarly, not as audible sound but as waves and oscillations moving through dense matter. Both perspectives point to the same underlying idea that vibration is foundational. Light and sound are frequencies. When we work with mantra, we work directly with vibration as one of the essential organizing forces of life.
Your voice is a direct expression of your inner state. For years, I avoided chanting out loud. I was shy about my voice and did not want anyone to hear me. Then, during a training about fifteen years ago, I had to chant in front of a group. It felt terrifying and freeing. Moving into resistance is often how we grow.
The throat is a processing center. Your thyroid and parathyroid help you process both your internal and external world. Using your voice with confidence supports these glands and your ability to respond to life rather than react to it.
Your voice carries your beliefs, your lived experience, your authority. If you avoid your voice, you often avoid parts of yourself. Through chanting, you develop an acquired familiarity with the sound of your own truth. That familiarity builds self acceptance, steadiness, and resilience. You cannot accept what you cannot hear.
Mantra gives you a direct experience of yourself. It reveals what needs strengthening, softening, or simply witnessing. Self acceptance becomes less conceptual and more like an ongoing relationship with your inner world.
I originally sat down to write about the kriya of the month, and before we get there, it feels important to share why mantra has been so central for me.
The voice is influenced by the entire body. The kriya this month circulates energy through every system, which helps the voice become fuller, steadier, and more impactful by engaging the body from the inside out.
I will share the December practice in the next post, including why it is potent, how it circulates energy through the whole body, and how it supports our winter theme of “returning to centre”.
With love,
Kristi
