When we work together, to bring all of you—creative, spiritual and professional—into your work in the world, one of the main tools that we use is mantra: vocalized repetition of sacred sound. And the mantra practice we use is specific to exactly where you’re at and what you’re needing. 

I want to take some time to tell you why mantra is such a powerfully effective tool for this work and to share how exactly I listen for that mantra when I do it for you personally.  

So, what is a personal mantra and why, how, does it work? Why is it even powerful at all? 

Mantra is the spiritual practice of repeating sacred sound. It uses your voice to create the sound vibrations of specific aspects of the Divine—and attune you to them. 

The mantras that I work with are Sanskrit mantras from tantric Śaivism. Sanskrit is a vibrational language, used only for spiritual practice, which means that the sound—and the experience you have by creating the sound—is its meaning.

There is no abstraction in Sanskrit. The word, the sound, is the thing. It is an actuality. It holds and expresses the energy of a pattern of divine qualities that exist both inside and outside of us, in everything else: compassion, beauty, abundance, veracity, truth, trust, revelation, liberation. 

Each of these patterns are named, according to the sound that creates the experience and cultivates the qualities. Myths and meanings then emerged and evolved around that to give our minds an understanding of the actuality and aspects of this—so that we can have a deeper and more intimate relationship with ourselves and the Divine.

All the mantras we use in our work together hold the energy pattern of the set of divine qualities we’re working with, either through the name of that pattern or its seed sound, the most potent, concentrated form of that pattern—like the raṃ mantra that we’ve done in the free 5-day This Again? practice.

And I listen for the one that is exactly right for you, right now.

Why is it powerful (and highly effective) to practice a mantra discerned specifically for you?

You express a particular energetic pattern (You are a particular energy pattern); and there is a disruption or block in that pattern, which is giving you a particular—probably recurring and maddenly stubborn—experience.

A specific mantra can and will bring that disruption into harmony, so that your energy frequency is clear. You can get there more quickly and smoothly with a mantra directed at doing that. Or, you could go skating around it, again and again. 

If you’re here, there is something that’s creating that recurring experience: This Again?

My experience—and what’s been reflected back to me by clients—is that the practice of mantra, when tailored to exactly what’s happening with you, can reach it where other modalities and practices have been unable.  

We can get very specific and targeted with the mantra we work with—through the mantra itself and through the pitch, focus and intention of the practice.

When I listen for your mantra practice, that is what I am listening for: (1) your clear, resonant energy; and (2) what’s in the way—where is there a disruption? 

Then, I ask what mantra will harmonize that disruption, so that your energy is clear. I only use mantras with which I’m intimately familiar and practiced, and they present themselves. I’ll say the mantra and listen to your vibration again. We’ll then work with the one that is harmonizing, or shifting whatever is in the field of what’s going on with you. 

That is how it transforms the energy pattern of what’s keeping you going around and around in confusion (or fear or anxiety, etc.). 

The beauty and the power of mantra is that it is an energetic practice that operates at multiple levels at the same time. And none of those require our mind. Which gives it the power to reach that as-of-yet unreachable pattern and shift it—for good.