What Are Mantras and How Do You Work With Them? (Part 1)
Mar 03, 2025
Mantras and chanting are an ancient spiritual tool for many different religions to support us to heal and be open to inner wisdom, guidance, and support that is beyond our own personal or ego-based system. Sacred utterance, includes words, tones, or phrases that come together in a mantra to create a chord of frequencies that activates and resonates throughout your whole system. This resonance impacts us physically interacting with your cells, tissue, and organs, and also within your subtle energy bodies - emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. In Sanskrit the root man means “to think” and the suffix -tra, means instrument. When you put them together you have an “instrument of thought”. A mantra, literally, is designed to help us change and reorganize our thoughts. Mantras help us activate one of the Mystical Laws of Creation, “thought creates form”.
This is why I love mantras! They can help us call forward a few key components for healing, such as:
- Creating loving intentions,
- Focusing our attention toward our intention,
- Plus they are activating the healing power of our own voice, resonating to match our intentions.
However, there are a few key tips and ways of working with mantras that I believe everyone should consider adding to their mantra work to ensure that they are not bullying or trying to force a change of thought into their system without consent and willingness. In this blog, we will explore the first two key components, followed by leaning into the last two in next week's blog.
Key Suggestions for working with Mantras include:
- Pauses that welcome silence, creating space to witness and be with what the mantra is bringing forward,
- Working in a three or more round format,
- Engage the mantra through the doorway of Sacred Witnessing and dialog,
- And rinse and repeat.
Pauses of Silence to Witness and Be with.
Many meditation teachers and mantra teachers encourage students to work with mala or prayer beads when they start to work with a mantra. This is because you typically work with mantras, chants, and toning in repetition. Mala beads are used in conjunction with a mantra to help you count without having to actually count, allowing your mind to focus on the mantra itself and not the task of keeping track of how many times you have said it. Each time you chant the mantra you move to the next bead until you reach the end or the starting place of the mala that you are using. You might have noticed that some mala beads have three different beads in the string of beads. These are often called marker beads. They are designed to help you track where you are at in your chanting. However, they have a different purpose as well. I invite students to use the marker beads as pause beads. Giving them a signal that it is time to pause and welcome silence before engaging in the next “round” of chanting.
Once you have repeated the mantra a few times to “wake” up the system, the resonance of the mantra has begun to “talk” with your body, mind, heart, and soul. Your whole system will begin to answer and share the different layers of what it feels about that mantra through the language of somatic sensations, emotions, thoughts, and even pictures. However, to fully listen to the conversation that is happening you need to create enough space and silence to fully witness the messages that your system is sharing. Silent pauses provide that space.
Whether you work with a mala or not, I invite you to include pauses in between your mantra work. Go silent, and listen. Allow yourself to notice what is happening in and around your body without trying to change, fix, or judge it. What emotions, colors, thoughts, images do you sense. What and who within you are they connected to? Invite your system to share the stories that have been trapped and waiting for an invitation to share in a healing presence.
Three Round Format
Because there are typically 3 marker or pause beads, I love a three-round format when I work with mantras or other toning or sound healing practices. It not only activates the law of three, allowing us to witness the polarities in the system and adding in a third perspective and way to bridge and transcend those polarities, each round also allows my system a specific question and area to lean into.
- First Round - Repeat the mantra or tone at least three times, pause, and engage in a somatic dialog and compassion inquiry with what is happening in and around the body in response to the mantra.
This round brings forward the question, topic, or area of inquiry that I would like to explore and invites the system to share its first automatic stimulus and response sequence that it has about that topic. This allows me to recognize the automatic protective and survival base stories I have, let them feel seen and honored and gain general insights into what how my system “feels” toward my intentions. - Second Round - Repeat the mantra or tone at least three times, pause, and engage in a somatic dialog and compassion inquiry with what is happening in and around the body in response to the mantra.
This round is designed to help you discover what else is there too. During the second round you have an opportunity to witness the wounds, fears, and restrictive parts of you that were below the surface and often the source of the first rounds automatic responses. Connecting with the insights of this round give you a deep and rich picture of what needs to be supported, tended to and released for your system to embrace the mantra and what it is inviting you to remember. - Third Round - Repeat the mantra or tone at least three times, pause, and engage in a somatic dialog and compassion inquiry with what is happening in and around the body in response to the mantra.
During this round you are seeking guidance and support from the mantra on how to tend to the aspects and parts of you that you have found during the meditation. This is the committed action round, that sets you up to discover how you can move with the mantra throughout the day, getting off the cushion and taking the insights that you gained into loving committed action and support throughout the day. - Closing - Ask for any guidance or directions of how you can bring any changes, awareness, or shifts in thoughts forward with you into your day. Set the intention and move back into your daily life with the mantra to help remind you when either you are falling into old thought habits OR there is an opportunity for you to try out the new thought. (Hint - you will hear the mantra randomly on its own playing in your mind, pause and tune in and see what and why it is there.)
Want to Practice this format?
I recently recorded an episode of Soulful Practices Podcast episode 30, A Mantra for Inner Guidance. In it I share one of my favorite mantras that came to me during a particularly challenging moment in my life.
May my body be free.
May my mind calm.
May I open to my heart,
And welcome my Soul.
Offering you light and love as you explore the world of mantras, sound healing, and joy!
Michelle