On the Science of Mantras and Vocalized Meditation
Meditation has been a part of my life since sophomore year of college. I remember going through a pretty bad breakup with my ex-girlfriend and wanting to find a more sustainable way to cope and stay on top of my school activities besides getting high to escape the issues. One of my first introduction to meditation was to go onto YouTube, look up chakra meditations, and follow along with the instructor. My intention was to try to understand chakras and meditation by blindly following those who are actively creating content in the space.
It’s been about 4 years since I started meditating. Now, meditation is a part of my daily morning ritual. I found that on days that I meditate I have significantly more focus, and the work I produce is of much higher caliber. I’ve started to become curious as to why some of these practices I picked up during my college career seemed to help me to this day.
A couple weeks back I started going through each of the chakras again, following the practice I did when I first began meditation in my sophomore year of college. My process looks like this: start at the root chakra, open YouTube, search “root chakra guided meditation”, select a video from the list of top results, and meditate for 10 to 30 minutes everyday. After a 3–7 days, I move up to the next chakra and repeat the process.
This week I started solar plexus chakra, otherwise known as the fire chakra. I’m following a guided meditation produced by Meditative Mind, who’s instructor I found to be structured and profound in his 20-minute meditations. He starts his meditations off with deep breathing, followed by affirmations focused on the individual chakra. Then, we focus on the chakra location within the body, as well as the color of the chakra. After that, and this is the part I’m most interested in exploring today, we chant the seed mantra for that chakra. The instructor states that the purpose of this chanting is to cleanse the chakra. After chanting, he plays frequencies which are supposed to tune the chakra back to its proper frequency.
The question I posed today is: what is the science behind chanting mantras? Are they helpful on a true, scientific level? Or is it just airy spirituality fueling this practice?
Let’s start by asking the question: what is a mantra? According to the International Journal of Advanced Scientific Technologies in Engineering and Management Sciences
“The word mantra comes from the ancient Sanskrit language. ‘Man‘ means mind, and ‘tra‘ means release. So a mantra is a combination of transcendental sounds meant to release the mind from all the anxieties of material life.” — Jai Paul Dudeja
Okay, that makes sense with how the majority of teachers explain what a mantra is. But what’s the science behind it? How does chanting a phrase release the mind from all anxieties of material life?
“It has been found that the sounds of specific mantras chanting will cause the left and right hemispheres of the brain to synchronize. Such chanting will also help oxygenate the brain, reduce our heart rate, blood pressure and assist in creating calm brainwave activity. There is a reason why most of the prayer/meditation on the planet is vocalized [4]. Sound amplifies our prayers. Through positive intentionalized and internalized sound, we can generate the miraculous effects. Every sound that we make is actually a composite of sounds — a fundamental frequency and geometric multiples of that sound, called harmonics or overtones. These harmonics are whole number ratios, 1:1, 2:1, 3:2, etc. These vocal harmonics make up the ―timbre or tone color of sound and are responsible for the way our individual voices sound.” — Jai Paul Dudeja
So, to highlight some of the takeaways, chanting mantras help to:
- Oxygenate the brain.
- Reduce our heart rate.
- Reduce blood pressure.
- Assist in creating calm brainwave activity.
Just as certain colors trigger different emotional reactions with inside the human body, it seems the laws of harmonics create actual effects into how our bodies operate and as well as how the bodies of those around us are impacted by our vocalics.
I plan to do more research into the science of chanting and prayer to understand the science of why our voices are such powerful tools in the coming days and weeks. I’ll be writing these articles and publishing them on medium as well as on our website. I will then record the audio in podcast form to distribute on Your Voice First Podcast on all streaming platforms. And finally, I will break down these articles into smaller, bite-sized, chunks which are easier for distraction and ADHD social-media-scrollers to be able to consume passively on all social media platforms including Tik-Tok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn @VoiceFirstAI.
if you have any science which could help fuel my research, please let us know in the comments.
Thank you for your time, your voice is the key. Go find your voice.
