Chanting your way to inner peace

The re-kindling of spirituality is the catalyst for Snatam Kaur’s Celebrate Peace Tour, which arrived in Ireland last week, writes…


The re-kindling of spirituality is the catalyst for Snatam Kaur's Celebrate Peace Tour, which arrived in Ireland last week, writes LOUISE ROSEINGRAVE

PART chant fest, part concert, part meditation and part yoga, a live performance by Snatam Kaur is a curious thing.

Barely five feet tall, she cuts a tiny figure. Her demeanour is reserved, quiet, almost ethereal, but she possesses the voice of an angel, powerful enough to reduce listeners to tears.

The re-kindling of spirituality is the catalyst that has seen Kaur and her band travel the world for the past four years on their Celebrate Peace Tour, which arrived in Ireland last week for the first time.

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Devoted fans travelled from all corners of the country to experience her music live during a whistle-stop two-date tour that saw her perform shows in Cork and Galway. Many would have come in contact with Kaur’s music through the practise of kundalini yoga.

Chanting ancient Sanksrit mantras is integral to the practise of kundalini yoga, which aims to tap into an inner energy, stimulating the glandular and nervous systems, to release tension, blockages and emotional baggage, and begin to nurture a sense of self-awareness and spirituality.

Kaur claims the postures of kundalini yoga (kundalini in Sanskrit means an unconscious or instinctive energy) are a way to use the physical body to affect the mind and spirit.

“It is a form of holistic meditation, using the mind, body and spirit,” she says.

“It works by the same principal that acupuncture is used on meridian points around the body. The postures, used by yogis for thousands of years, are said to have a specific mental and physical effect, and that has been my experience, too,” she says.

Her mission is to spread the benefits she has gained through her practice, to empower people with the tools to create a stabilised inner peace in their own lives.

“People come to transform personally. But in my experience of kundalini yoga and chanting, you are not just praying for yourself, you are praying for the entire universe and beyond,” she says.

Kaur’s style of devotional chant music brings on varied responses – people laugh, hug, smile, cry or meditate.

The performance sees Kaur and her fellow musicians sitting cross-legged on stage, dressed in the traditional Sikh fashion that originates in the Punjab region of India – white gown, white turban and veil.

Diminutive yet radiant, Kaur leads the crowd in a series of chants, which she peppers with her own musings and devotional prayers in English.

The crowd sings the mantras back to her quietly at first, but with gaining momentum, and the room slowly fills with energy.

The performance could have benefited tenfold from a better venue than a hotel conference room, nevertheless, an enchanting aura abounds.

“When I create music, it’s a healing process for me, I’m just sharing that. I really try to put meaning into the chants and experience them,” Kaur says..

Born in Colorado, Kaur attended daily sadhana (morning yoga, meditation and chanting) with her parents in the traditional Sikh fashion.

She first travelled to India at age six, where her mother was studying under the guru Yogi Bhajan, who publicised the secrets of kundalini yoga outside of India for the first time in 1969.

Music was her primary interest. Although she trained as a yoga teacher while in her 20s, her music career began to crystallise shortly before she entered her 30s.

She has since released seven albums of chant mantras, earning her a slot as one of the world’s best known producers of devotional music.

On one of her albums, Liberation's Door, she includes a mantra she sang in Spanish every day throughout her pregnancy with her first child, now 11 months.

“It’s a mother’s blessing for her child. I still sing it everyday. I have no Spanish connections, but that mantra is special to me,” she says.

Not everyone desires to be self-aware, or to chant ancient Indian mantras they don’t understand. Many might dismiss the practice as New Age nonsense.

Kaur points out that it is not always an easy journey, that it takes courage to examine the reasoning behind one’s thoughts, reactions and emotions.

“It’s about taking responsibility for the inner-self. In life, it’s easy to place blame on other people and other things for the way your life is. But through chanting and meditation you are really just responding to your inner frequency and transformation happens from there. It’s a process everyone can benefit from,” she says.

Cork-based Jai Kartar is the chairwoman of the Kundalini Yoga Teachers’ Association of Ireland. Originally from California, she arrived in Ireland in 2002, when she was one of just four kundalini yoga teachers in the country. Today, the figure is closer to 40.

Kartar sums up the practice as a process by which to get closer to a real purpose in life.

“It’s about developing self- awareness, developing a deeper relationship with yourself, feeling a connection within and extending that beyond yourself. Eventually you begin to feel what your highest purpose might be,” she says.

Today, issues of self-esteem are proving to be a massive block to personal development and inner growth, according to Kartar.

“There are sequences of breathing, exercise and meditation based on kriya that can have a certain effect if you are trying to tackle something in particular,” she says.

“You can be very specific about what you are addressing, for example, an emotional aspect, you can learn to open your heart or release inner anger.”

In her classes, Kartar has experienced all manner of reactions from new students, who move, breathe and chant their way through an hour-and-a-half of specific postures, only to experience an emotional release or sense of elation upon completion.

“People have all sorts of reactions. I’ve had tears of joy in class, there can be a strong emotional response as things settle, it’s a process of re-balance and release of ‘kundalini’, which is the energy we all contain within. Some of that energy is active, some of it is latent. As you circulate that energy you move into a higher state of awareness,” she explains.

Experience is key. It’s difficult to imagine a process of emotional healing so intricately linked to the individual through words alone.

“It is very much experiential. You have to do the yoga and feel the changes yourself to understand it, to see it happen,” she says.

www.snatamkaur.com