Chanting

I consider chanting to be a cheap alternative to therapy. How much have I spent on it? Well, I have two books and a Tibetan mala*. Roughly...$50 total, I think. That's probably on the high end. That might get you one therapy session, if you were very lucky.

I mentioned that I was depressed last Christmas. Chanting became my way of dealing with painful thoughts. I wandered through Barnes and Noble over Thanksgiving Break, looking for something, anything that might help me make it through. I wandered through the New Age section in particular, looking for books that talked about chakras.

I couldn't tell you whether chakras have any physical reality. They're my way of visualizing my inner state of mind/health/etc. If I meet someone who can see in them the same things that I see, then I might think there was some phsyical reality. As is, I treat them as a purely mental construct, much like the scales of pain they show to children in hospitals (neutral face, smiley face, frowny face, etc.). Only my scale involves colors. I'm a synesthetic, so what else would I use?

So, the root chakra at the base of the spine should be red. Abdomen area, orange. Solar plexus, yellow. Heart, green. Throat, blue. 'Third eye', indigo. Crown, Violet. Yes, I got this system out of a book, but I find that it works for me. This past Christmas, I had no root chakra whatsoever, my heart chakra was a crusted over and oozing red, and my throat chakra was black. If I went into detail about exactly how my heart chakra felt at that point, you would have some clue as to how messed up I was, but I really don't feel like revisiting those memories just now. Suffice to say that the root chakra is tied to survival and will to live, the heart chakra to emotions. At least, in my mental imagery.

In this rather messed up frame of mind, I came across Chakra Mantras by Thomas Ashley-Farrand. It was exactly what I needed at that point. And not really because of its discussion of the chakras (Farrand's system is somewhat different from mine), but mainly because of the chanting. I don't think it really mattered what I chanted, so long as I chanted. The chanting did two things: (1) it shut down the racing negative and painful thoughts; (2) it gave my subconscious a goal to work on during the chant. Each chant is associated with a particular meaning. "Healing," or "Friendship," or "Getting things done," etc. So, knowing that association, the back of my mind would be pondering that idea during the chant. (OT: it would be interesting to see if the syllables themselves were significant, or if just the association given for the syllables mattered)

I don't think this would work for everyone. Someone who sits there thinking "this is stupid" the whole time wouldn't get much benefit, imo. But for someone who enjoys things like singing, and thinks pronouncing odd words is fun, it's probably worth a go. It's certainly less expensive than therapy. Or antidepressants.

*The second book is another by Farrand: Healing Mantras. The mala has 108 beads and is used to keep track of how long you've chanted, without having to mentally count each repetition.