That moment you enter the yoga studio, sit down in a sukhasana (a bit nervous as you would break your leg before it is halfway your neck) and your teacher starts chanting words in a weird language. Well.. indeed, break a leg!
That moment, please stay calm and 'give chanting a chance' because what the old monks already knew - and what we also learn and preach in kPNI - is now shown in more and more scientific studies: chanting is (so) good for you!
Although things do not need to be proven to work – and over-intellectualization is definitely not healthy too! - I also learned during kPNI that ‘when we understand we can implement’. So let’s try to understand ‘the why of chanting’ and then just let go of the theory and sing it out loud!
Some background on stress:
We are currently living in an era called by some as the ‘Anthropocene’, characterized by an environment mainly defined by one species: ‘the Homosapiens’.
While our ancestors were responding to - and living according to - nature (when there was food, you ate, when it became dark, you slept, when a lion came, you ran), nowadays we have to deal with stimulants coming from a human made environment (electric light, computers, deadlines, phones ringing, an overdose of food around us, traffic jams). For these, our human body does not have a proper response system or program as it takes about 30,000 years for our internal response systems to get ready for new challenges and surroundings. It is like trying to operate an MS-DOS system in an Apple environment.
An example of a system that is not ready for the environment we have created is our ‘stress system’. Our grey matter – and subsequently rest of our body - still responds the same way to ‘modern day stressors’ (deadlines, computers, info-mania) as we would do thousands years back encountering a hungry lion. Our amygdala (part of the limbic system in the brain) starts alarming the hypothalamus. The latter activates the sympathetic nervous system – part of the autonomic nervous system. Signals are sent through the autonomic nerves of the sympathetic nervous system (remind this one, it will come back in the ‘chanting part’!). And stress hormones will be excreted by our adrenal glands (adrenaline, noradrenaline and later also cortisol) making your heart rate increase, enabling blood flow and energy to your muscles, so you are ready to take action. This is beautiful – you want to be able to run away when you encounter a hungry animal - however like everything in life there needs to be a balance and it can become dangerous if your body constantly responds to any non-life threatening event like its encountering a lion, and/or with the frequency in nowadays environment.
We are constantly (over)exposed to ‘modern lions’: nowadays we encounter the same amount of stressors (in all forms) in one day as our ancestors in a year. This leads to all kinds of ‘new’ health problems that did not exist a century ago. Stress starts a cascade of breakage of the body barriers, endotoxemia, low grade inflammation, and when the cascade is completed this leads to all kind of chronic diseases, not the least being depression, an old friend of mine... OK, so far a snapshot of what I learned during my latest kPNI lectures. Back to ‘chanting’.
The autonomous nervous system:
We already spoke about the autonomous nervous system – which consists of two parts. The sympathetic nervous system activates the ‘fight or flight response’ (run Forest run!) and the parasympathetic nervous system, our rest and digest system (ever wondered why ‘going to the toilet’ gets disturbed in times of great stress?). A beautiful thing to know is that they do not work simultaneously, e.g. when we stimulate our parasympathetic nervous system, our sympathetic nervous system ‘shuts up’. And that comes in use when we want to come to rest, we need to stimulate our parasympathetic system, of which one way is .. chanting!
OK from toilet visits to chanting (which can be done together, I would definitely give that a try!)
During chanting we are activating our vagus nerve, the longest nerve in your body. The vagus nerve represents the main component of the parasympathetic nervous system and enables anabolic (rebuilding) activities.
Via this way (but also other ways – let’s leave that for another post - chanting can decrease stress, anxiety and depressive symptoms, as well as increase positive mood, feelings of relaxation and focus.
Stress can have a detrimental effect on memory retrieval, but chanting– vagus nerve! – can help improve memory. French scientists noted that Christian monks who chanted the Gregorian Chants have exceptional memories, now we understand why!
Cool last fact: Although one preferably sings out loud and together with others (it is multiplying the benefits of chanting) chanting mantras can be done silently as well, as even visualization and moving the lips could result in benefits (isn’t nature magical?).
So lets sing along with Yoko Ono and John Lennon – fervent chanters too – and ‘give chanting a chance’.
What are the benefits you experience or - maybe the adverse feelings you encounter - chanting in yoga class?
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