Chanting is a grounding practice for me. I find it a perfect prelude to a meditation practice such as centering prayer, and a delight on its own. When I feel a little “off base,” I might chant -- in the car, or quietly in the grocery line or the dentist’s office. Chanting is not about perfect singing, it’s done with our whole being, particularly the heart, as prayer. As I hum or chant with awareness of the body, it helps me to show up as a whole human being.
I’ve been surrounded with music all my life, and have often woken up with melodies in my heart. It has been a natural expansion of the wisdom path for me to become more involved in chanting – leading groups of people intoning them together, writing them, and simply offering them as prayer. Here are some recent chants (and a couple of longer songs) that I've written, and recordings of some chants written by others. Feel free to join in as you listen!
“Chanting is at the heart of all sacred traditions worldwide, and for very good reasons. What meditation accomplishes in silence, chanting accomplishes in sound: it wakes up the emotional center and sets it vibrating to the frequency of love and adoration while feeding the body with that mysterious higher “being food” of divine life... Sacred chanting is an extremely powerful way of awakening and purifying the heart because it allows us to experience, beyond the distortions of our own personal passions, the power and profundity of the divine passion itself. ”