Mantra as Therapeutic Practice with Melissa Shah

What happens when traditional public health science meets ancestral wisdom? In this episode, host Michele Lawrence sits down with Melissa Shah, MPH, C-IAYT, the founder of Find Your Breath, to explore the intersection of modern healthcare, lineage reclamation, and the physiological power of sound. Melissa breaks down the Western misconceptions surrounding mantra, reclaiming it as a potent, therapeutic practice.  Whether you are a healthcare provider looking to expand your somatic toolkit or an advanced yoga teacher committed to honoring the true roots of the practice, this episode serves as a vital blueprint for the future of culturally respectful, therapeutic care.

In This Episode, We Discuss:

• The Intersection of Lineage and Public Health: How Melissa navigates modern, institutional spaces by blending an academic Master of Public Health framework with lifelong roots in Yoga and Ayurveda.
• Decolonizing the Somatic Space: Why reclaiming and honoring the true cultural lineage of yoga is not just a philosophical duty, but a requirement for generating a deep felt-sense of nervous system safety for clients.
• Mantra as a Clinical Tool: Redefining mantra from a passive "mental affirmation" or aesthetic background track into a direct, active neurobiological intervention.
• The Psychoneuroimmunology of Sound: The science behind chanting—including chest vibration, tongue movement, vagal nerve stimulation, and how extended exhalations manually hack heart rate variability (HRV).
• "Digesting" Heavy Emotions: A practical breakdown of how specific, targeted chants can help a client shift stuck emotional and psychological tension (like anger, anxiety, or grief).
• Practicing with Humility & Respect: Crucial advice for yoga therapists who want to bring therapeutic sound to their clients while navigating Sanskrit pronunciation and avoiding cultural appropriation.

Melissa Shah, C-IAYT, MPH, is a certified yoga therapist, public health leader, and the founder of Find Your Breath—an online sanctuary, virtual practice library, and mentorship platform dedicated to making yoga therapy truly collaborative, accessible, and inclusive. Grounded in the Viniyoga tradition and her lifelong ancestral relationship with Yoga and Ayurveda, Melissa integrates movement, breathing, and traditional sound with modern clinical and public health frameworks. She is also the author of an upcoming book dedicated to mantra as a therapeutic practice, releasing next year.

Connect with Melissa:

• Website: FindYourBreath.net
• Instagram: @FindYourBreath
• Resources: Explore Melissa's weekly community chanting classes, mentorship portals, and updates on her upcoming book directly on her platform.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome to This Is Yoga Therapy. I'm your host, Michelle Lawrence. Join me as we venture beyond the map into the fascinating intersections of yoga and health. Each episode brings you candid conversations with the visionary leaders and practitioners who are truly shaping this field, sharing their stories, insights, and the profound impact of yoga therapy and action. Hey, it's Michelle. Before we get into today's episode, I just wanted to bring up one thing. If you're enjoying this is Yoga Therapy, the best way to support the show is to like, subscribe, and review. Whether you're watching it on YouTube or listening on your commute, your engagement really helps us scale. So please take 10 seconds to hit that subscribe button or leave a review. It really makes a world of difference. Okay, let's get into today's episode. Hi folks, and welcome back to This Is Yoga Therapy. Today we're joined by a yoga therapist whose work is redefining how we look at public health, representation, and the ancestral roots of therapeutic sound. Melissa Shaw, who's a CIAYT and MPH, is the founder of Find Your Breath, which is an online sanctuary and mentorship platform dedicated to making yoga therapy truly collaborative and accessible. Melissa beautifully bridges the gap between traditional clinical science and deep lineage, bringing their background and public health together with their lifelong roots in yoga and Ayurveda. Today we're going to explore how we can move past Western hyper-commercialized spaces and delve into their upcoming work on mantra as an active somatic tool for healing, which is so cool. Melissa, it's such a pleasure to have you here today. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

I'm so excited.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

So many of our listeners are navigating the intersection of mainstream healthcare and holistic therapies, whether that's yoga or others. And you hold a master's of public health and have spent years integrating yoga into schools and community health settings. Yet your own relationship with yoga started in childhood, heavily influenced by your mother. How do your public health lens and your personal roots inform how you navigate modern institutional spaces? I think this could be just like a really rich learning opportunity for all of us.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

You know, it's a great question. And like no one's really ever really asked me it that way before. One way I think about it is like what is embodied versus information that I've received. And it sounds like they're the same thing, but of course they're not. And I think even growing up, learning these practices from my mom, but then also like my grandmother and then the teachers that my mom later introduced me to when I was around like middle school age, I didn't know like even the depth of yoga in terms of like all that's possible, but also like the therapeutic applications from a teaching perspective or even from like a clinical perspective, I was just experiencing it. And I think that is something I wish for everyone, whether you are a yoga therapist or whether you are practicing yoga therapy, that you always have the support you need to be in your practice. Because I see like even how um when I've worked in clinical settings or in schools in in Nashville and New York, Nashville, and LA, I see it as a natural like extension of what I've been able to really like metabolize like through my life. And that's not only um, you know, like what I've learned like at home or with my teachers growing up, but also like the learning opportunities I chose to take on as an adult. I mean, I did a lot of study end of high school, kind of through college with um with two of my teachers, but I never had this intention of actually being a yoga therapist or teaching. Like that, it wasn't even like I had the concept and decided not to do it. It just was not even something I'm like my brain was even considering, you know? And so I I see like how life has unfolded, like the last, especially last like 10, 12 years or so, as I've been focusing more on teaching full time and then pursuing yoga therapy training as like a this is sort of um, these decisions are really coming from knowing. And I think for me, that's been really useful because there are so many ways to integrate yoga into our community, right? I mean, people who are listening probably have already done amazing things, right? Community centers, um, for new parents, you know, of the immigrant populations. There's like, I feel like the options are infinite, but how we do it really matters. And even I sometimes feel like embodying the practices can give us the insight of discerning like, what does this population need? What are they also like showing that they need and asking for versus only like what I think is going to be helpful? And to me, I think that's the difference between integrating something and having your own experience with it versus like having all the information and just wanting to put it somewhere. Um, yeah, it's not a pause there.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

I so wholeheartedly agree with all that you said. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about your work. Your platform, Find Your Breath, places a massive emphasis on reclamation and decolonizing yoga spaces. And so, from a strictly clinical and therapeutic standpoint, why is honoring the cultural roots and the true lineage of these practices so essential for a client's actual deep level nervous system safety and healing? We don't talk about that so much.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

Oh my gosh. Tell me about it.

SPEAKER_00 6:04

I don't need to tell you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

Well, I mean, there's always, you know, one of the things I'll say when you say I don't need to tell you is like I like to use the word decolonizing. Um, I know many of my other like South Asian yoga teacher colleagues also use that word as a verb form rather than decolonized. And I used to say decolonized. Oh, my practices are decolonized. And I think what I've learned as I've like peeled back more layers is like, well, I've also grown up in the West. I grew up in the Indian American diaspora. And so there are many ways that like my mind actually has colonized ways of thinking. And I think for me, like acknowledging, understanding that and acknowledging it can be like very uncomfortable because you think, like, I think because, you know, I grew up with these practices to an extent. And, you know, the yoga is like, it's like in my DNA, you know, that I think that there's not work to be done on even like my expectations of how yoga therapy should be taught or what the programs should look like, what yoga therapy teacher training should look like. The decolonizing to me is a nod towards like we're actually always in the process of unfolding. And we're all like, you know, we all have our own process, and some of us have a little bit more because of our positionality in one direction, some of us have a little bit more in a different direction. I have so many thoughts close to my heart on this. But what's coming up right now is the nature of practicing yoga is to eventually connect with like who we really are. It's like, right? Chapter one, that's like they say potentially says it right away that this is how we define yoga in this chapter as a way of directing the mind. And the next sutra says, like, well, then when we direct the mind, like what like what are the results? And they're mainly saying, like, you're basically more of who you really are. And who you are, like Burusha or spirit or inner knowing, whatever you want to call it, is inherently whole.

unknown 7:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

And so I see like this way of like not just reclaiming for other South Asians, but also like really honoring the holistic foundation of like how and why we practice, like with anyone who wishes to learn, as like a that inherently can actually support someone's therapeutic healing so much. Because we're starting out from the beginning, we're like, this is actually a whole system in itself. You are a whole system in yourself. And what is the point of actually knowing all of the dimensions of your being? It's so that you actually have a clear path toward connecting who you really are. If we're only focusing on, you know, and like yoga therapy, for example, we only focus on the diagnosis, right? Someone has IBS, that's one I see a lot. And it's one I've definitely experienced myself, like uh digestive issues, right? And we stay hyper focused on, okay, well, they have IBS. And from a Western perspective, like this is what happens and this is what this means. We really forget that there's a whole system already in place in yoga to actually think about what's happening in somebody's digestion. And this is the part, you know, in 200 hours I've taught and 300 hours, this is a piece that's like really missing because in there's such a push to get yoga and yoga therapy, obviously, more attention, whether it's in healthcare spaces or otherwise. It's like a big conversation right now. And my feeling on that with the decolonizing how we think about like yoga and yoga therapy is like, what are we losing by trying to change our shape to fit another form? And there's no doubt that we have to meet people where they are, 100%. But there's also a lot, like we as yoga therapists, we can already do to help our clients or groups we work with to start from a more holistic foundation. And that's where I see this whole decolonizing our approach to yoga therapy and kind of reclaiming a lot of like the rich cultural context of yoga. That's where I see that really playing a role. And that supports everyone. It doesn't just support me as an Indian American yoga teacher. I've seen it firsthand support clients who are like white or other types of Asian or like other cultural backgrounds that aren't South Asian. It's not even something we have to intellectually communicate. It's something we really just have to be and have it come through our teaching. And teaching people from the beginning that this is the long-term direction. We may never get there in this life. We maybe we barely have a glimpse of our inner knowing, but the process and that direction is what really matters. And how we have a lot more integrity in that process is by not starting out for something very fragmented. So getting super involved in only the physical or physiological, like with the digestive issues, and forgetting, like, well, there's all these other dimensions, like our Manomaya and Vignana Maya and Anandamaya. And maybe the first session is not where you address all of it. But as a yoga therapist, we should definitely be have that understanding that everything is really playing a role.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Everything is always playing a role. Yeah. Thanks for bringing that into the picture right here. Let's keep going a bit. So you teach in the Vini Yoga tradition, which inherently prioritizes adapting the practice to the unique individual. So really meeting the person where they are, rather than forcing individual into a rigid shape or what our ideas are, right, as the yoga teacher, yoga therapist. So when a client comes to you with a complex condition or emotional trauma, how does that personalized framework change the therapeutic outcome compared to a general standard yoga class?

SPEAKER_01 11:28

It's like one of the questions, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Yeah, and it and I think it helps our listeners who may not be totally familiar with yoga therapy too, start to envision the difference between what yoga class might be at their studio versus yoga therapy through this tradition. And I think really most that I'm familiar with, most yoga can be traditional.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

Totally. You know, like I think coming back to what we were talking about earlier is like this idea of continuous effort of being in a process. So that abhyasa and like vairagyam, like the continuous effort and the vairagyam the like relinquishing control. And I think those two concepts can be in any yoga practice, whether you're in a group class or whether you're working one-on-one with someone. But one-on-one, when it is more when, like you're saying, there's a lot of layers there. There's maybe complex trauma, and they maybe have chronic um, like physical conditions going on. I really like to use the Banchamaya model as a way of organizing kind of what's happening. And again, it's a living model. Like I have a document for like every single session. And there are times where something gets revealed, not because I'm pulling it out of them, not because they're pulling it out of them. That's like the Vairagyam. It's like you don't have control over what the outcome of the practice is going to be. But as a yoga therapist, like we do have um, it's important for us to have a sense of intention of like what direction. And what the most important thing of all, um, one-on-one or in a group is like their experience. And I think that's what can kind of distinguish us sometimes from a group setting, in the sense that in a set one-on-one session, there's a lot of room to process or get into like what is your experience in this practice? And then you can actually adjust and change. Whereas in a group class, everyone's getting the same instruction, or, you know, of course, it'll modifications and stuff-ish, right? People are generally getting the same direction though, right? The class is being organized a certain way, and yet people are all having a different kind of experience. And I think in that individual setting you're sharing with somebody might have like complex issues and emotional things. When I organize it and the Banjamaya and all the dimensions, I then start to think about two things. Like one, again, long-term and short-term direction, but also two, like what is going to be the best entry point for them? And that's something that I think really differentiates it from a group class where you might have the more, I guess, like traditional or like what people are used to seeing, which is like you have like your warm-up or your purvanga, like the beginning part of the class. You have your Pradhananga, like your main practice or your peak pose, and then you have your Uttaranga, how you come down. A personal practice can be the same, but your entry point might be different. You might not start with asana. Actually, the entry point for them might be on more of those deeper dimensions. You actually might start with chanting. What I've seen more so with people, particularly with complex childhood trauma, it of course will show up in their bodies, just like it does for, you know, all of us. And what I've seen more often is there needs to be more focus on the more like tangible dimensions like prana and what's happening in the physical body. And there needs to be more pacification and stabilizing. And that needs to sometimes often as an entry point first. And then there's a lot more capacity then to address what's really happening underneath all of it. And I think the temptation can be like, well, they're clearly presenting with anxiety or they're clearly presenting with a lot of grief. And the temptation might be to like, let's address that first. But the person's container might not be stable enough to actually like hold all that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

Yeah, totally. So well said. You brought up mantra. I'd like to go there next. And that's really a space that you're putting out in the world and exploring, and you've got a new book coming out about it. So perhaps often misunderstood as well. So let's learn a little more about your new book, completely dedicated to mantra as a therapeutic practice coming out next year. Many people might hear the word mantra and think it's purely a mental affirmation or a background track. Who knows what people think, right? But it could be different things to different people based on what they have been told or learned somehow. But from the perspective of yoga therapy, tell us what yoga, what mantra really is and how does it function as a direct active intervention?

SPEAKER_01 16:00

I'm so excited about this book.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

Do you have a title for it?

SPEAKER_01 16:04

It's in process. There's a few potential options out there. My editor is really, really great. And so I think she's going to be really helpful on that front. But the general idea is exactly what you said as like the healing energy of chanting or the healing energy of mantra, um, therapeutic applications of the practice. And um, you're catching me at a good time because I was just going through a few weeks of like really intense, I don't even know if writer's block is a word, or like avoidance around it. It's like I wrote it, I send out the draft, and then I just was like felt really disconnected from it, you know. And I think um, as I was reflecting back, getting back into editing mode this past week, I was thinking about like, you know, what was that resistance, you know? And I think part of it is like what you're saying, it's like it's a pretty undertaught and often misrepresented type of practice. And I started to feel like, well, is anyone gonna like resonate? You know, does anyone want to know like the therapeutic applications, or people just like want to do what they want to do? Like, I don't know. Um, so you're catching me at a good time where I feel reinvigorated about it. And the overall approach of the book, like I shared therapeutic application, is really how like what we shared about earlier, some of these frameworks that we already have in yoga and in Ayurveda of like how to see the mind, how prana is moving in the body, and using that kind of as our foundation on how to think about how mantra can actually support us. So rather than it was really important for me to not start the book out from here's a bunch of practices, and these are all the things I think can be helpful. It was really important for me to start out with like, again, like what is the practice, but also like how to actually think about what's happening in your system from a yogic perspective when you actually are chanting. Mantra, you know, comes from two words, manantra, which means to protect the mind. And one of my teachers said a long time ago that like the idea is as the mind is protected, like thus it can be free, which I think is such a great also um connection back to yoga therapy. We think about giving people their sadhanas or practices, you know, whatever the long, shorter, long-term goals might be, it's like the practice serves as like a gentle kind of structure for them to explore within. So even though they might have the same thing every day for a few months, no day is exactly the same. And their experience also gives us some insight into like where to then stretch the capacity or like where to where to expand. And mantra is like that too. And by having these practices actually protect the mind, the mind can actually like um experience a sense of freedom. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

And that's really beautiful. Um experience a sense of freedom. And I I'd love to know more about what's happening from a yoga perspective during mantra. We want to to know from a scientific perspective too, I think, in um the West, right? And there's been so much emphasis lately on the vagus nerve, just in you know, all the different spaces that surround us and stimulating it. And I've seen some research about ohm chanting and vagus nerve stimulation from the from the yogic perspective. So I don't know, maybe we can talk a little bit about the physiological mechanics of sound. Feel free to take that in whatever direction you want. But when we look at the science of chanting, the physical vibration in the chest, in the throat, in the head, right? The movement of the tongue, the naturally extended exhale. What's happening inside? And maybe to our vagus nerve as well when we chant.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

I think, you know, um prana pranayama, yes, but mantra especially is a really, when we think about it from a Western's perspective, vagus nerve, our nervous system. I think it has the potential to be like, if not the most, one of the most powerful practices to really influence it.

SPEAKER_00 20:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

And of course, like we know in yoga therapy, like it depends. Like it's not necessarily true for everybody. Right. Um and oftentimes, not everybody can, right? Not everybody, and not everybody can. And um, I do think that there is something to we'll talk about a little bit more, like that, you know, even if somebody is not able to do the vibrations out loud, like using their voice. Um, in my book, I even have a whole section talking about um like mental chanting and how powerful it can really be, because it's basically out loud or mentally, it's a way of placing your attention.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:42

Right. And even if you're not saying the syllables out loud, as you mentally recite them with your breath, you're still doing a pranayama practice, right? You're still extending, extending that exhale. But the vibration, um, I'll start with first, like, you know, a lot of the chants in the book are Sanskrit chants. It's not the only language yoga was written in, but it's the most commonly, commonly known one. And but that's in the book, a lot of the ones are the ones I learned, which are in Sanskrit. And that alphabet, like other languages in South Asia too, is inherently vibrational.

unknown 21:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

So they call it like a syllabic language, right? And that just means for listeners who aren't like who aren't sure about that difference, it just means that the alphabet is made up of sounds. They're not made up of letters. So in English, we have we say the letters like A, B, C, D. In Sanskrit, the consonants have to be paired with the vowel for them to have any actual um sound. So it's never just K or G, it's G or G. And that has a really big influence, we can say Western, definitely on the vagus certain nervous system, because where the sound is being produced in the body has bearing on how that chant is also going to influence you. There's a whole model that's not necessarily my area of. Skill, but there is this whole model in Sanskrit where they match the vowels or the syllables with elements. And so, for example, the month Ganesh mantras like om gum gana pathayena maha, the g is uh guttural consonant, so meaning that the sound is coming from the back of your throat. So even if you don't know what's happening with your nervous system, even if you don't even know what the chant means, by having the experience of doing it, it will have some influence on bringing in this very stabilizing, powerful earth quality into your system. And I think that's what's so cool about chanting is that you can make it intellectual, but that's not where the power is. And power is actually like it's really in the experiencing. And I think that's what so many in like Western, like in Western healthcare, we're seeing like so much more research about that now, and so much interest about the idea of like somatic and what's happening in the body. And in yoga, it's like we've known this for a long time that one, it's all connected, but there's a lot of uh potential for deep healing when we experience things like beyond our like rational, like intellectual mind. And this is, I think, where mantra has a really, really strong place. And when I would learn mantras, definitely when I was younger, but even now as an adult, like my teachers, like there was no discussion on like this is what it means, this is the word-by-word translation. Like great. I mean, and I also study Indian classical music in our Guduj, like we would discuss like the meaning of the songs like after we actually sing them. And of course, learning the meaning with the songs can definitely connect you to a deeper sense of like intention and be able to like evoke more emotion when you're singing. But I think it's a really beautiful thing that like the focus is more on give your body the experience, yeah, get the get the information after.

SPEAKER_00 23:55

Yeah, I learned that way too. And yet I know I see around me everyone wants translation. Translation, please, right? Can I have the sheet? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

You know, with um, I was gonna say, like with clients, though, like when you were talking earlier about the difference between like the individual versus the group, I think in group settings now, in an effort to be more conscious of people's like histories of trauma, in a group setting, I often will, if I'm not familiar with everyone, so if I'm teaching a workshop in a different city and I don't know a lot of the people in the group, I might actually have them recite the words and then we talk about the meaning and then we practice. Because in a group setting, again, they're all getting the same, roughly the same instruction, but I'm not sure what they're coming into the space with, like what it's going to activate within them. However, in one-on-one in yoga therapy, I think there's a lot more room to inquire, you know, and to also be able to sense from the person like, is it okay if I give you this chant? Like if I give you this chant. And when we come back together in a couple of weeks, like we'll talk about the meaning. And that for some people who have a really strong need to know. Sometimes they'll even say, like, I won't be able to connect to this until I know. And one on one, there might be a lot more room to explore the why behind that. But in the beginning, I might just say, like, hey, like, let's just try it together. Try it on your own for a couple of weeks, and then we will talk about it. And it's like that little by little approach where they know, like, okay, I'm going to get some answers, but they're stretching their capacity just a little bit to be able to be out of the intellect. So I do think it's like, I grew up learning it like this, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's like the best way all the time because it's really about like, is the person receiving the function of the practice or not? Sure.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

Yeah. We want to eliminate any barrier that might be there, right? For the individual. And it is so experiential. I think that was the original point too. So let's talk about some specific chants. So in your virtual library, you couple specific chants with meditations for digesting emotions like anger, anxiety, or grief. And so for a client who's carrying deep emotional or psychological tension in their body, can you walk us through how chanting helps them make that shift or shift that energy from that conceptual level into a physical relief? So, like a practical example of the experiential part that we've been talking about. How does it really show up?

SPEAKER_01 26:28

So, one um example that I think a lot of people will relate to, because it's a well-known chant, is the Um Shanti mantra. Um, I think it's a great one for beginners too, because even if people are not practicing yoga therapy or don't have their own personal practice, if they've done some yoga, they've probably heard this chant. And even if not, it's like um usually easier to pronounce syllables. So I do like to start with that oftentimes, especially if there's a lot of emotional strife. And I see the Om Shanti mantra as more of like a shamana or like a soothing, like pacifying practice first. And like I shared earlier, when people have more of the complex trauma or complex, like a lot of like physical things happening too. Sometimes I'll like like to start with a mantra like that to help things settle and it'll often reveal like what's next. Um, rather than going to like, we're gonna process right away. It's like, well, there might be like 10 different things to process. How do we know what the low-hanging fruit is? So let's actually like stabilize a little bit first, like have a sense of like trust and success in your practice. And then almost always it will like in our conversation, like the next step just like becomes clear. And so that is like a favorite of mine. Um, and I think I like I put it in the book because there's several different ways to do it depending on the function you're trying to like achieve. And so, like I said, it can have a very like soothing quality to it because the shh sound is like, I mean, it's it's like a primal sound, right? It's like what we use when we make calm, like little babies or even like little animals, right? Like it's so natural for us to do that when we're trying to achieve a state of like a pacifying, calm, relaxed feeling. And energetically, in the syllabic like perspective of the language, shh is it also associated with wind. So there's like this like almost like starting that almost like letting go process of like allowing that gentle wind quality to just like help move things along. So those are a couple of ways or a couple of like motivations I would use to offer it. Simple would just be om shanti shanti shantihi. But in the book, I talk about how you can actually break it down where you build, you add a word each time. So om shantihi, om shanti, shantihi. So it's the same exact chant, but how you're building on it is different. And that can have a different um implication in terms of helping the person extend their exhale little by little, especially if maybe they don't have a lot of exhale capacity as for at first. Um, it also I think can help with attention because they're having to do something slightly different um each time. So those are, yeah, those are like that's just one example, but a few different ways to approach it.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

It's a great example. And I really love how it illustrates your process and how you get that? Yeah, yeah. It was really, really helpful and illustrative. So thank you. So for the yoga therapists and healthcare providers who may be listening who want to bring chanting into their client work, but they're afraid of cultural appropriation or incorrect Sanskrit pronunciation. What advice or starting point does your upcoming book offer to help them navigate this with humility and respect?

SPEAKER_01 29:48

Yeah, I love that. And I love that this is like the conversation we're having, you know, because I do feel like, you know, I work with a lot of yoga therapists and teachers that I mentor, and there's so much like motivation and desire to learn. And that was really different from what I experienced like early in my teaching career. I was really pretty much always the only South Asian or even Indian, like American teacher. And I was definitely the only one offering chanting to the point where I used to be in like when I was in more of like the yoga studio culture, I would be really nervous about like offering things because I would just lose students, you know? Um, and luckily I worked at a really great studio, which unfortunately doesn't exist anymore in Nashville, where I'm the owner, my friend, she would be so encouraging. She would just see like what I was trying to do, and she's like, just do it. Like people like again, it's experience. Like people might be seeking something, but they actually don't know what it is, right? And I've had that experience on my end, like with my teachers, um, of just receiving something and not having the language for it. But once I experience it, I'm like, oh, I'm really interested in this. So I think um, you know, I'm just loving that people are trying to be discerning. And I would say a great starting point, like we started our conversation, is one like integrating it as a practice for yourself first and foremost. Which, like, maybe even maybe even in your question, maybe that was like an implied given. But I'm also just naming that. Yeah. And it could be like the simplest thing, right? Integrating om into your practice, om shanti, or other shorter mantras too. It doesn't have to be something like when I teach my one-on-one mantra sessions, we'll learn long chants like Sri Sukhtam or from the Upanishads, but that's not a requirement to be able to embody these practices.

SPEAKER_00 31:34

And it doesn't have to be the Hanu Mancha Lisa, right?

SPEAKER_01 31:37

It doesn't have to be. I mean, I grew up Jain. I didn't grow up learning the Hanumancha Lisa. And then I met my partner and he's like, oh, I know that whole thing by heart. And I'm like, how? He's like, I don't know. I just like my mom would chant it every day. But I mean, like, I don't, I don't personally like know that chant that well. And I think coming back to again and again, like, what's the motivation? What's my motivation to offer these practices? And that's like yo, that's our like yoga practice in a nutshell, right? Like discerning like what is coming from my knowing versus something else. And I think when we start with first like trying our best to integrate these practices into our own sadhana in our own life, then we actually have the experiential knowledge. And then we can draw from just like what we know. So even if it's a couple of chants, like a little bit goes such a long way. I have one mentee, she's also a nurse, and she teaches like some chants and breath practices bedside at an integrative um facility in a hospital. She um actually knows like quite a few chants, but she uses like the same one or two all the time. And I'm like, you don't always need more than that. So I would always ask tell people like, if this is something that's really interesting to you and you're like wanting to approach with humility and respect for the culture and the practices, it's drawing from your the insights you get from your practice and also investing in like working with other teachers. It's like the yoga sutras, right? You're not really supposed to pick up the yoga sutras, read it to cover, cover cover to cover, and be like, I'm good. I got all four chapters down. That's like not how things were also taught, but it's it's been shown again and again that like that only takes us so far. So having the experience with someone you trust that you can learn from, I think is fantastic. And in the book, I think um the starting point is really we start with that alphabet first. And there's like a whole key about like practicing your pronunciation. And um I think what I've had to learn also with teaching this stuff is like, you know, it's not really about getting the perfect pronunciation. My pronunciation is stuff. I mean, I grew up in New York, you know, and I know other languages, but English is definitely the language I spoke the most and still speak the most. So my pronunciation, like I've worked on it a lot. But if my mom comes to my mantra workshops, she's 100% teaching the Sanskrit alphabet to everybody, not me. Right. So I think like again, like is the what is motivating you wanting to integrate these practices, what's interesting to you? Are you integrating it into your own sadhana? And are you making the time and effort to actually like invest in other teachers and learn from them? Um, and the book has some really great starting points, you know, that you can like play around with.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

So yeah. Yeah. Thanks for just putting that so clearly and kind of dovetails into our last question, which I always love to ask at the end to each of our guests. But first I just want to say thank you so much for being here and for sharing. And I look forward to your book when it comes out, meeting you next week at the conference. So um tell us about your sadhana. It does come first, right? So if we want to do this work in the world, yoga teacher, yoga therapist, we first have to have our own practice. We have to understand what it does for us before we can share it. And we also know that practicing ourselves can help us um be able to be present with others, right? So tell us a little bit about what your practice looks like, your sadhana.

SPEAKER_01 35:02

You know, um, right now, I'll just say like the main direction of my practice has been for quite some time is surrendering, which of course is like the ultimate yoga practice. But I'm going through some things in my life this past year that are uh requiring that of me, like more than ever. And I think up until this past year, like relinquishing is always a piece of my practice, but it's been always more um how do I say this? Like more superficial isn't the right word, but more like about how it was more about just like helping me recover from what was happening at the time. So, like a long exhale, a pause after exhale is probably to like again, maybe stimulate that vagus nerve and like calm my system down. And I still have days where like that's my motivation for practice for sure. But in this last year in particular, I've had things come up in my life that are just putting this idea of placing your trust in something bigger, like smack in front of my face. It's like there's no way around this except to surrender. And so that's in my sadhana um through my asana, my chanting for sure and my meditation. That's really like the main direction. And I would say even more so than that, it's bringing um every single time I do my meditation, it's like bringing to mind ancestors and being able to like it's like almost like surrender control to them. You know, and that's something one of my teachers like always emphasizes that, you know, um these energies, our ancestors, like they're always, they're always around. Like they're they're always, it's not that they're not available, it's that we're not always willing to be open to like receiving what they like what kind of support they have to give. So that's a little bit about like what my sadhana is looking like right now.

SPEAKER_00 36:45

Thanks for giving us that too. Well, I uh so appreciate once again you being here, Melissa, and we'll include this in the show notes, but you can find out more about Melissa's weekly community chanting classes, mentorship portals, and updates on the upcoming book at findyourbreath.net. Thanks again.

SPEAKER_01 37:07

Thank you so much. It was so fun.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

Thanks again for listening. If you're interested to learn more about who we are and what we do, check us out at inner peaceyogatherapy.com.