Naad means “the essence of all sound.”
When I first encountered the Naad I was intrigued. How could sound effect us beyond being music or accents I loved or not,
Sounds has been with us since we first entered the world, the sound of our mother’s voice, our father, family, household. Some meant dinner was being prepared, others meant we were about to be dunked in water.
Sound is how we draw attention to ourselves when babies. It’s how we gauge the mood and quickly learn, if we will be getting picked up and entertained or just left to scream louder.
We discover its likely the bigger the sound we make we are more likely to get attention and maybe what we want
Sound is primal stuff. Sound carries powerful information.
Move on to hide and seek. Silence means less chance of being discovered. At school it can mean getting noticed or gliding under the radar. We learn to use it and sometimes abuse it.
But how does it really work?
Why does some music gets my toe tapping while others makes me want to seek refuge in the loo with my hands over my ears and my eyes closed.
How can you make it work for you?
Enter the Naad another arm of Kundalini Yoga which means the essence of all sound which explains it quite nicely.
It is a specific vibration, a fundamental frequency emerging from one common source or sound current.
It is the universal code behind language and therefore behind human communication.
Sound and mantra are integral to Kundalini Yoga. There are many mantras each carrying its own vibration when sounded in a certain way. there are mantras for accessing your power, releasing blocks and for welcoming love. ‘Man’ means sound and ‘tra’ means wave so we are creating sound waves. Within the yoga practice we are consciously creating sound wave patterns to affect our brains to bring us into balance and harmony with the universal harmony. We move from me (individual being) to we (infinite, connected and universal being).
We are also doing this every day in our lives by choosing our words consciously or not. they carry a different vibration depending on our tone, emphasis, volume and from which part of our body we speak them.
“If your words have the strength of the Infinite in them and are virtuous, and you value them, you are the greatest of the great. If you do not value your words, you have no value. Your own word is your value as a human being.” Yogi Bhajan
We learn how this works in Naad Yoga. It creates the experience of how sound vibrations affect the body, mind, and spirit through the movement of the tongue, the mouth, and changes in the chemicals in the brain.
We can alter our consciousness by changing
the chemical composition of the fluids in the brain.
Can you tell, I find this stuff fascinating? There are eighty-four meridian (energy channels) points on the upper palate of a human’s mouth. One can feel the upper palate with the tongue and experience the different surfaces up there. There are two rows of meridian points on the upper palate and on the gum behind the upper teeth.
Hitting these meridian points with the tongue stimulates the hypothalamus which radiates energy in the pituitary gland.
This causes the entire glandular system to secrete balancing the chemical composition of the brain.
This automatically changes your perspective on life.
When I first heard this I recalled a conversation with a friend where we had been expressing our love of languages. For me Italian, French and Spanish win any day. For him German and slavic languages which leave me pretty cold. I find their sounds harsh and often quite clipped. It then occurred to me that to speak any or all of these languages you hit the meridians in your mouth in a different way. And if sound is changing our brains then may this accounts for some cultural conditioning. (but that’s a whole other can of sardines 🙂
There’s the petit peu of French with your lips in a pout and uttered non-chalantly There’s the universal vowel ending of Italian which always sounds like they are having a party, even in the middle of what I know is a raging argument. Then the dramatic and barely open mouth of guttural Spanish. To my ear Arabic and Asian languages can sound both aggressive and beautiful. (I’m not intending any offence here. Any of these languages can) I happen to speak with an Irish accent, but other english speaking accents hurt my ears. Sound like most other things are completely subjective.
It creates a vibratory frequency that travels and affects us depending on it frequency.
When we resonate with it, it increases our vibration, elevating our mood and expanding our consciousness when we are in dissonance with it we feel irritated and contracted.
To heal is to make whole, so where there is functional harmony and holistic resonance, healing takes place naturally.
Sound can take us places that our other senses can not. It can be as beautiful as it can be fraught.
All this said it makes sense to use our words wisely and purposefully. We express our unique sells through our words how we string them together and whether we use them to inspire, elevate and bring positive energy into our work, our homes and our relationships.
As I say speak like an Italian Always finish on the rise!
Here’s some Kundalini music I’ve played in class and used when creating guided meditations for you. People who attend class often ask for the music. It all holds a vibration intended to elevate and create harmony. And for my two cents. It does. Enjoy and please feel free to share the list
