One of my favorite moments in yoga class is the chanting of Om. When I first began taking yoga classes, I felt self-conscious about joining in and I would sit quietly or pretend I was om-ing without actually making any sound.
Finally after several sessions, I gathered up my courage and opened my mouth to softly chant Om. I didn’t want anyone else to hear my Om. What if they think I’m weird? What came out of my mouth sounded more like GAAAK than Om and I cringed in horror. When I looked around the room, though, nobody was laughing or even looking.
Over the years, I have come to embrace the Om. I especially love it when the whole class participates and you feel the vibration of the other Oms in the room.
I have heard that if you pluck a string on a violin, the same string on any nearby violin will begin to vibrate as well. That’s how I feel. I’m a violin string being plucked by the vibrations of the others in the room. I can feel that resonance against my vocal cords, against my skin, like the wave action in a pool, coming back at me.
I have gotten louder, more confident, but I could never Om as long as the instructor. Her Om would begin before everyone else’s and continue long after the rest of us were out of breath. I wanted to see if I could Om as long as she did. I decided to work on my breathing and expanding my lung capacity.
Where could I practice my Om, free of interruptions, away from raised eyebrows and out of earshot of neighbors? Living on an island is a lot more crowded than I previously realized and I never thought I’d actually chant anywhere outside of class.
Then a summer of magic happened when someone gave us a kayak. My husband hauled it up to the beach, got it in the water and helped me get in and beyond the breakers. I loved it! He fashioned a wheelie carriage for it from someone’s discarded baby stroller and I began taking it up and launching it myself every chance I got.
Oh, how I loved being out there, surrounded by water, watching the fish jumping, the birds flying overhead, or the pattern of the sun on the water, far beyond the daily chatter of the people on the shore and the demands of the day. The joy of it filled me up and spilled out of my mouth in a spontaneous expansive chanting of Om!
Well, that was it for me. Every chance I got, I’d climb in the kayak and head out beyond the prying ears of tourists and Om away.
I would chant on the glassy green stillness with giant skate undulating beneath my kayak. I would chant to the passing dolphin pods. I would chant through my fear when the shore break grew with the wind shifts. I was like a howling wolf, loud and wild. And yet, out on the vast sea, Om sounded small and close in my ears. It didn’t have that resonating quality - that echo effect of an enclosed space.
Over time, I noticed in the studio that I could breathe through an Om for as long as the instructor, sometimes even longer, but it didn’t seem relevant anymore. Something much more important had happened along the way: I stopped thinking about Om-ing and began feeling it.
I am comfortable now. I feel strong and connected from within. There is an energy rising up and out behind my Om now, at once as subtle and powerful as the ocean rising and falling beneath my kayak. While I am, at times, like the violin string, resonating in sympathetic vibration because I am close to the music, I am also at times the musician creating the song.
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