May 8 - June 19 Mondays 7-8:30 am CST
Workbook - please note than when you print/convert to PDF, the double svaritas print as a box. Mark your text appropriately/ask as we cover the specific words. This is my human error and a shortcoming of technology - the mantras themselves are flawless:)
Recordings and audio support for learning the mantras will be put here week after week. The most recent will be on top.
I expect you to be doing your own practice. That is, whatever your sādhana is and a daily practice of the ‘new material’ here.
Monday June 19
Happy Solstice! This was our final gathering for this little set of songs around invocation, prayer, śraddhā. We will take a break for two weeks (I’m going camping, then the US Holiday for 4th of July). Join us again starting July 10 Śrī sūktam, tab to the left.
Meanwhile, use this time to refine whatever pieces feel like they need your attention. We will repeat the invocations and closing every time we gather, and the Laksmi Gayatri is part of the next song. Work on śraddha. Little bit at a time. Use your will/agni to do that part and the rest just happens.
When my teacher sends me several building recordings, I genearally stick with the first one for a day or two. Then I add the bigger part for several days. In a week or so, I finally get to the full mantra. Take your time, a little bit at a time.
Monday June 12
Suggested practice this week: play with ‘aligning with sound’ in various shapes. I’m not interested in trying to get you into a particular ‘shape’ or sequence, so much as inviting you to play with the body/sound/prana and how it might ‘align’ with chant, meaning, gesture, energy, strength. For your chanting practice, keep using invocation + a gayatrī and 'work on’ the first three mantras of the śraddhā sūktam. close with pūrnamadaḥ.
Here is the completest/most recent/most accurate sheet of the śraddhā sūktam.
*I just learned a thing about zoom technology! Zoom ‘filters’ sound, so that when I’m singing it clicks off, thinking it’s filtering background noise. There is a ‘musician setting’ in zoom that will turn that function off. I’ll do that in future so you don’t get silence when I sound.
Monday June 5
Suggested practice: go through the Ganesha and Saraswati prarthanas straight through to invoke/begin/threshold. Spend 5-10 minutes in listen/repeat practice of one of the Gāyatrīs. Pray: what is important for you to see? Then: what is your responsibility? Finally: turn it over/ask for help/courage/clarity/etc. Close with purnamadaḥ. You can always and should be repeating with the audio for a very long time as you learn. But also trust that you can focus your learning on the Gāyatrīs this week: the prarthanas will come with time.
Here is an article on Gāyatrī, if you want intellect food.
Here are the chanting sheets for the Gāyatrīs.
Here is a thingy I’m currently writing. Its rough, yet, and I’m still working on it. But might be helpful.
Monday May 22
Suggested practice: go through Ganesh and Saraswati invocations straight through. Do the repetition practice of purnamadaḥ.
Victoria caught an issue in the text: the Devanagari of the Saraswati prarthana is just repasted Devanagari of the Ganesh prarthana. Here is the Saraswati prarthana. There is no need for you to do anything with this: but the text is in some way an embodiment of the meaning, and we want to respect that.
Monday May 15
homework: continue practicing practicing: five minutes a day.
Monday May 8
homework: repeat the pada padaḥ audio every day. You do NOT need to get good at this by Monday. I do want you to get good at doing hard things, daily repetition, five minutes a day. You have the rest of your life to ‘memorize’ or get fluent. For now, get good at practicing.