Prayer, Affirmations, Mantras, Visualization & Heart Opening

"Offering regular prayers to God enables the state of yoga to be achieved."  Patanjali's Yoga Sutras

Spiritual Yoga
 Prayer   Affirmations    Mantras
Visualization    Heart Opening

Prayer

Prayer is recognition of a relationship with universal and eternal spirit, whether you consider that a higher aspect of yourself or a spiritual presence or power separate from yourself.  Prayer is a way of acknowledging and connecting with spirit.  It produces feelings of peace, contentment, harmony and an assurance that all will be well.  Prayer opens the heart to the eternal spiritual center of love, connectedness and truth.  Prayer does not have to be formalized in spoken words.  You can experience a profound connection to spirit by sitting quietly without words and feeling the peace of being united with all life and all consciousness.

Prayer is very personal - it is your personal relationship with spirit and you have to develop it just as you develop relationships with people.  Developing a personal prayer for yourself  to open your sadhana practice is a way to connect to higher consciousness, to align your purpose with spirit, to express gratitude for the blessings in your life and to affirm the intentions of your higher self  for this day and for your life.  Developing a personal prayer encourages you to think about your life, its purpose and your connection with all other life.  Your personal prayer may change as you grow or you may develop additional prayers.  I keep a prayer journal to collect the prayers I create and receive as well as the prayers, affirmations and spiritual wisdom that I find enlightening as I study, read, travel and take part in classes, workshops and spiritual services.  

This is my personal prayer at this time:

Daily Prayer

Thank you Lord for this day and for all your love and blessings
Please help me to be of service today
Please help me to do unto others as I would have them do unto me
Please help me to love others as you have loved me
I pray for all life today. Amen. 

There also are wonderful prayers, chants, hymns, etc. in all religious and spiritual traditions. Some of these were originally the personal prayers of spiritual people and they have become loved and adopted by others.  Reciting prayers that are said every day by other loving hearts provides a wonderful connection to the world and to all life.  I find in reciting the prayers of others that I sometimes spontaneously modify the traditional words or lines to better express the spiritual awareness I am feeling and I believe this is perfectly acceptable.  The original words were an expression of a spiritual feeling and a prayer is only effective if you can touch that feeling and express it yourself.  

A beautiful prayer that is recited by many people is the Saint Francis Prayer.  Saint Francis and Saint Clare knew the spiritual path is one of love, peace, service and kindness to all living creatures.  This is my version:

A Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me show love,
Where there is injury, let me give pardon,
Where there is doubt, let me have faith,
Where there is despair, let me bring hope,
Where there is darkness, let me invoke the light,
And where there is sadness, let me be a force for joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
    to be consoled, as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved, as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in loving that we are loved;
And it is in dying to the lower life that we are born with thee
    and all life into the eternal higher life.  Amen.

Reciting prayers from other spiritual traditions acknowledges our connection to all people throughout the world and helps us honor the principle that all spiritual paths are sacred.  A lovely ancient prayer is the Gayatri Mantra. The Gayatri Mantra is a verse from the Rig-Veda.  It is said that this mantra is recited daily at sunrise by more people than any other prayer on earth.  It is a mantra of purification and by chanting it we pay homage to the sun which lights our world and our hearts.

The Gayatri Mantra

OM
Bhur Bhuvat Svah
Tat Savitur Varenyam
Bhargo Devasya Dhimahi
Dhiyo Yo Nah Prachodayat

Like many verses and words in Sanskrit, you will find the Gayatri Mantra translated many ways. This is one translation:

OM
Divine light that shines on the earth and in the heavens!
Let us meditate upon the Sun - Symbol of the eternal light of spiritual consciousness, So that it may illuminate our minds.

Kripalu Sadhana Prayer

This is a centering and opening prayer from Kripalu Yoga Center.  It is a nice way to set your intention for yoga practice.  Add your personal intention for today's practice at the end.

I open my heart to explore the divinity
that is inherent within my body.
I realize that my body is the Temple of the Divine.
And I am not just this body, but the embodiment of spirit itself.
During this sadhana time, my intention is to be totally present
in my body and in the light of consciousness.  OM

Affirmations

Affirmations are statements to acknowledge and manifest the reality we desire in our lives. It is important to focus our awareness on our highest goals and intentions for each day and for our lives. Thoughts manifest into actions.  That is why spiritual traditions tell us it is necessary to be pure in thought, word and deed.

Goals and intentions can be most readily manifested by affirming them at the beginning of each day.  Know yourself.  Know what you truly want as your highest goals.  Affirm them.  Your intentions will be set and all parts of your conscious and subconscious mind as well as all physical, mental and spiritual energies will work toward those goals. Yoga is based on the ancient wisdom of universal laws.  The law of sympathy and antipathy is expressed as "like attracts like."  Universal energy will come to support the personal energy of our highest intentions and goals.

The spiritual goals of many people are to rise to our highest purpose and potential, to be one with all life and with universal spirit, to know God personally, and to be of service to our communities and to the world.  To determine your spiritual intentions you just need to sit quietly and center yourself in your truth.  Know your truth.  Feel it. Affirm it. Manifest it.

I AM

"I AM..." is a powerful manifesting affirmation.  The words I AM are empowered with spirit and creative force.  In the third chapter of Exodus God tells Moses: "I AM THAT I AM...say unto them, I AM hath sent me unto you."   By the use of  I AM we link ourselves with the power of spirit and creation.

I AM has been used from ancient times by people to affirm their reality and  their intentions. One of the mantras in the Isa Upanishad is Aham Sah "I am He" affirming that the individual self and the universal self are one. In Spiritual Yoga practice there are several affirmations that begin with the creative power I AM.

Mantras

A mantra is a word or phrase of power used to focus attention and intention.  In Spiritual Yoga practice mantras can be used to focus the mind and breath during the asanas to increase the flow of prana and energy through the body.  It is a challenge to discipline the mind to stay centered during yoga practice.  When I feel totally present and spiritually connected during sadhana I move within that concentration. But if my mind starts to wander and it is hard to stay centered I silently repeat a two syllable mantra to focus my mind and breath.   The mantra I use is "brahma."

Two syllable mantras are the easiest to use because the first syllable ("brah") is mentally sounded during the inhalation and the second syllable ("ma") is mentally sounded during the exhalation.   The rhythm of the mantra and the breath brings the mind to stillness; concentration is enhanced; the breath flows more easily, prana is increased and you enter a higher meditative state as you move through the asana series.

It is best to choose a mantra that promotes spiritual connectedness.  Words or phrases that stimulate thinking about worldly matters should be avoided.  A few two syllable mantras to experiment with and their meanings are:

• Brahma:  Brahma is the creative aspect or power of infinite spirit.  Focusing on the mantra "Brahma" aligns our individual power and intention with the highest creative power to enhance our yoga sadhana.  The daily time when the Brahma or creative power manifests is 4AM as a new day is being created and our energies awaken again.  This is the perfect time for yoga practice!

• So Ham (pronounced "sah hahm"):  "The immortal spirit, I am that"  

Notice that when you practice Ujjayi breathing, the inhalation and exhalation of the sounded breath resonate with the mantra "So Ham."

• Shanti or Shalom:  "Peace"

Two beautiful mantras to focus yourself in the spirit's eternal center of peace and calm.  Our wish for the world and for all beings.

OM

Spiritual Yoga sadhana includes the chanting of OM, the original sound from which the universe was created and the mantra of the sixth (Agna) chakra to manifest wisdom.  

In Spiritual Yoga sadhana our goal is to raise our personal energy vibrations to the  vibrational frequency of higher consciousness.  When chanting OM focus on using the sound of the syllables to create a vibration in your chest, throat and head that will open these centers.  The OM vibration should be experienced as rising and expanding energy that radiates from each of these three centers through your energy field into the universal energy field.

Visualization 

Visualization is a manifesting practice to help us realize our goals and objectives.  In Spiritual Yoga we use visualizations during affirmations in various asanas as a tool to focus our concentration.  For example, in Tadasana the Mountain posture, we visualize ourselves as the mountain in order to feel the strength of the mountain while we affirm our strength.

Also in Spiritual Yoga practice light is used as a visualization to focus concentration on our breath and the flow of prana and energy to our chakras and throughout our bodies.  This Light Visualization is explained in the section on Pranayama, Breathing Practices and Light.

Heart Opening

Spiritual Yoga sadhana includes several asanas and affirmations to open the heart.  The heart chakra is the center through which we love and feel connected to all life.  All energy must pass through the heart center before it rises to the throat for expression, to the third eye for wisdom, to the crown for enlightenment and to the hands to perform service for the world.

The ancient yogis believed there was a center of spiritual consciousness called "the lotus of the heart" and that it shone with an inner light.  The heart openings in Spiritual Yoga sadhana open us to this spiritual consciousness and connectedness to all life through light and love. 

"There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth, beyond us all, beyond the heavens, beyond the highest, the very highest heavens.  This is the Light that shines in our heart."    Chandogya Upanishad

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