Nina Rao – Sacred Traditional Mantra & Chant Practices To Find Your Way Home To Your Heart
Experience the transformational, heart-opening benefits of an intentional chanting practice, and receive guidance on how to create your own — to find a sanctuary of divine love within your own heart, again and again.
Embark on Nina’s calming, heart-opening, and musical 5-module journey, where you’ll discover how chanting can lead you back to the foundation of your being and help you recommune with what resonates authentically in your heart.
With Nina’s course and her rich, soul-stirring voice, you’ll sing and chant mantra in Satsang (a community of truth-seekers) session after session…
… and along the way, she demystifies the practice by introducing the original texts from which they were born.
In this powerful, musical, and highly experiential course, you’ll:
- Enjoy singing and call-and-response chants from Nina to experience their peaceful and joyous influence permeating your whole being
- Bathe in the mind-calming and heart-expanding benefits of a devoted chanting practice — and receive guidance to confidently create and commit to your own
- Find a sanctuary of divine love within your heart, which you can return to again and again
- Discover how to set intention by the way you present yourself to the practice, even amidst the busyness of your daily life
- Come together to pray through song — for the earth and your part in its healing
- Explore chanting as the vehicle, the path, and the destination to a more intentional life
- Learn about the origins of mantra practice to tap into the joy and wonder of this sacred tradition
- Demystify the practice of prayers and chants to make it more accessible in our modern world
- Be part of a supportive Satsang
- Learn the correct pronunciation and interpretations of the chants to honor this tradition and the potent transformation it enables
- And much more…
What You’ll Discover in These 5 Modules
In this 5-part transformational musical journey, Nina guides you through the fundamental skills you’ll need to experience and personalize the calming and heart-opening benefits of an intentional chanting practice — to find a sanctuary of divine love within your own heart.
Module 1: Beginning Again & Again — Mantra & Chant Practice Through Recitation & Singing
The spiritual practices of India can be an inauguration into many interconnected ancient systems of practice.
In this opening module, You will be warmly welcomed to the path of chanting. You’ll begin to understand the vast scope and depth of this practice — to help you express your deepest longing for love.
Through stories and images, Nina shares about her journey into this practice of chanting the divine names and mantras from the Indian Hindu tradition.
Hearing Nina’s story will help you gain more insight and confidence in finding your own path and creating a practice.
You’ll explore how each of us has our own individual spiritual path, and the way your practice will unfold isn’t always clear from the beginning. You can learn to receive clues and guidance from your inner guru each step of the way.
An important part of Nina’s path has been her relationship with her guru, Sri Siddhi Ma, and she weaves the wisdom she has gained from this connection throughout the course.
In this session, you’ll:
- Enjoy a session of singing call-and-response chantsto calm your mind and open your heart
- Explore mantra practice and its origins to tap into the joy and wonder of this sacred tradition
- Gain clarity on the importance of having a spiritual practice in your life — and set an intention to design a daily practice to create an inner sanctuary of the heart
- Discover why chanting and mantras, especially in Sanskrit, can resonate deeply within you
Module 2: Hanuman — Bowing Down to the One Who’s Fully Surrendered
Many people know Nina for her rendition of the Hanuman Chalisa on Krishna Das’ Flow of Grace album, as well as a variety of melodies she sings on her own album Antarayaami.
The Hanuman Chalisa is a 40-verse devotional prayer to Hanuman, which invokes his (and our) qualities of wisdom, compassion, courage, surrender, and devotion.
In this session, you’ll have the opportunity to read slowly through the Indian language Avadhi with English transliteration and review pronunciation.
Nina shares some stories from the Ramacharitmanasa— Tulsidas’ Ramayana, one of the largest ancient epics in world literature… consisting of nearly 24,000 verses. It’s referred to in the Hanuman Chalisa and the Bajrang Bān.
Both of these longform prayers are said to have been composed by the poet-saint Tulsidas. The Hanuman Chalisa is practiced far and wide and the Bajrang Bān (the arrow of the thunderbolt-body of Hanuman) often acts as a super-boost in circumstances that require you to get unstuck.
These kinds of sacred stories have been told for thousands of years, and the enduring blessings of the teachings from these stories are encapsulated in the Hanuman Chalisa and bring us into a devotional space.
You’ll also explore your inclinations in this life, as you’re being called by your inner guru.
In this module, you’ll discover:
- The experience of chanting of the Hanuman Chalisa with slow repetition — a great opportunity to refine your pronunciation
- A sense of the meaning of the Hanuman Chalisa as it pertains to Ramayana
- Why this prayer resonates with so many people, even before we know the meaning
- What the word “surrender” means in these texts and why it’s such an important part of Bhakti yoga
Module 3: Vedic Chanting of the Gāyatrī Mantra — The Roots of the Chanting Tradition
One of the most widely practiced mantras in India, the Gāyatrī mantra, invokes our inner sun to illuminate the clarity needed to make the decisions that best serve ourselves and others.
While you may have been singing kirtan for a while, you will be guided to the roots of chanting in a more traditional form. You’ll learn some of the differences between kirtan with music and Vedic chanting — the oldest sacred texts from India.
You’ll practice the recitation of the Gāyatrī mantra in the Vedic tradition, with an emphasis on the true pronunciation and svara (notes) and chandas (meter).
In this session, you’ll:
- Engage in a full 108 rounds of mantra repetition (or japa) to create a deep meditative space
- Practice a more traditional way of chanting that’s different from what’s most commonly sung
- Address some misconceptions about what mantra is and what we’re invoking when we chant
- Learn why the Gāyatrī mantra is one of the most widely practiced mantras in India
- Receive insights on creating an altar and making offerings in a simple way
- Discover how to set intention by the way you present yourself to the practice in the midst of your busy day
Module 4: Prayers to the Goddesses Durga, Lakshmi & Saraswati — She Who Is Auspiciousness
During the annual Hindu festival Devi Navratri, the celebration of the daily prayers are sung to the goddess in her various forms.
In this module, Nina shares some simple mantras and longer-form prayers to three manifestations of the goddess — sung to music and rhythm — while reading the transliteration and translation. Singing these mantras helps you tap into the qualities of the goddess that you’re invoking.
Nina also shares some stories of Devi Navaratri that were told in her guru’s temple, as well as some excerpts from the Chandi Pāth (700 verses in praise of the goddess).
Chandi means “she who tears apart thought” — referring to our thoughts of too little and too much. In this ever-balancing middle path, we have to traverse in each moment, allowing the universe to act on our behalf.
In this session, you’ll:
- Invoke auspiciousness to enter to the space of the goddess through the singing of prayers
- Invite the goddess into your being
- Develop confidence to explore and practice these longer-form prayers
- Learn the meaning of the prayers and get a stronger sense of what they can mean to you as you practice
Module 5: Connecting With Great Mother Nature — Being One With the 5 Elements
Most of us are aware of the current climate crisis, and, in this closing session, you’ll spend time connecting with Mother Nature through practice.
Since the beginning of time, humankind has revered the Earth through prayer. However, in our modern world, many of us have lost sight of her sacredness.
Even when you’re not forest bathing, swimming in the ocean, or planting in soil, you can become more and more aware of your natural surroundings… and keep in your consciousness that everything we have and all that we are comes from the Earth.
Nina shares some readings about the embodied forms of the five elements.
You’ll be guided in the recitation of the Vedic Bhū Gāyatrī mantra. You’ll also sing kirtan to Bhūmi Devī. Bhū translates into “Earth, Mother Earth.”
As with all mantras, the names are not different from the form — and as you chant the mantras you’ll invoke Her presence from whom all things arise and return to in the cycle of life.
You’ll also have the opportunity to make a natural mandala of our own from your whatever’s around you — to place upon your altar.
In this module, you’ll:
- Learn how to set an intention in your mantra practice to transmit healing to the planet
- Chant second Vedic mantra, as Nina explains the meter and svaras (notes), as well as the meaning of the mantra and how to connect to it
- Come together to pray through song for the earth and your part in her healing
- Explore your own identification with the 5 elements of earth, wind, water, fire, and space
- See how dakinis (energetic beings in female form) and celestial sky-dancers embody these elements
About Nina Rao
Nina Rao learned traditional chants (bhajans) from her grandfather in a village in South India when she was nine years old. Her childhood was spent living in and moving between many countries around the world. Prior to rediscovering chanting with Krishna Das in New York in 1996, she worked in banking before switching to organizing and leading photographic wildlife safaris in Africa and India. For many years, she has been Krishna Das’ business manager and accompanist as well as a chant leader in her own right.
Nina tours with Krishna Das, playing cymbals and singing with him. In 2007, she recorded the track “Nina Chalisa” on Krishna Das’ CD Flow of Grace: Chanting the Hanuman Chalisa. In January 2013, she released her debut album, Antarayaami: Knower of All Hearts, which includes a duet with Krishna Das. Later that year, she was honored to accompany him at the Grammy Awards webcast performance. Her second album, Anubhav, released in 2018, was entirely crowdfunded.
For over 20 years she has supported conservationists in preserving the sacred wilderness and forests of India via her charity, Saving Wild Tigers. Nina regularly leads kirtan, chanting in Hanuman Chalisa workshops and retreats in her hometown of Brooklyn, New York, and beyond.
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