Deva Premal: The Medicine of Mantra
Sandie Sedgbeer: To coincide with the release of Deva, you and Miten launched the Mantra of Medicine live Facebook Series, in partnership with several well-known Doctors. What inspired that?
Deva Premal: I think if I hadn’t become whatever I am now, I would have become a healer in some way. In school, I was always attracted to biology, like taking classes in biology. When I first left school, I learned bodywork – shiatsu, massage, reflexology, cranial-Sacral – always in the direction of alternative healing, and so that idea was pretty selfish because I find it so intriguing when those two worlds meet. Last week we had a talk with Kulreet Choudhary, MD, who is a Neuroscientist and has created a hospital where the mantra is being chanted in the morning as part of the healing process for the patients. Then, there is Michael Finkelstein with his slow medicine concept and Dr. Kenneth Pelletier. They all come from different angles, but they have all realized that when both worlds meet there is magic, and even more healing can happen – to just have their angles on Mantras, and how they work is very intriguing for me.
Sandie Sedgbeer: On your world tour, which began in April and finished in November, you also played to homeless people and autistic children. I’ve read that you’ve been contacted by teachers and caregivers who have said how much Autistic children love the music. What do you think it is about your music that they love?
Deva Premal: We played at the Centre for Discovery in upstate New York, and it’s an incredible place. That’s where we can really see the power of Mantra. They have no concept of how old they are, or what they should feel when they hear them; they are just receiving the sound for what it is in that moment and responding to it just the way they do. They have no filter, they aren’t going to be polite, so it’s a direct transmission that really shows the power, and the staff just couldn’t believe they would sit for one-and-a-half hours without getting restless. It was just so touching and wise. I think first of all it’s the power of sound, the sounds are healing.
Sandie Sedgbeer: One teacher wrote to you saying that she was playing The Essence CD for her class as part of the noon-time relaxation hour and within a few weeks children who’ve never uttered a word began singing along with the mantra. That must be so gratifying, and of course, it’s proof as you said in the interview with Ken Pelletier that you don’t have to understand the meaning of the mantra to feel the benefits of it.
Deva Premal: You don’t have to believe anything, and for me, that’s the most important thing. We don’t have to have some mindset that needs to be in place for this to work. It speaks to all of us.
Sandie Sedgbeer: You and Miten have also used the mantra and your music for your own healing as well, specifically as an integral part of Miten’s healing from open-heart surgery earlier this year.
Deva Premal: Yes. The mantras, again, are proving their power because Miten had open-heart surgery on the 20th of March this year, and when we finished our tour, which basically lasted from May to now, I asked him: ‘How do you feel after this tour, do you feel exhausted, do you feel you need to rest? He said: ‘No, I honestly don’t feel any different from when I started. I don’t feel I’ve lost any energy from it.’
We also had a profound experience right after the surgery when he was still very much aware of having a lot of trauma in the body, so whenever he fell asleep, he would wake up in a kind of panic. Then he had a lot of crying, a catharsis, a big outburst of emotion to let out all this stuff where the body had been traumatized. We luckily remembered the long form of the Gayatri, the Seven Chakra Gayatri Mantra, and we put on the recording that we were working on at that time and it was incredible how it transformed the energy and brought peace. We could just come to healing sleep.
Sandie Sedgbeer: I was watching a video on Facebook the other day of a conversation you had with a physician living in India who shared how she used mantras in everyday life. I’ve always thought of it as being a kind of ritualistic kind of activity, but she says when she’s cooking, when she’s making herbs, she would use a mantra. Do you do that?
Deva Premal: Yes, for me that’s the way to use mantras; to infuse our whole life with an attitude of prayer or worship, like an awareness, and there’s no separation between, ‘Oh now I will chant a Mantra, or now I’m cooking or walking”, it’s all one. It’s beautiful to chant while cooking with the intention of nourishing and healing those who eat it. But just to start a meal with chanting a mantra three times changes the whole vibration of the meal. It’s incredible how quickly the energy shifts to a deep level of silence or relaxation or peace, and the more we can create these habits of chanting while we’re doing things, the more our lives will have more color and joy because we can’t separate it.
Sandie Sedgbeer: What you’re describing sounds like a continuing mindfulness practice, a continuing meditation.
Deva Premal: Yes. Also, chanting itself. Sometimes I feel it’s almost like cheating because it’s so quickly that we get a silence break with chanting. I mean, like when I sit just without doing anything, just silently, and close my eyes and try to watch my thoughts, my mind is busy, active, my body is restless, and when I sing in chant the silence happens. It’s like immediate. It’s vibrant silence, the thoughts are slowed down, and they don’t have such a grip over me. My body just wants to be in a silent place. It doesn’t want to be fidgety, or you know, so the great thing is it’s so much fun. It’s not like something strenuous we have to do to get there. We can sing and chant and the silence just happens, really so sweetly. That’s what’s so uplifting in the concerts also because then it’s like so many hundreds of people together and then there’s this pin-drop silence after a Mantra.
Sandie Sedgbeer: Your next Facebook Live event in the Mantra of Medicine Series is with New York Times best-selling author Dr. Larry Dossey, who’s going to be discussing mantras as a portal to the one mind. In the introduction to that event on your website, it says that when he published in 1993 his ground-breaking book, Healing Words – The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine. Only three medical schools in the United States had courses devoted to exploring the role of spiritual practice and prayer in health, and now there are nearly 80 medical schools that have instituted such courses. To see the two worlds converging, the physicians, the scientists, and the spiritual dimension as well, must be very gratifying for you as you’ve been aware of the healing power of mantras for 20 years.
Deva Premal: Yes, it’s so funny that we need to have people with titles to endorse our experiences – if a doctor says it then it must be right. And it’s also great that there are so many doctors who actually have the courage, experience, and the knowledge to explain it to our minds because sometimes we need that explanation to trust and let go into it.
Sandie Sedgbeer: Do you and Miten plan on continuing this series?
Deva Premal: Yes, we have a few more. We are going to do one with Bruce Lipton, and we will see who else appears, but there’s a few more that definitely will be coming.
Sandie Sedgbeer: We live in a world where there’s so much space, so much food, so many resources, and the technology to make the most of all of them. Yet, fighting, back-biting, anger, upheaval, hate crimes, and poverty are increasing rather than diminishing. With all that you’ve seen on your travels, all that you’ve experienced at your concerts, and all that you’re learning and sharing now through this particular Facebook Live series, it would seem that music, mantra, and meditation could be a powerful antidote to the rising rates of stress, illness, depression, and alienation that the world is experiencing. Would you agree with that?
Continue to Page 3 of the Interview with Deva Premal
