10/12/2025
We are delighted to have Hanna with us this Sunday for our Seasonal Stillness Mini Retreat. She will be guiding a beautiful sound session using her Shruti box and gentle Sanskrit chanting. The combination creates a deep, steadying hum that helps your mind switch off and settle, especially at this time of year when everything feels hectic.
This session is designed to ease tension, quiet the mental noise, and help you feel more grounded as you move into the festive season.
We have only a couple of places left. If you know you need a calm day before Christmas takes over, now is the time to secure your spot. Click the link for tickets.
I vividly remember my first encounter with chanting Sanscrit prayers and mantras. I was 24 and had recently moved to live at the Samye-Ling Tibetan centre. A female Swami, Swami Yogamudrananda Saraswati, who travelled the world chanting for peace, had come to sing at the annual tea party and I was really keen to hear her. The moment she opened up her harmonium, the only possession she owned, and began to sing I was completely entranced. I didn't know what the words meant but I could feel how they made me felt. It was completely mesmerising and a beautiful introduction into the ancient healing sounds of Sanscrit, and I was completely hooked. She gave me a copy of the prayer that she introduced us to and I carried it with me everywhere and still have the same old battered copy today. I also pass on this prayer in my workshops as she asked us to keep sharing it far and wide. I must have taught this prayer to over 1500 people in the last 20 years !
For many years I was desperately shy of chanting or singing in public and it was something that I only did for my own practice. I learned wherever I could, travelling to ashrams to learn more. I even chanted in temples in India, in the hot sweaty mass of joyous kirtan in the Silver temple, near the GoldenTemple, in Amritsar - a memory I will never forget. Gradually I began to introduce this nada yoga into my workshops and I was amazed at how well it was recieved. I remember an older lady in my workshop beaming, with tears running down her face, at how heart opening she found it. I realised that I needed to share these beautiful sounds more.
As my knowledge and confidence in sharing this beautiful ancient sound healing has grown the chanting and songs have become more and more a part of my workshops.
I am so looking forward to sharing this sound journey of the last 30 odd years in the afternoon session that I will be teaching with Tribe Fortune on Sunday in Dumfries. It will be a joy to share something which is so dear to my heart and to my own practice.
There are only a couple of spaces left, but all details can be found on the Tribe Fortune page.