Original wisdom, Lucy Crisfield

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Original wisdom, Lucy Crisfield A space to listen to Original Wisdom! Explore mantra, meditation and enquire into the vision of yoga

24/07/2025

How to pronounce ‘kṛṣṇa’ ✨

Isn’t it wild how powerfully it changes things when we get the pronunciation right?!

Light shifts to dark with the flick of a tongue.

If you’re ready to learn how to pronounce, and read, and write any – yup, that’s 𝒂𝒏𝒚 – Sanskrit word, then now might be the time to sign up to my 𝙇𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙣 𝙩𝙤 𝙍𝙚𝙖𝙙 𝙎𝙖𝙣𝙨𝙠𝙧𝙞𝙩 course.

Early bird ends next Thursday (31st July) – drop a ‘Sanskrit’ below for more info. ༄ 🌱

Part 3 ~ from learning Sanskrit to meeting the teachers who shaped my path.This final part of the journey honours the th...
22/07/2025

Part 3 ~ from learning Sanskrit to meeting the teachers who shaped my path.

This final part of the journey honours the three Sanskrit teachers whose wisdom continues to echo through everything I share, and leads to the work I offer today.

I hope you’ve enjoyed following along.

If you feel drawn to explore more drop a ‘yoga’ below, and I’ll add you to my newsletter - where I share updates, teachings, and offerings from the world of Original Wisdom ༄🌱

My Journey ~ Part 2After twenty months on the road, I had a breakdown that left me unable to move for five months, and t...
16/07/2025

My Journey ~ Part 2

After twenty months on the road, I had a breakdown that left me unable to move for five months, and that changed me irrevocably.

Every cell of my being throbbed as all the pain and misunderstanding of my childhood came surging to the surface, desperate to be seen. My body pulsed with an intensity I couldn’t escape as I turned yellow, and I began to release the traumas that had long been buried in my system.

The sound of the Indian ocean was my companion. And later I came to realise that the Mother and Sri Aurobindo were also by my side.

It took five years for my system to recalibrate. During this time I worked for a cultural tour operator specialising in the Middle East and North Africa. I travelled extensively, planning historical tours and immersing myself in the Arabic culture and the Quran.

I have a deep respect and love for this area of the world, whose sounds and culture continue to weave their way in and out of my spiritual path.

I went on to study Hebrew at SOAS in London, and the recitation of the Quran in East London, drawn by a desire to connect more deeply with the sounds of these traditions.

It was also during this period that I encountered the teachings of Adyashanti, a teacher for whom I hold deep gratitude, and whose depth of presence continues to resonate through everything I do.

I travelled extensively, internally as well as externally, with a daily yoga and meditation practice, Vipassana courses, vortex healing, Network Spinal Analysis, yoga workshops, colonics, shiatsu and four years of painstaking holistic dental work to re-align my jaw and the cranial rhythm of my brain.

Gradually, I began to experience a physical and emotional stability that I had never known before, and it was this, that prepared me for the next profound turning point in my life:
a meeting with the sounds of Sanskrit.

I had heard countless Sanskrit mantra throughout my time in India, but it wasn’t until a Jivamukti yoga class back in London that I truly heard my first mantra.

My heart quickened.
My whole being leaned in.

What was that?!

A Google search led me to Austria, and to the first vedic chant teacher training ever offered by the Krishnamcarya Yoga Mandiram.

I was so entirely gripped by the Sanskrit resonance that I found myself spontaneously orientating, once again, around something that I could not define.

Whilst still immersed in the vedic chant course, I signed up for a three-year evening course in Sanskrit at SOAS, London.

And so began a journey of revelation that would unravel everything I thought I knew about sound, language, and myself.

My journey ~ part 1As I walked down Oxford Street one evening, I had the realisation that if I didn’t let go of all expe...
15/07/2025

My journey ~ part 1

As I walked down Oxford Street one evening, I had the realisation that if I didn’t let go of all expectations about career, perceived success and monetary gain, that I was going to die before my time.

Up until this point, an insatiable desire to prove my worth and to fulfil the natural capacity I had with academia and music had seen me sail through a first class honours degree, and a scholarship to the Royal College of Music.

A year spent in South America had started to erode my expectations about how my life might turn out. But it wasn’t until I entered my first yoga class high on class A drugs, that an unshakeable knowing took over my whole being, and I knew that this was now the focal point of my life at whatever cost it took.

So when I boarded a flight to Jordan at the age of twenty-four, with only a few thousand pounds in my bank account, I didn’t know when I would return, but I was prepared for it to be never.

India was my goal, and a need to immerse myself in yoga. But before I got there I lived with the Bedouins in the desert of Jordan, fell in love while studying Arabic in Damascus, let the sound of the call to prayer start to soften my atheist edges, and spent weeks walking barefoot along the flagstones of Jerusalem.

Eventually, I found myself in Rishikesh, India. I inhaled my last drag off a cigarette and I knew that now I was ready for the work to begin.

I began my schedule of spiritual practice and started to meet other travellers who had also let go of their lives back home, travellers who had been searching for their soul in Asia for years. Our conversations revolved around meditation experiences, childhood trauma, shamanic journeys and expressing ‘our truth’.

My world was cracking apart, it was painful and challenging, but I knew I was where I was supposed to be.

The journey continued with Reiki trainings in Goa, aṣṭanga yoga and Vipassana courses in Dharamasala, personal retreats in Ladakh and Tibet, Buddhist retreats in Kathmandu and a love affair with a Reiki Grandmaster in Pokhara. He took me rowing and dived into the water shaking with his love for his guru, Osho.

I was seeing people act in ways that would have been inconceivable to me back in London.

Could I let myself go in the same way?

It was a question I did not have to answer, because the tsunami of 2004 took me to the beach of Auroville, and to a man who would uncover parts of me that I had never imagined could exist. A psychotherapist who had fully embraced an alternative lifestyle twenty-five years earlier, he was twice my age, and a polyamorous raw foodist.

His purpose in life was to awaken, and he took me on as his personal project. We were together twenty-four seven, for six months.

I had an unending stream of questions, and he had an unending stream of answers. He also had the strength, and the wisdom, to reflect back painful patterns I was still clinging to, even when I didn’t want to see them.

But it didn’t take me where I expected...

Sitting on my bed during a break in my vedic chant teacher training, I watched my roommate, Jenni from Sweden, with a pi...
11/07/2025

Sitting on my bed during a break in my vedic chant teacher training, I watched my roommate, Jenni from Sweden, with a pile of translations by her side, studying the yoga sūtra. Her spirit of enquiry was so vibrant, I felt it igniting a flame of curiosity within me that felt urgent in its need to know.

I later heard Ramana Maharshi’s description of the spiritual seeker as ‘a deer caught in the jaws of a tiger’, and related it back to this moment: my life was no longer my own: I now had to know what the yoga sūtra meant.

My need to know the yoga sūtra guided the direction of my life with an intensity that surprised me, taking me to the feet of masters of the Sanskrit tradition, with whom I studied the entire yoga sūtra many times.

Fascinated with their sound, I listened incessantly to recordings of the sūtra as I traversed the streets of London muttering their sound forms under my breath, and spent the early morning hours in meditation: looking, sounding, and searching for meaning.

But there was something missing: the sūtra still felt separate to me, and I couldn’t grasp their meaning. That is, until, after almost a decade of enquiry, I met a sage who told me:

“meaning is found in the sound”.

At first, this felt like a simple, and perhaps obvious statement. But, as I sank deeper into the space from which these words came, I realised that the type of meaning I was looking for wouldn’t bring me the freedom I was looking for.

Instead, I started to sense a meaning I hadn’t yet known how to recognise.

So I stayed with the minutiae of every syllable of sound, sensing from where it arose, and into what it emanated: feeling the play of vowels and consonants cascading within my mouth - and I was taken away from the pursuit of knowledge, interpretations, and searching ever more refined levels of understandings.

I was taken to a place where all the meaning I needed was already here, alive in the immediacy of the moment.

ॡ - lṛ - the mother of the gods, the sound of earth. Calming and soothing the expansive fire of ṛ,lṛ is not a sound fou...
08/07/2025

ॡ - lṛ - the mother of the gods, the sound of earth.

Calming and soothing the expansive fire of ṛ,
lṛ is not a sound found in English.
Formed by resting the tongue behind the upper teeth,
its resonance hums in the space between tongue and palate.

A deeply restful sound,
lṛ is the voice of earth,
a grounding presence amidst the unfolding of creation.

While ṛ moves outward toward infinity,
lṛ draws us back toward stillness and form.
The manifest aspect of matter,
It stands at the penultimate threshold of creation,
and so, becomes the keeper of the unmanifest.

A paradox in itself,
its long form, lṝ, known as The Mother of the Gods
does not appear in any Sanskrit word.
It dwells only in the causal realm,
as a petal in the cakra at the throat.
Unspoken, silent, and unseen,
it carries the mystery where form and formlessness meet.

And from this deep and unfathomable rest,
a unified movement begins.
The seed of manifestation stirs,
as we turn towards ū,
the final step of manifestation,
the single, unified movement through which creation is made whole.

I’m frequently called a ‘Sanskrit scholar’, but what I share doesn’t belong to the world of scholarship.Instead, the San...
30/06/2025

I’m frequently called a ‘Sanskrit scholar’, but what I share doesn’t belong to the world of scholarship.

Instead, the Sanskrit I share, is not exclusive or abstract - it is a soundscape that resonates within all sounds, all languages, and even within all silence.

When we enter into the music of a language, we experience ourselves in new ways, as the structure of our thought patterns change, and we are able to express new nuances of experience.

The music of Sanskrit vibrates with a resonance that unravels the identities and beliefs we’ve formed to fit into the world around us. It leads us toward something deeper with ourselves, a sense of completeness that is often felt as a homecoming.

And this is the meaning of the word Sanskrit itself: ‘that which creates perfection’

A perfection that knows everything as already whole.

If you feel called to explore this powerful soundscape -

🌱 only 4 places remain for this round of Learn to Read Sanskrit

🌿 Super Early Bird ends today!

Comment ‘Sanskrit’ below and I’ll send you the details.

Who would have thought grammar could be so thrilling?!Well, not grammar exactly, since there’s no direct equivalent in S...
26/06/2025

Who would have thought grammar could be so thrilling?!

Well, not grammar exactly, since there’s no direct equivalent in Sanskrit for the English word.

Instead, the journey into Sanskrit is an exploration of who we really are, through sound, structure, and vibration.

And yes, it is thrilling to see what each new instalment brings. I’m constantly surprised by the jewels that reveal themselves along the way!

I’m deeply grateful for the fellow travellers who’ve shared this path so far. The next opportunity to join Learn to Read Sanskrit begins September 13th.

✨ Super Early Bird ends this Monday, drop a ‘Sanskrit’ below or send a DM for more info.

Who would have thought grammar could be so thrilling?!Well, not grammar exactly, since there’s no direct equivalent in S...
26/06/2025

Who would have thought grammar could be so thrilling?!

Well, not grammar exactly, since there’s no direct equivalent in Sanskrit for the English word.

Instead, the journey into Sanskrit is an exploration of the Self, through sound, structure, and vibration.

And yes, it is thrilling to see what each new instalment brings. I’m constantly surprised by the jewels that reveal themselves along the way!

I’m deeply grateful for the fellow travellers who’ve shared this path so far. The next opportunity to join Learn to Read Sanskrit begins September 13th.

✨ Super Early Bird ends this Monday — drop a ‘Sanskrit’ below or send a DM for more info.

ऋ - ṛ - the sound of fireMouth the cauldron,tongue the be**er -tip of the tongue rising, reaching,yearning for the peak...
24/06/2025

ऋ - ṛ - the sound of fire

Mouth the cauldron,
tongue the be**er -
tip of the tongue rising, reaching,
yearning for the peak of the mouth.

Breath brushes the tongue’s edge,
kindling fire,
scattering and transforming,
outward into the infinity of forms.

Birthing vision, form, and sight -
ṛ, the mid-point
of the mouth’s creative arc,
where fire becomes form,
and form, flame again.

ई - i - the sound of wind, movement, and power. Rising up from its rest in the cavern of the mouth,the tongue splits the...
23/06/2025

ई - i - the sound of wind, movement, and power.

Rising up from its rest in the cavern of the mouth,
the tongue splits the space in two.

You see, the Sanskrit ‘i’ is not a smiling English ‘i’,
instead, the mouth stands vertically strong,
while the tongue, alive with power,
reveals its upper side, bright, alert and receptive,
its lower - unfathomable and unmanifest.

Thus, duality is born:
the cosmic potential for two,
where ‘I’ can become aware of 'you’.

Where good and bad, night and day,
conscious and unconscious come forth.

And so, from the unity of space held in ‘a’,
‘i’, stirs with energy and direction,
crossing the chamber of the mouth,
and emerging as wind to birth two.

And with that, the dance of creation continues..
where does the mouth move next, from two?

Nuff said.But seriously:GPT is useful and all — but the em-dashing — And the moulding of the mess of my human-ness.Does ...
22/06/2025

Nuff said.

But seriously:

GPT is useful and all — but the em-dashing —
And the moulding of the mess of my human-ness.

Does anyone else smell it?
The saccharine, sugar coated wall of perfect-ness?

Oh for the punctuation flaws,
The words out of place.
The unvarnished rendition of YOU-AS-YOU-ARE.

Cos honestly,
It is in the unfiltered-ravines
That I found my God.

And realised, the power in me - in us:
The creative current of life.

Transmuting thought into word,
Word into world.
We are miracle-beings:

Communing.
Expressing.
Praising.

So, fellow comrades - where do we venture from here?

Into the glossy veneer of mirrors?

Or, into our voice:
The expanse,
Singing the depths of our hearts?

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About Original Wisdom

Original Wisdom is a pathway for those wanting to experience the teachings of the Yoga Sūtra, the Bhagavad Gītā, the Veda and associated works for themselves through an immersion into sound, meditation and scholarly precision. It is the labour of love of a Sanskrit journeyer, of someone who was ‘got’ by a need to know the inner teachings of yoga, ‘the word’ and sound.

The teachings of Original Wisdom weave a precise and clear roadmap of the Sanskrit language with an experience of the sound of the language, allowing people to hear the subtleties of resonance and to trust the authority of their own experience. As we explore mantra together so we learn to walk the revelatory teaching of the great works of yoga philosophy and Original Wisdom is born; a knitted thread of both being and becoming.

Original Wisdom creates the space to enter the cosmic vision held within each letter of the Sanskrit language. And for those wanting to walk the path of intellectual illumination, Original Wisdom offers the teachings of Pāṇini, the great visionary of the Sanskrit language whose breathtaking exposition breaks open the understanding of our own language so that we begin to speak every utterance and hear every murmur of the mind as a whisper of the reverence of life herself.

As I walked down Oxford Street one evening I had the realisation that if I didn’t let go of all expectations about career, perceived success and monetary gain, that I was going to die before my time. Up until this point, an insatiable desire to prove my worth and to fulfil the natural capacity I had with academia and music had seen me sail through a first class honours degree, and a scholarship to the Royal College of Music. A year spent in South America had started to erode my expectations about how my life may turn out, but it wasn’t until I entered my first yoga class high on co***ne, that an unshakeable knowing took over my whole being and I knew that at whatever cost it took, this was now the focal point of my life. So sitting on a plane to Jordan when I was 24 with only a few thousand pounds in my bank account, I didn’t know when I was going to come home, but I was prepared for it to be never.India was my goal, and a need to immerse myself in Yoga. But before I got there I lived with the Bedouins in the desert of Jordan, fell in love while studying Arabic in Damascus, let the sound of the call to prayer start to break down my atheist tendencies and spent weeks walking barefoot along the flagstones of Jerusalem. But eventually I found myself in Rishikesh, India – I inhaled my last drag of a cigarette and I knew that now I was ready for the work to begin.