Healing Through Sound in the Hindu Tradition

In the Hindu tradition, the Divine is a perfect balance of masculine and feminine energies. The gods and goddesses emanate particular energies that can support us to bring balance to these energies on our path of spiritual development.  If you missed it, you can read more about Balancing the Feminine and Masculine Energies within You here. 
 
In our modern world, there’s an emphasis on the masculine with less attention to our feminine side. We tend to rely mostly on our visual sense, a masculine energy, in our day-to-day lives, with less focus on our sense of hearing. In ancient cultures, the ear, the center of our hearing, was associated with the feminine with its more receptive, deeper, and mysterious qualities. 

​This is why sound and the quality of what we hear is so important! What healing and nourishment for our soul from hearing sound, quality sound. 
 
The ancient Hindu text, the Vedas, shares the importance of sound, “In the beginning was sound…” and Shakti was this sound, the feminine, dynamic energy of the Divine or Brahman.
 
Shakti is the most important energetic force in the Hindu tradition and can take many forms and names. Shakti manifests as divine cosmic energy that dynamically moves through the universe. We see this feminine energetic force expressed in a trinity of the Great Mother Goddess in 3 distinct forms: Saraswati, the goddess of wisdom, Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity, and Durga (or Kali), the goddess of power and judgment. 

​The first, the goddess Saraswati, reigns over creativity, wisdom and knowledge, music and the arts.  She also governs our speech – where we share our creativity and wisdom through words. 
 
The second goddess, Lakshmi, is the goddess of prosperity, beauty, and abundance. She helps us to embrace and appreciate the abundant blessings that exist in our lives and brings to us prosperity and possibility in our life’s journey.  She bestows upon us wealth – both spiritually and materially – which is our birthright.
 
Durga, the third goddess in the trinity, manifests as the goddess of strength and power in many forms, defending what is good and right in the world. She’s invincible! She’s considered divine feminine energy, Shakti herself. She can empower us to find our own strength to manifest what’s needed in the world. 
 

Shakti, who moves through these 3 goddesses and is responsible for dynamic and energetic force within the universe, can be seen as an agent of change, creating the new, destroying evil forces, and restoring balance in the world. 
 
When we turn to the chanting of mantras, we can remember that sound, a feminine energy, is the creation of the entire universe. Within this universal sound, chanting OM (A-U-M), a seed comes to birth as form, a masculine energy.  So, in sounding OM at the beginning of a mantra, we bring the masculine and feminine energies into balance within the sound. 
 
Now, it makes sense that, in ancient cultures, when physical illness was seen as a lack of harmony in the body, they used sound and music to restore health and balance in the body.  A “sound” and healthy body produces harmonious music. 
 
Discover more about using mantras to connect with the energy of a Hindu deity in my guidebook and audio recordings , How to Bring Life to Your Chakras: 7 Healing Mantras.  Join me in chanting a mantra invoking Durga to embrace your own power and strength.