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Borrowed from Sanskrit मन्त्र (mantra, literally “instrument of thought”).
I've been doing Yoga for a while now. I always found Mantras silly. Until Raghunath Cappo explained that whether or not you choose to chant a Mantra, you have mantras in your head anyways. To understand Mantras as the sentences that just get stuck in our head and are playing on repeat, for years on end throughout the day.
There is a German comedian, called Johan König. He had a program that roughly translated to "without rehearsal". There is a bit in it, in which he comes clean and admits, he did have one rehearsal. He did the routine for his manager and the only feedback he got from that was:"Johan, the important thing is, that you think it is funny.". A more accurate translation would be"...that you like it.". So I now see that as a mantra that got stuck in my head for years: "The important thing is, that you (I) like it.".
Do you know how people hunch their backs and their shoulders come forward while sitting in front of the PC all day? And how it is common knowledge, that you should draw your shoulder blades together, and sit up tall, lift you chest and draw you chin towards your chest. If you never done sports before and start with a yoga that "just" asks you to sit up straight, that is a challenge. Because while it can be done for 10 or 30 seconds, we are not going for explosive strength with that exercise. We want to hold that for 5 minutes, or 10. You might sweat, you will go through pain, you might be out of breath afterwards. But the more you do that, the more natural it becomes. The easier it becomes, to the point, where hunching over starts to feel unnatural.
While bad posture around the chest and shoulders is common knowledge, I have the theory, that the pelvis and lower back, need just as much correction. And that that is why for some men over 30, their guts start to spill out. Because for the shoulders you draw you shoulder blades together and down, try to squeeze that imaginary pencil between your shoulder blades. For your lower body, you should tuck you pelvis(which would be over-correcting), but actual lengthen your tailbone down, lift from the pelvic floor, draw you upper and lower abdominal wall into the center, move your bellybutton towards the spine while breathing out, not in. BTW: Shout out to Yoga with Adrienne, my favorite Yoga Teacher on Youtube... and that lead me to the following mantra:
"You become what you are.".
It also made me realize why The Matrix is my favorite Movie. Other than being a more than decent action flick, it is filled to the brim with Mantras. The 147 Delphic maxims could be seen as mantras. The only one I don't quite understand is 095:"Control your wife", then again, I don't have a wife yet, may I be wiser when the time comes.
Namaste
  
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Could you expand on the matrix mantra thing? I have never heard at this. I also don't know what the '147 delphic maxims' is referencing, maybe I don't remember the movies well enough.
Anyways, I don't do much chanting and don't do mantras, but I do spend time doing asanas, qi gong (not yoga i know - but it's in the ball park), and pranayama.
The other day I was struck by a thought. Possible the most commonly chanted word//sound is "Om". Some say it is the name of god.
Well, what do people say (at least in english) when they need to sync up their mind? They say "ummm". Essentially, making the same sound/vibration as chanting "ommm".
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ummmm, sure :D
When Neo visits the oracle, she asks him, "do you know what that means?" and points to the sign over the door, which reads "Temet Nosce". Which is the latin translation of the 8th Delphic maxim. Now Delphic maxims are 147 sayings, the oracle of Delphi gave to the greeks. With "Know Thyself", "Nothing to excess" and "Surety brings ruin", being the 3 most known.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphic_maxims
But for me personally, just a lot of things said in the matrix work as mantras: "Ignorance is bliss",
"Can you fly that thing? Not yet.", "I can only show you the door", "There is no spoon" etc.
"There is no spoon" is a mantra for Neo since he recites it, to remind himself about the truth of his world.
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To understand Mantras as the sentences that just get stuck in our head and are playing on repeat, for years on end throughout the day.
This is extremely interesting. Quite a thing to be aware of.
That kind of a thing can alter much of one's day-to-day mood, thinking patters, attention, perceptions, interpretations and thus, choices. So essentially, it can quite literally re-write a big chunk of one's life. In desirable or non-desirable direction. Because it's there, on constant repeat, it causes a lot of alteration that would otherwise not have been there.
If that is the case, it makes sense to check and test what sentences on repeat were there all this time. Since that would bring more clarity about one's day-to-day choices and how they were influenced - perhaps very randomly, and not desirably, in some cases.
It also relates to other channels or types of sensory data. Music's an example. And it's an example that can illustrate the issue above.
You hear some shit over and over, almost every single day, multiple times - it gets mantra'ed. It's somehow recorded and starts to repeat itself over and over, unless taken care of.
It was, strategically, a big nuisance when I worked at a store. A rather short list of songs were on repeat, every single day. Many or most of these songs were just kinda off. Some were absolutely shit beyond any description. Like fucking audio weapons designed to induce listeners to vomit uncontrollably.
I'd be walking down the street and I'd mentally hear some of that shit just randomly start playing. That'd repeat a few or more times throughout the day, unless I would barrage myself with other music (some good metal, for one), and repeat that music mentally when I'd hear that shit.
Same thing can happen when one's near somebody who repeats some stuff a lot of the time in certain situations. If that stuff's positive and reinforcing, great. Otherwise, it means work to be done - or be influenced by shitty attitudes that could get stuck on repeat, much like shitty music samples from shitty music pieces at a store can.
Awesomely interesting post. Reminded me to try and sign up for some yoga classes too, dammit. Meant to try that for a long time.
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You get me coffee. I hadn't even thought about music and colloquialisms. Your contributions are appreciated.
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EPT
