Putting the Mantra into BodyMantra

One of the primary reasons why I decided to develop the BodyMantra product line was to help people incorporate ritual into their everyday lives.

In the early years of my private practice, I often created customized essential oil blends for my clients. Along with a personalized meditation or body-centered practice, they would use these custom oils between sessions to stay connected to the material we were unearthing with in person. Over time, it became clear that these clients were deepening their soul work by adding this simple tool to their daily routine. The oils acting as both anchor and amplifier. 

At that time, I was also keenly aware of what I call the “retreat effect” in many of my clients’ lives as well as my own. Stress would build and build until I was either completely toasted and/or feeling painfully disconnected from myself and the solution was to go on retreat to reset. For that short stretch of time, I would blissfully immerse myself in body:mind:spirit practices, but then once home, find myself slowly returning to old habits of running around too much and not taking time to ground and care for my spirit needs regularly. These sporadic cycles of spiritual self-tending weren’t enough.

Eventually and quite naturally, BodyMantra came about because of this [completely human and normal] tendency to show up with tons of presence and attention with our beloved practitioners and retreat facilitators, and then ever-so-slowly slip back into the distractions of everyday life, forget to feed our spirit lives more consistently.

Hence why the core principle of BodyMantra is essential oil blends for daily ritual. That phrase infused with my belief that daily ritual can be both uncomplicated and potent, unfussy and transformative.

The key to bringing that simplicity and depth together is the crafting of the ritual itself.

If you think about the things in your day that are already small but mighty rituals—making a cup of tea in the morning, taking the dog for a walk, going to yoga class, preparing dinner, your nighttime bath—they all have one thing in common: repetition of the same basic actions. You may change things a little bit each time (honey in the tea one day, cream the next), but the substance remains the same.

This is what the mantra of BodyMantra is all about. Creating a basis for repetition.

A mantra is a word or phrase spoken aloud (or internally) to bring focus to a meditation or other devotional practice. There are many other words that can be used in place of mantra if that doesn’t feel quite right for you: intention, prayer, affirmation, aspiration, dream, desire, invocation. The fundamental notion remains the same: a repeatable phrase that houses the essence of what you’re working with spiritually, emotionally, and/or physically.

Enter the second guiding principle of BodyMantra: one mantra at a time.

When we look beyond the material world and start asking questions about our purpose, beliefs and soul contracts, we often find ourselves traveling on a winding road, encountering a fair amount uncertainty. All while carrying on with our busy lives. 

This is why taking time to distill our spirit work down into a mantra that we can repeat daily without a lot of effort is a worthwhile practice. That mantra can act as a reliable touchstone when we’re moving through uncharted waters and still have to get the laundry done.

Here’s the critical piece to understand: distillation isn’t about stripping away the essential complexity of your spirit inquiry, but concentrating it. 

What I recommend is that you begin by sitting down for 30 minutes—set a timer—and journaling, stream-of-consciousness style, about an area of your life in which you want more healing, clarity, growth, or transformation. No edits. Pouring your heart onto the page. (Alternatively, you can speak into a voice recording app; the idea is to empty out your busy brain.) 

Once you clear your mind a bit, this practice usually leads quite naturally to the core content of what you’re working with—its essence. This is the basis for your mantra and daily ritual. Circle back to your writing (or dictation) and highlight words and phrases that feel particularly juicy, the ones that capture that essence. This is the material that you’ll distill down to a one or two sentence mantra, to speak or hold in your mind’s eye every time you apply your BodyMantra oil.

Let’s come back to the why of working with a mantra. It’s not mumbo-jumbo, this mantra business. Research suggests that chanting mantras quiets activity in the brain's emotional centers, eases anxiety and improves mood, and naturally slows the breath in a way that supports the body's parasympathetic, rest-and-digest response. In other words, mantras used consistently and with focused intention can positively impact the mind and body.

Add onto that the layer of speaking your mantra out into the universe, calling on all spirit helpers and divine beings to support you, and you’re actively magnifying the impact of your devotions.

Now comes the best part:

pairing your super-honed, cosmically-amplified personal mantra with essential oils. The oils serving not only as a tool to ground you physically into your practice, but also to deliver their plant medicine through body contact and scent. Let’s take those one at a time.

Ritual has long been accompanied in many ancient traditions by physical tools. A sage stick burned. A candle lit. A bell rung. Water being poured over the body. Physical objects and experiences helping us to embody our divine work, make the intangible, tangible. In this way, we bring our ethereal experiences down to earth, give them a place to land.

And then there is the plant medicine itself. Essential oils being a distillation of various plant parts—roots, stems, leaves and/or flowers (much like distilling your spirit musings into a mantra). Every plant carries its own vibration, wisdom and healing properties. And in turn, every BodyMantra blend of essential oils is formulated to transmit specific medicine to the body, which can impact physical as well as emotional health. This transmission is due in part to direct body contact—the tissues of the body absorbing the medicine—and in part to scent.

And while scent is just one facet of BodyMantra oil blends, it’s an important one. 

When a fragrance has been paired with an experience over a period of time, we come to associate that scent with the content of that experience. Smell is blessedly direct: the olfactory pathway connects straight to the amygdala and hippocampus in the brain, two structures involved in emotion and memory. 

That means that when you apply an oil and pair it with your mantra, you’re associating the scents of the oil with your intentions, which in turn sends very specific signals to the brain to reorganize and build new pathways aligned with those very intentions—your olfactory channels conspiring to point your neurochemistry in the direction your spirit is wanting to go.

All of these elements, together—mantra, plant medicine, scent, and daily ritual—is what unlocks the potency of BodyMantra oil blends and brings both support and dimension to your soul seeking.

To get even more personal and focused with your BodyMantra rituals, consider a Custom Blend Experience, where we meet one-on-one so that I can hone in on your specific needs and tailor a blend especially for you.

Related Reference:

Mantra: Sounds into Silence. Documentary film. Directed by Georgia Wyss. 2017. 

Kalyani BG, Venkatasubramanian G, Arasappa R, et al. "Neurohemodynamic correlates of 'OM' chanting: A pilot functional magnetic resonance imaging study." International Journal of Yoga, 2011.

Moss AS, Wintering N, Roggenkamp H, Khalsa DS, Waldman MR, Monti D, Newberg AB. "Effects of an 8-week meditation program on mood and anxiety in patients with memory loss." Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 2012.

Bernardi L, Sleight P, Bandinelli G, et al. "Effect of rosary prayer and yoga mantras on autonomic cardiovascular rhythms: comparative study." BMJ, 2001.

Herz, "The Role of Odor-Evoked Memory in Psychological and Physiological Health." Brain Sciences, 2016.