Sound of Resilience: U

(crashing waves) Welcome back friends to the exploration of sounds through mantras. We've looked at the primary two vowels the ah short and the long version ahh. E short and ee and also accompanied it with certain practices, certain gestures. We'll next look at a third primary vowel which is the oh and we'll look at it in it's short form and the longer version with ohh. And see how it adds a slightly different dimension when you elongate the sound a little bit.

So, the sound oh is the last vowel that the human vocal instrument can produce. It's produced by bringing your lips together, oh. Sometimes you hear people doing it as oo, it's not oo. Try and get it as rounded and soft as you can with oh. Do that, oh.

Exaggerate it, pout your lips nice and long. (laughing) Yeah, try that. Oh. Lovely. It's the oh that you encounter in the word flute.

Oh. The quality of the sound oh in it's vibraty nature is the quality of expansive power. It is that sound that helps to sustain, contain, and protect everything. Strangely enough it is also kind of a dualistic sound because while it holds some things in it and creates the space, it also is responsible for letting things disappear. So it destroys while it creates, it also destroys something to allow new creation to emerge.

That's the process of life. You have to give up to get something else. We can't get everything in life. So the sound oh is a very good expression of this law of the universe that holds everything and in order to maintain that balance has to create and let go at the same time. So oh therefore because of it's power of creation and the power to sustain as well as to protect has a certain benefit at the physical level which is that it helps to improve our work and the effort that we put in.

It gives strength, stability, and durability. Got that? Strength, stability, and durability. At a psychological level it is connected more with emotional power and resilience. You can feel that, oh.

Yeah? And at a spiritual level it is said to open up one's being to new discoveries. So, I would suggest that the best time to try out the oh, or the need for the oh, would be if there is a sense of unstability that you feel that whatever effort you're putting in is not bearing results and that you would like to continue further in order to, in order to feel that confidence to achieve something by sticking, by hanging on there really. So that's when the sound oh can help to build in that stability of your will. Right?

So, we'll try to practice this together. Again, sit in a comfortable position, close your eyes, take a breath, and do the sound oh. Lovely. The next time you do it I invite you to pay attention to the breath and also to see if it does something to the space. If you had to represent the sound physically what kind of action would come to your mind?

Try and become sensitive to that. Yeah? So, let's close our eyes, take a breath, and do the sound oh. Once more. Take a breath (breathing in deeply) oh.

The suggestion that I have to accompany the sound is that it is like an opening up of your palms like as if a flower was blooming. It's an unfurling of your fingers and your palms. So as you do the sound oh imagine that you're creating that stability within yourself. It can start like a seed and then open up and feel the stability of your palm with the sound oh. We try that together.

So close your eyes, fold your fingers together, take a breath, and do the sound oh. Lovely. You can add more visualization to this if you have a very specific instance where you would like to apply this experience of stability. Then, see whether the sound is in any way helping you to feel more, more resilient, more stable in that position. All right.

So now that we've done the sound, the short vowel oh, we'll look at the longer vowel ohh. As we have noticed in our previous vowels the lengthening of the vowel helps to add more force into it. It adds more expansion in it. So close your eyes, do the sound ohh, and see what experience it corresponds to. Let's do that together.

Close your eyes, (breathing in deeply) deep breath, ohh. So the quality of the sound ohh, the long vowel oh, it is like wave. It's as if it seems to carry a lot of things with it. And it is the vibraty feel that helps to sustain and opens up the present space and protects everything in manifestation. So, the way that I would suggest that we do it with an action is to imagine that you're giving the whole universe a big embrace.

So imagine very concretely that you're not the limited figure that you associate yourself to be, expand your being, take a deep breath, and then as you do the sound ohh, embrace the biggest of galaxies you can imagine. Lovely. We'll do that using the sound ohh this time. (breathing in deeply) Take a deep breath, ohh. Lovely.

You can feel that it holds the space in a very special way. The sound of ohh therefore is almost like the sound of love itself. It is the sound that at a physical level promotes healing energies. At a psychological level they say it helps to break resistances because of its expansive loving nature. And it also said to clear up the subconscious and it can be done in two gestures.

So, one is the sense of embrace, but because of the dualistic nature of the sound you can also do it in a gesture of giving. So, from your heart you give it out and expand it into the universe. Can we try that once together? Let's do it. So the first time when we do it sit in a comfortable position, take a deep breath, and as you do the sound ohh, embrace the universe as strongly as you can.

The second time as you do the ohh, expand from your heart outward and see the difference it creates in the space within you and outside of you. So close your eyes and this time as we do the sound ohh imagine that you're giving a nice embrace to the entire universe. So take a deep breath (breathing in deeply), ohh. Take a deep breath and this time with the gesture of giving expand your hands from your heart outwards to the universe. (breathing in deeply) Take a deep breath, ohh.

So normally I like to play the visualization related to the sound and I invite you to try this experiment. So think of the people that you really don't like, okay. The ones that you like least I request you to hold them closest to your heart and as you do the sound ohh imagine that you're giving them a nice embrace. And listen to your ohh. Listen to how a small change in your mind has a change in the way your sound is produced, the length of your breath can change.

So, thinking of all those people that you don't like, and do it sincerely mind you, no cheating on that, and I say that I hope there aren't too many that you don't like because your hand would get stuck quite farther. (laughing) So, think of a person, think of the people that you don't like and with the gentleness of the ohh, give them a nice embrace. And then think of the people that you love and unconditionally with the gesture of giving repeat the sound oh. The sound oh being the sound of love is a sound of forgiveness and self-giving. So the more we practice the sounds, we will see how they can start softening our relationship with people because my dear friends one thing one becomes aware of in this work of mantras is that when we get stuck in certain constructions of our mind and emotions we also restrict our own spaces, our own existential spaces.

So if there are people that we can't stand, then at some level we have also blocked our own existential space. So the work really in this journey of sounds and mantras is to expand our being so that even that which is not pleasant to our nature can be written over with the power of who we are. So, practice the oh, allow yourself to expand, and feel the freedom of joy of that experience.