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Mantras for Managing Anxiety
For centuries, Hindu meditators have chanted mantras to obtain and deepen a state of focused spiritual connection. Now modern medicine manages anxiety disorders with mantras.
Sanskrit combines the words for mind (man), and vehicle or tool (tra) to form mantra: a tool or vehicle to drive the mind into a desired state. “Om” is perhaps the simplest and briefest mantra. A number of other religious traditions similarly utilize repeated vocalizations of chanted spiritual phrases as an act of soothing and grounding one’s mind — whether saying the Rosary, chanting Jewish prayers, or reciting Koranic verses. Iterating affirmative, secular, phrases appears to evoke similar states of focused relaxation.
More than fifty years ago, cardiologist Herbert Benson began studying and popularizing the physiologic benefits of eastern meditation practices. In research for his best selling book, The Relaxation Response, he and his colleagues demonstrated that meditation activated the parasympathetic nervous system and induced a state of deep relaxation. Studies showed that reciting a mantra relaxed even inexperienced meditators, and that the relaxation deepened as individuals became more practiced at their meditation. Mantras appeared helpful whether in Sanskrit or the person’s native tongue.
