Medicine music

The word mantra comes from Sanskrit: man means «mind» and tra, «instrument». A mantra is, literally, a tool for the mind: a few syllables repeated with the voice, again and again, until the noise inside grows quiet and only the sound and the breath remain.

You don't need to understand what they say to feel what they do. Their strength lies in the rhythm, the vibration and the repetition. When you sing, your exhalation naturally grows longer, and a long exhalation is one of the simplest ways your body has to move from alert mode to rest mode.

In India, Krishnamacharya taught chanting together with the breath: for him, breath and voice were part of the same practice. There is also a branch of yoga devoted to this, naad yoga, the yoga of sound. Several women felt this connection with chanting too. Indra Devi was Krishnamacharya's first Western student; years later she settled in Argentina and brought yoga in Spanish to thousands of people. Swami Sivananda Radha, one of the first Western women to become a swami, wrote a whole book about chanting, Mantras: Words of Power, and taught that any voice, just as it is, can sing them.

Medicine music feels closer to home. These are simple songs, many of them in Spanish, born in women's circles, in ceremonies and around the fire, to be sung together with the voice, a drum or a guitar. Their lyrics speak of the earth, the water, the moon and the body.

They're called medicine because they accompany what you feel: they help you let go, calm down, celebrate and remember that you're not alone. When we sing in a group, voices and breaths fall into step, and something settles inside.

You don't need to know how to sing. Your voice, just as it is, is enough.