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Vedic Chanting is one of the oldest living oral traditions, where sacred Sanskrit mantras are recited with precise pronunciation, rhythm, and intonation. More than a spiritual practice, it is a powerful method for harmonizing the body, breath, and mind. At Yukta Yoga, Vedic Chanting is taught in the traditional Krishnamacharya lineage, helping practitioners experience both its ancient wisdom and practical health benefits.

1. Balances Energy

The vibrations created through Vedic chanting help regulate the flow of energy within the body. As the mind becomes more focused and calm, practitioners often experience greater emotional stability, mental clarity, and a deep sense of inner balance.

2. Improves Breathing Quality

Every chant is synchronized with the breath, encouraging slow, mindful, and rhythmic breathing. This natural breath awareness reduces stress, calms the nervous system, and promotes relaxation while improving overall breathing patterns.

3. Enhances Lung Capacity

Regular chanting gently exercises the respiratory muscles and encourages longer, controlled exhalations. Over time, this practice strengthens the lungs, increases breath retention, and supports healthier respiratory function.

4. Positively Influences Health

The combination of focused attention, controlled breathing, and vocal resonance creates a positive impact on physical and mental well-being. Consistent practice may help reduce stress, improve concentration, support emotional resilience, and cultivate a greater sense of overall wellness.

5. Therapeutic Benefits

Vedic Chanting has long been used as a complementary therapeutic practice in traditional yoga. Its soothing vibrations and meditative quality help quiet the mind, reduce anxiety, and promote emotional healing. Many practitioners also find it beneficial for improving memory, enhancing focus, and developing a deeper connection with themselves.

Experience the Power of Vedic Chanting at Yukta Yoga

Rachel is an accomplished marketing professional and has risen the corporate ladder fast. Though it came at the cost of many sacrifices which she is ok with, when she looks back, she feels a sense of accomplishment. Working as a CEO of an ad agency at the age of 30, made her work her worship & her life tied to the hamster wheel. Career is her priority, and she is non-apologetic about it, but her heart lies in her passion, her paintings which she is such good at. She was an accomplished painter during her college days and now she doesn’t even get time to visit her small studio in her home. There are many half-finished ones waiting at the easel stand to be caressed by the paintbrush. With long working hours and weekly travels, she hasn’t been able to do justice to them and probably that’s the one thing she feels guilty of sometimes.

It was a lazy Sunday morning with no plans been made, she while relaxing in her Worli apartment, decided to spend her day finishing the long-pending paintings which have been waiting to get some attention from her for few months.

She prepared a black coffee and entered her small studio, and was about to get started, the doorbell rang…and to her surprise, as there is no one to visit her today, not even her maid. She opened the door and found a Big Basket delivery, but that’s meant for her neighbor, who will be back by afternoon. After taking their delivery, she came back and again started focusing on her painting…but within half an hour again the doorbell rang. This time it is the building sweeper asking for some old papers for sale. She somehow controlled herself, and sent her off with a big plastic smile and started again focussing on her job. She was mixing some colors, very focussed on the job and completely lost in her thoughts, again the bell rang and in shock, she spilled a little extra color on her palette which means she will have to do it again. This time at the door she found a Swiggy delivery not intended for her. The delivery boy mistook the floor number because of confusion from the security. But Rachel couldn’t control herself, she not only blasted at the poor boy and called the security below to give him a piece of her mind. She was so enraged, that even after that she couldn’t hold her still and shut her work out. She is suddenly not in a mood of seeing her paintings only. The day has been ruined…

So what has happened? Thinking about it, about an hour later she felt bad about the incident even wanted to apologize to the delivery boy and the security downstairs, but the damage has been done…her destructive anger has gotten the better of her.

Certain times when we go through an adverse situation, we burst out in rage if things don’t go as per our terms. Even though our rational mind can distinguish what bigger damage our emotional outburst will do, still we couldn’t control ourselves. 

But if we look deep into it or analyze Rachel’s situations, we can find that anger resides within us not outside and around us. It just needs some external stimuli for one to react like that. When the delivery boy didn’t react and simply apologized, the negativity came back to her only without affecting the other person and spoiled her concentration and the painting. 

When we have, an expectation set for an outcome, if the desired result falls short of it, we measure it by our own ideals. We often get engaged and make the situation worse without trying to understand the situation from other people’s perspectives. 

So, in the above case, if the delivery boy or the security got caught into the same emotion as Rachel as it was also not their fault too, the situation could have become worse. But as the outbursts were only from Rachel’s side, in the short term her adrenaline pump would have made her feel good, but when sense dawned on her she got disturbed as the negative energy came back to her. Anger is an emotion that is effective in the right proportion in the right context, just like snake poison, in the right proportions, it is a medicine. 

If we see our ancient asana practices we find a posture called Bhujangasana or cobra pose, which works in strengthening our back & core muscles and makes us stronger as a physical body. It also helps in strengthening us from inside like a cobra. It is like a cobra holds poison but never gets affected by it. Similarly, you may carry the anger, but don’t have to be engulfed with it. It should not poison you from inside.

Not just our anger, all our negative emotions which we carry within us like fear, disgust, rage, sadness, etc all have some uses to help deal with the external world and environment, but all need to be used in the right proportion, else we will be overwhelmed by it and lose control on our senses. 

There was a story of Vishakha in Buddhist literature. One day while she was busy grinding some spices her bangles were making noise and bothering her. As she couldn’t concentrate on the job, she removed a few of them, but still those bangles were a distraction. So she removed them one by one and at the end when only one was left, there was no more noise.

If we try to find inner meaning, those bangles are comparable to various impurities that are there in our mind, which hampers our spiritual thoughts. As ordinary human beings in our material world, we lack tolerance, compassion, peace, and get driven by greed, desire, pride, lust, envy, etc. These blind us in our actions. As we walk the path of material achievement, we find that to be endless as we can’t satiate any of our desires. In the end, we are bereft of peace end up becoming restless. But if we know how to walk the path of renunciation and withdraw each of our negative emotions we will only be left with awareness which will help us in uplifting our soul.

If we carefully notice throughout our life since our childhood somewhere somehow we had learned to differentiate between good and bad. If we sit back, lose the veil of our ego and reflect, we can clearly identify our deeds of what is good and what could have been done differently, yet while we are in motion or action, we tend to go with the flow as our perspective gets clouded by our emotions/ impurities. A spiritual awakening will only happen if we reflect and start becoming aware of our actions and thoughts.

Here in the story Vishakha, we can see a very important character of a human being which is being tolerant. In life, it is hard to avoid negative circumstances around us like criticism, quarrel, jealousy is very much part of our life and surroundings, but we can avoid reacting to them, rather try to avoid by removing them one by one.

When Vishakha was removing her bangles one by one she was withdrawing each obstacle that created noise and bereft her peace. In the end, only one remained left which is awareness then there was no more distraction.

In the field of Yoga, Japa is considered as an effective way to invoke the state of concentration of our restless mind by subduing the power of sense organs. Japa helps in shutting our mind down from all those external influences and helps in finding inner peace.

It’s nothing but practicing repetition of a sacred word or a verse or a mystic syllable or mantra, remembering the name of any deity and those repetition helps in bringing the mind to a state of absorption. One who finds the meditation is difficult Japa is advisable to them as it does not require any posture, time, place, and formalities. It requires the only effort and can be done at any circumstances.

One can begin with repeating Om or any scared word mentally with every breath and that can be done even while someone is busy in his or her daily chores. That itself will align the mind and prepare him for meditation.

A holistic way to lead a healthy and balanced life is what defines wellness.

We all are experiencing hastiness. Especially in this current tough time where work from home has become the harsh reality taking a toll on our physical, emotional, and mental health. From the one who is looking for a first job to the working moms trying to balance domestic and work responsibilities to the employee having loan burden, we all work in a competitive space with increasing daily demands.

To help the employees cope up with such a challenging and changing environment, a corporate wellness plan is introduced which not only provides health plans but environmental support for the employees to have a balanced approach towards life. The wellness program can be:

Awareness oriented – sharing the information about the choices to make for a healthy lifestyle

Activity oriented – combining the awareness with participatory activities

Goal-oriented – measuring the end results of a wellness plan

According to a study by the American Psychological Association, “89% of workers at companies that support well-being efforts are more likely to recommend their company as a good place to work.” Healthy employees lead to a healthy organization. By implementing the wellness plan creates a win-win situation that has a positive impact on both employees and employers. Some key benefits are:

Reduced healthcare cost

Reduced emotional reactivity

Greater productivity

Improved relationships among employees

Reduction in absenteeism

Positive effect on employee morale

Planning to implement an effective corporate wellness program is not that challenging. Let’s find out how!

Wellness is not one size fits all : Considering this itself is the true foundation to design an effective corporate wellness plan. An employer needs to understand that a corporate wellness program having the approach of ‘one size fits all’ would not meet their goals. Every employer is different having their own methodology to lead a healthy and balanced life and the corporate should bring that wellness plan that would bring flexibility and customization.

Customization is the key! The Corporate Wellness program will be successful only when the employees have the space to choose from the various options that the plan has to provide from pilates workout to cycling classes or from various yoga forms to meditation. By creating a wellness plan with a broad reach and diversity of options, the company can see a fair increase in enrollment and the desired result. So how do you implement such plans among your workgroups? Yukta Yoga provides you such a customized corporate wellness plan that caters to as many employees as possible offering a broad range of possibilities across different age groups at a preferred time

Conduct Surveys – Gathering information about the health of the employees is one of the most important steps to create and design an effective wellness plan. Based on this information an employer can find out which part of health and wellness are important to their employees.

Conducting regular surveys will help the corporate in many ways-

• Switching off those initiatives which are not a good use of time • Making changes to the existing wellness plans and optimizing them • Introduce any new initiative as per the employee’s demand • Understanding the health culture and the environments of the workplace in general • By knowing the health of the workgroup will help the corporate to know which wellness the program would be suitable to cater to their needs

Go for a simple plan

The key is to make the customized wellness plan but one to which the employees would make the most out of it. The simpler the plan is the more effective it will be. As per the survey, one drawback which most of the employees find in a wellness program is the hassle they have to go through while enrolling for any membership, reimbursing any fitness expense or paperwork that some programs require. In order to not to go through such complication, they end up not involving them in such plans considering their busy the lifestyle of lack of time-management

Make it simple

Offer one easy-to-use platform, where employees can opt-in for benefits, rather than juggling to find their own plans and end up being littered.

Awareness about wellness plans

One-time communication about wellness is never enough. This leads to convey clear information to employees and see how many of them have a better understanding of the ongoing corporate wellness program. Spreading the word is a strategic way to gain more participation from employees Employers should ensure that proper awareness is always present in the corporate as to what the wellness plan has to offer to each employee. In order to reach everyone, displaying promotional materials in high-traffic areas throughout the office and frequent communication is a must

Added benefits with the plans

The enrollment rate for wellness plans gets higher if the employees are receiving additional perks out of it. Such as flexible office timing, financial guidance or education, free skills up-gradation courses, and other voluntary benefits.

It would be an added benefit if an employee has the option to include their family members or friends in the wellness program. This not only encourages them to get social by involving other people but also generates a lot of excitement and energy. As a result, the members are less likely to opt-out from trying out any form of new activities

Incentivize the healthy changes

Simply introducing the health and wellness plan may not be enough motivation to increase the engagement among employees. As per basic principles of behavioral psychology, ‘People are driven to act by the positive consequences they expect from their actions’.

The approach of the wellness plan should be like bringing behavioral changes in employees from simply participating for incentive to actually making those changes as their new habit which is worth maintaining. Research shows, to increase the participation rate and engaging more & more employees, the corporate wellness plan should have wellness incentives like: • Gift voucher • Cash prize • Extra paid time off • Free lunch /dinner with family • Free goodies

Measure your plan’s success

With the introduction of any initiative, evaluating the effectiveness of the wellness program plays an important role for maintaining the consistency of health culture and implementing such more plans. Healthy behavioral change in an employee is the most important tool to measure the success of the corporate wellness plan. To do this well, make a proper evaluation plan at the start so that you can monitor the data collection with time.

For example, measure the participation rates, reduction in healthcare claims, the completion rate of the wellness plan, reduction in absenteeism, how many have claimed the incentive, percentage of employees who stopped smoking or have lost weight, etc.

Understanding The Truth Behind Prenatal Yoga & Childbirth

Pregnancy is the most transformative journey in every woman’s life. Apart from the excitement, myriad questions arise, mainly about labor and delivery. One of the most common questions expectant mothers ask is whether yoga can help with a normal delivery.

The simple answer to this question is that prenatal yoga supports a healthy pregnancy and it also prepares your mind and body for labor. However, it can’t guarantee a normal or vaginal delivery.

As every pregnancy is unique, factors like maternal health, medical conditions, baby’s position, and unforeseen complications play important roles in deciding whether a vaginal birth or cesarean section is the best option.

According to experts, practicing prenatal yoga with the approval of your healthcare provider and under the guidance of a certified yoga instructor can strengthen the pelvic floor, improve flexibility, develop confidence for childbirth, and promote relaxation.

How does prenatal yoga help?

Prenatal yoga is specifically designed for pregnant women. Unlike usual yoga sessions, it mainly focuses on breathing techniques (Pranayama), gentle stretches, relaxation, pelvic mobility, and mindfulness. Similarly, it avoids poses that may not be suitable during this period.

It’s been almost a month, and she has got not more than 10 new followers in her Instagram account… The recent post of her fellow colleague has accrued 500 likes, whereas just around 200 likes have hit the post with her favorite red two-parts… And, that’s not the end!! No matter how rigorously she has been working out for the last 5 months, she has only managed to shed 2-3 kgs, which is hardly noticeable. Aren’t these enough reasons to get stressed over?

It may seem to be a bit humorous, but just take a minute to delve into yourself; perhaps, you would also realize that you are not an exception either! Because, just like her, we all are looking for happiness in some way or the other. We all want to be happy which is totally not wrong. Happiness, in many sources, is often defined as our real nature. But, instead of trying to be happy, we have rather caught ourselves in hunting for numerous ways that can bring permanent happiness.

However, according to Vedanta, nothing can give you permanent happiness if the very source of it is going through constant changes. Ever since we are born our body, thoughts, emotions, perceptions are constantly going through some kind of changes of adjustments for sure. Most of the time, we are not aware of this fact. And, as a result, we are unable to see and accept things, people, and events in our lives as they are. This, in turn, starts sowing the seeds of anxiety, stress, and frustration within us.

So, you actually don’t need to study to understand stress is on the rise. Maybe, you are also the one to experience it from time to time. It may be a short-term or a long-term occurrence, or it can also happen repeatedly over time. When there are people who recover from stress more quickly than others, there are also people who tend to cling onto the same on an incessant note. Also, sometimes, we are unable to spot it though it is always there within us.

What is the solution, then? Watching over your own actions. Question yourself if the outcome will bring you everlasting joy. An outcome which won’t let you to regret in future for taking that particular action. Whatever the outcome try to stay detached from that and move on.

This way, you will be able to learn to control your senses by which our thoughts, perceptions, and actions are constantly being influenced.

Allow yourself to come out of the non-acceptance mode.

Asana Practice with Alignment | Yukta Yoga Refine your asana practice with safe, alignment-based teaching using props. Taught by Satavisha, rooted in Krishnamacharya’s tradition.

Advance your teaching with continuing education in anatomy, alignment, prenatal, and props-based practices. Designed for certified yoga teachers. https://yuktayoga.org/continuing-education-course/

Our retreats provide a unique opportunity to step away from the routine of daily life and embark on a journey of inward exploration. Our objective is to guide participants away from the external distractions and demands that can deplete energy and focus, creating a conducive environment for achieving that essential moment of Pratyahara—the withdrawal of the senses. https://yuktayoga.org/retreats/

Join our 200-hour Yoga TTC rooted in Krishnamacharya’s tradition. Deepen your practice, learn safe teaching, and gain confidence to guide others.

Calm your mind and balance your energy with guided breath practices. Learn safe, traditional pranayama with Satavisha.

Learn Vedic chanting with clarity and devotion. Improve pronunciation, rhythm, and experience the meditative power of sound.