Chanting As A Tool To Develop Your Powers Of Concentration
Chanting is the spiritual practice of repeating a word, a sound, a phrase or an entire poem, song, or verse. Chanting is a practice that many of the worlds spiritual and religious traditions uphold.
A chanting practice can hold many purposes. The nature of the purpose tends to related to the particular tradition or practice itself.
A commonality amongst all the chanting traditions is that chanting facilitates the development of concentration.
All of your attention is focused on the chanting of that mantra or word. Directed into that mantra is all your energy and your emotions. The sound you produce is the mantra or chant. If your mind naturally does wander as you start your chanting practice, it has to wander back in order to do the chanting itself.
All of this helps to develop concentration. In the yoga traditions they refer to this as “one pointed concentration”.
But what exactly is the purpose of developing concentration?
Having the ability to concentrate the mind provides numerous benefits. Obviously there are the benefits that help and can be applied in everyday life.
A capacity to stay focused. The ability to stay with the task at hand. The ability to develop your memory and not forget.
When you practice chanting this actually creates new neural connections in the brain. This is laying down new neural pathways of concentration.
In modern times there is the rise of ADD and all attention related disorders. Unfortunately the human mind is becoming something of a mess. The capacity to focus, concentrate, remember and actually retain information is become a lost art in todays age.
This situation is not assisted with the information overload that we consume as our diet and the various media we choose to surround ourselves with such as the TV, DVDs, film, mobiles etc etc.
A chanting practice helps the brain to regain and develop concentration. Once this concentration is developed, it is naturally and can be consciously integrated into your life to assist you in performing all the tasks you need to do that require focus and concentration. If you feel you could do with help of a little concentration, develop your mind and powers of concentration with a chanting practice.