Happy Eclipse Week!
You can use this healing chant for yourself, or to send healing energies to others. I hope you find it as nurturing to receive as I found to let it out of me. Listen on all your favorite services – a few are:
Here in the US, many of us have been eagerly anticipating the 2024 solar Eclipse, which will finally be here on Monday, April 8. Most households on the continent have a chance to see at least part of the sun obscured by the moon. (Don’t forget to wear eclipse glasses!) Millions are expected to travel to places of totality; whether weather cooperates is another story. Eclipses are a wonderful time to remind ourselves of our innate connection to, and dependence on, the natural world.
It just so happens that ra ma da sa, a song which invokes the healing potential of the Sun, Moon, and Earth, was recently released. I’m thrilled by what can happen when you weave the producing talents of Ben Leinbach into the inspired violin in the hands of Dan Ault and celestial harp under the thrall of Christine Tulis. Add cover art of an actual annular eclipse by Colin D. Young Photography, and you have exactly what we eclipse-obsessed humans want to see and hear!
I wanted to create a song specifically for healing. As many of you know, I’m involved with many online groups for people with EDS, Vascular Compressions, Tethered Cord, CSF leaks, and other related conditions. Daily, I’m in touch with people around the world and in my back yard with these conditions. There’s a lot of suffering there. Often it cannot be addressed by medical intervention, or people have tried one thing, only to make another issue worse. Surgeries sometimes fail and create more pain. Physicians disagree on diagnosis and treatment, and often label patients incorrectly as needing psychological intervention, alone. Some people want surgeries and can’t get them. Self-confidence is obliterated. Relationships are lost. A disarming darkness is found.
This is often the type of suffering which transcends our capacity to cope with intellectually. We need to find a way to connect to Source, whatever that is for each of us, in order to make sense of the noise and step into a quiet place where we can make the best decisions possible for ourselves and our loved ones. Often, our connection to nature can bring about that needed stillness, and bring us into a state of mind which reduces pain, helps us think more clearly and brings us much needed calmness of spirit to manage the inevitable ups and downs of an extended health journey.
In another little wink to nature and embracing its inevitable celestial clock, I sent this song to the “interwebs” for release on February 29th. I believe it may have actually released when I was in the hospital, recovering from Tethered Cord surgery. (That digital process is a little mysterious and I was otherwise occupied.) In any case, I had my own healing in mind throughout the writing and distribution process, as well.
When I first heard Snatam Kaur’s version of this chant, I was struck by the poetry of it. Here are eight words, each one syllable. (Shakespeare would be proud.) And when spoken or sung in chant, each one seems to have its own gravity; it felt like each word was pinging, resonating with my main chakras, one by one. Here’s a translation:
ra – Sun
ma – Moon
da – Earth
sa – Impersonal Infinity
sa say – Totality of Infinity
so – Personal sense of merger and identity
hung – The infinite, vibrating and real.
This chant invokes the powerful energies of the Sun, Moon, Earth, and Infinite Spirit to bring healing. Also known as the siri gaitri mantra, it is a relatively new chant – it was first heard in 1973 – and is commonly used in Kundalini Yoga. Considered a very powerful mantra due to its connection with the timeless elements of the universe, it calls for healing.
If any of those links don’t work, just search “Niki Naeve ra ma da sa” on your fav streaming service, and it should come up.
In gratitude,
Niki
P.S. I just found this picture from about a day and a half post-surgery and have no recollection whatsoever of it being taken three weeks ago. I think I was excited they let me sit up. 🤣
Niki Naeve 
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