When the most boring mantra bears fruit
Reflections on Sādhana with Margaux Knox
Two years ago, I found myself wanting to learn more about yoga philosophy, and the non-dual tantric lineage I was told modern yoga was derived from. I’d been a certified yoga teacher for nearly 4 years, but I still felt unclear on the philosophical parts. My yoga teacher training was extremely dense and high quality — I could tell you all about somatics, or ideal alignment in any pose — but when it came to a dharma talk or dropping in a bit of insight from the Yoga Sutras, I was very unsure of myself. Every time I thought I had it all figured out, I’d read something else that complicated it, and I’d keep my mouth shut. I struggled to offer energy-focused practices that were genuine and powerful, because I knew so much of what we know about the cakras is muddied with new age thought. The more I read, the more confused I got, as the contradictions piled up. I wanted to clear things up for good.
One day, I saw a video on YouTube where Jacob Kyle explained that svādhyāya (Self-study), one of the niyamas of the 8 limbs of the aṣṭāṅga path of yoga, didn’t actually mean “getting to know your desires, needs, boundaries, and preferences,” as I’d repeatedly seen people saying all over social media, in yoga classes, and even in my teacher training. Svādhyāya is a process of studying not our limited egoic self, but the “capital-S” Self. It’s the study, and recitation of sacred texts. Hearing this lit a fire in me, and I knew my next step in exploring yoga, tantra, and non-dual philosophy.
Unfortunately, as I began reading, I realised I didn’t have anywhere near enough knowledge and context to make sense of much of what I was seeing. I didn’t know where to start to build the foundation. Fortuitously, I got an email announcing the launch of Sādhana School, and I knew it was exactly what I was looking for. I spent the next several months in Sādhana School diving deep into the material, reading the texts, and clearing up the contradictions. The core aspect of the program was, of course, sādhana (daily practice) with one mantra. This is where I struggled to stay engaged.
At the start of Sādhana School, Jacob advised us to practice with the mantra ‘haṁsa’ daily. I’d been introduced to ‘haṁsa’ in my yoga teacher training years before, but as its inverse ‘so’ham’. The mantra translates to “I am That” or “That I am”, with ‘That’ being the divine (Śiva, Śakti, Brahman, the universe, pure awareness). It’s a mantra we’re already repeating again and again, because it’s expressed through our breath: ‘haṁ’ as the inhale, and ‘sa’ as the exhale. By simply breathing, we are constantly reaffirming our oneness with the divine. By centring our sādhana around it, we study and come to know the Self. I thought it was interesting in theory, the non-duality expressed in such a simple mantra tied to each breath, but I found the practice boring. So, during my yoga teacher training, I ended up pursuing Buddhist mettā and vipassanā meditation styles instead.
With our accompanying deep study in Sādhana School, the mantra certainly had some new appeal, but I still found the practice difficult to anchor to. I thought maybe my mind was just too busy for a mantra like this. Perhaps I needed the structure and control of something like vipassanā, which aims to turn away thoughts and feelings to make space for the practice. Instead, tāntrik practice invites in all these experiences, and shows us their non-duality. This felt hard, and I was annoyed at not being able to turn off my thoughts to experience the mantra without distraction.
Despite my struggles and boredom, I did my duty of practicing with it most days, but my practice fizzled out a few weeks after the final term of the first year of Sādhana School. Fortunately, our year-end retreat breathed new life into the mantra as I was finally able to shift my approach from consciously repeating the mantra to listening for it. I experienced profound dreams, physical healing, and a new ability to truly engage with the mantra. It was so intense that it actually left me feeling very disoriented for several weeks following the retreat.
When I was asked to return as a Teaching Assistant for the second year of Sādhana School, I found the curriculum brought even more depth, and yet… I once again became inconsistent with the mantra. Even though I could now hear it more clearly, and had felt its impact on retreat, the boredom and annoyance crept back in. I carried it through the first and second terms, but soon stripped back to only practicing with my initiatory mantra. I had skipped ‘haṁsa’, and its derivatives, for months by the time we reached retreat time.
The profundity of the haṁsa mantra is not lost on me. We’ve explored it in great detail across the 2 years of Sādhana School. From Mary Reilly-Nichols’ passionate expositions, to Jacob Kyle’s intellectual explorations and emotional disclosures, to Nataraj Chaitanya’s poetic waxing on the mantra’s nectar, it’s been made very clear to me how powerful this mantra really is. Intellectually, I get this, and I could even explain it to you in detail. But that doesn’t make it any less boring sometimes! This, of course, is the challenge. To stay with the practice even through seasons of boredom, distraction, contraction, and delusion.
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I’d love to say that, as a TA in Sādhana School, I’ve always stood to that challenge, but there would be no use in me lying. I’ve absolutely let the practice fall by the wayside to keep space for my initiatory practices. Sometimes Sādhana feels dry, or scattered, or irritating, or like straight up torture. It has its seasons. In those times when it’s been particularly challenging, I’ve reserved that suffering for the initiatory practices I’m obligated to do instead of forcing myself to sit through two additional seemingly fruitless sessions a day on top of them.
Approaching our year-end retreat for a second time, I once again found myself feeling a bit guilty for neglecting the core mantra practice, but this time I was also bracing for the intensity. I’d found new depth in my practice as we explored bhāva, rasa, and longing throughout the last couple of terms. I felt far more connected to the divine on an emotional level, and I wondered if this would make this retreat even more destabilising than the last. I just wasn’t sure I had it in me. I wondered if I’d just end up sitting back and observing, being more of a support as a TA rather than an active sādhaka, simply because I couldn’t weather the power of it. Maybe this was why I couldn’t extract much nectar from this mantra. Perhaps I just didn’t have the capacity to hold its potency yet. I resigned myself to this.
It seems it’s always the times that I stop grasping for a certain experience of the mantra that I can actually go deeper. On retreat, I experienced the mantra like never before. ‘Haṁsa’ was suddenly far more than its translation, “I am that”, an expression of our non-dual nature. It was Śiva and Śakti. The mantra isn’t a simple calling to the divine, but a form of Them. I experienced the goddess through it in deeply intimate ways. I truly felt union with the divine, now for extended periods of time. I found myself longing to get back into practice, instead of dragging myself to the mat, exhausted and bracing for it. While the first few days brought almost overwhelming feelings of ecstatic pleasure, there was a point when that gave way to a profound sense of peace. This was bliss. This was oneness. This was what I had always thought tāntrik meditation was supposed to be like, and yet it was also simultaneously far beyond anything I thought possible. What was uniquely different from the year before is that I didn’t feel destabilised by it at all. I felt so calm, completely at ease, and madly in love with reality.
The work we’d done through the year around longing, bhāva, and bhakti opened the door for a deep relationship with my iṣṭa-devī, and She showed me our oneness in every way. I had visions, I heard Her speak to me. I watched the endless fractal field of reality unfold before me, and I melted into it. I felt my body become pure light, love, divinity. I knew that this is what it always was, that there was in fact nothing that wasn’t this.
If you had asked me what practice would have carried me to this state of bliss, I never ever would have guessed it would be the ‘haṁsa’ mantra. I’d practiced with it on and off for 2 years, and for stints before that as ‘so’ham’, and it was only through my trust in Jacob’s guidance that I kept coming back to it. I try to stay consistent rather than collecting mantras and practices, but there were times that my faith wavered for sure. To think this mantra would be the vehicle to this level of connection, love, and bliss, just as Jacob said… That would have been unfathomable to me just months ago. The mantra has been my anchor every day since.
While I can’t say it always feels easy, and I’m always fully focused and feeling that same peace as I did on retreat, and I’m in constant awareness of the non-dual nature of reality… what I can say is that, since then, I’ve never missed a practice. I never cut back to just my initiatory mantra. I sit, listening for ‘haṁsa’ twice a day, every day. Not because I always feel completely one with Her in practice, but because every time the bell rings at the end of my meditation session, I always think “Just a little more. A few more breaths. Ten more minutes. I want to stay with You longer.” and I feel Her respond “We’re never apart.” And every time, I feel it a little deeper. It seeps a little further into my awareness. And that… That is the essence of ‘haṁsa’. That is the fruit of the practice. Knowing just a little more with every breath that I am unseparate from Her, just as She is (and we are) unseparate from Śiva. I am always fully one with the deepest love imaginable, and every breath is a chance to feel it more fully.
If you’d like to explore the haṁsa mantra and its teachings further, you may be interested in:
Summer Swan Song: a 21-day journey with the Haṃsa mantra.
August 10 – 30, 2026 | 11:00 AM ET | Live Online, Daily
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