• What are switchwords
• How to use switchwords in everyday life
  1. Negate bad thoughts
  2. Find, retrieve or memorize things
  3. Get out of jams or lose bad habits
• Making a switchword sentence
• How to combine multiple switchwords
• Table: A list of useful switchwords for love, health and work

What are switchwords

James T Mangan dedicated his life to understanding the power of individual words. In his book, The Secret of Perfect Living, published in the 1960s, he coined the term switchwords. Switchwords work because they bypass the conscious thinking minds and reach out to our subconscious minds. They are words that, like switches, help us turn off the blocks in our subconscious and turn on our hidden potential.

Amazingly, these are simple words we use in our day to day lives. However, when we use them with a focused intention, they start creating magic. To categorize them as a manifestation tool, however, is to sell them short. Switchwords are an amazing clearing and cleansing tool.

How to use switchwords in everyday life

You can use switchwords for good health, money, love, weight loss or any other intention you may have. Let’s look at three examples of how switchwords can help you in your everyday life.

1. Negate bad thoughts

I was taught switchwords and how to apply them in a happiness class. Of all the switchwords, the one that particularly caught my fascination was “Cancel”. Every thought carries energy. Using the word ‘Cancel’ clears the energy behind a negative thought. It can therefore prevent a negative intention from manifesting. So for a week I experimented. Every time I had a negative thought, I cancelled it by repeating, “Cancel, Cancel,” in my head a couple of times. Sometimes I even put a red cross across it in my mind.

For almost a week after I began, I found that I was cancelling every other thought. One morning as I woke up, I had the first thought pop into my head: Cancel. It was truly a moment of elation for me. I started experiencing a mind free of negative thoughts. I became aware that the mind is not the content, but rather the stream of awareness where thoughts come and go.

2. Find, retrieve or memorize things

Soon afterwards, I started experimenting with other switchwords. “Reach” a word which is used to find something or solve a problem, became my next favorite word. I couple it with the word “Divine” which means to work miracles. After all if you have lost something, it feels like a miracle when it shows up. I had the habit of misplacing my keys all the time, so “Reach Divine” was a real life saver. Additionally, this phrase can also be used to help you recall or retrieve. During a job interview, I used “Reach Divine” to memorize my technical fundamentals that I had forgotten to brush up and it worked. It is not only recalling, but also memorizing that you need on occasions like a job interview. “Care” helps you to memorize and retain information. I repeated the phrase “Care Divine” after studying a module for an interview. Sure enough, I remembered things a lot faster.

3. Get out of jams or lose bad habits

So much of our life is spent in traffic jams, especially if we live in metro cities. Chanting ‘Divine Order Now’ clears traffic and helps you get out of jams. Adding ‘Halfway’ to this mantra can make a distance seem short. Another handy switchword that my mother used for a long time was ‘Off’, which is used for sleeping or quitting an unwanted habit. She often chanted ‘Off Divine’ before sleeping and started falling asleep faster and better. An acquaintance of mine also used ‘Off Divine’ every time he smoked or had the urge to smoke to help him get rid of his habit.

Chanting ‘Divine Order Now’ clears traffic and helps you get out of jams

Making a switchword sentence

The trick to using switchwords is that the more playfully you apply them, the easier it is to see results. Moreover, there is even a template that allows you to combine different switchwords to help you affirm what you need. It reads something like…

“Bring Together With Divine Love <put your choice of switchword here> Now Done Thanks”.

For example, to manifest your heart’s desires, you may use the switchwords “Find Charm”. You can use these words in the template like this: Bring Together With Divine Love Find Charm Now Done Thanks!

How to combine multiple switchwords

• Don’t crowd all the switchwords into the same phrase or sentence. For example, use one phrase for health, another for prosperity, another for self-esteem and so on. Break down different areas of your life and apply switchwords to them
• Make sure you are not using conflicting switchwords. For example, if you are looking to get publicity—for which you use “Ridiculous”, and at the same time use “Cut”, which is used for moderation or cutting down, the end result may not be as effective as using ‘Ridiculous’ and a word like “Hole”, which means to appear attractive.
• I have found that using maximum four switchwords for one purpose works well, especially if you put these in the above template.

Have fun while you play with switchwords and experientially understand their essence.

This was first published in the October 2015 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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Vedic chanting, as the name suggests, is chanting Sanskrit sholkas [verses] from the four Vedas—rig, yajur, sama and atharva. The school and lineage I am affiliated with— Krishnamacharya yoga mandiram—chants from the yajur veda tradition.

What makes the chanting and its origin [the exact dates are amorphous] so interesting is that these verses were actually ‘heard‘ or what is known as sruti, by the sages when they were in deep meditation who then passed on this vidya [knowledge] to their disciples, who further passed on the chants to their disciples in the guru-shishya parampara [student-teacher tradition]. Sruti is what forms the Vedas.

Vedic chanting is governed by strict rules of pronunciation, length of notes, continuity of the sound, the pitch, where to pause and the force of syllables, so that we can stick very closely to the meaning of the chant and thereby have the correct effect in terms of vibrations within the body and in the surroundings as well.

The benefits of chanting are innumerable

On the gross level, we work on the breath when we chant. A chant is done on an exhalation and therefore it becomes a pranayama. On the mental level it requires dharana [focus] on the rules, and correct and effective pronunciation of the words and sometimes complex sentences. On the subtler and energetic level, the mantras create vibrations, which in turn affect us in our vital energies or what we call the ‘pranic level’. Some mantras, for example, are heat producing, some cooling, and some meditative. Some are in praise of certain energies like Laxmi, the Goddess principle of abundance, some for Narayan to invoke peace or then the more intense Shiva energies. Some Mantras deal with the purusa [source] or the energy of creation, making the mantras more esoteric or abstract, requiring introspection and reflection; some mantras are chanted for health and some for protection.

One would ask how are these mantras relevant to us today?

My mentor Radha Sudarajan, a yoga and Vedic chanting teacher-trainer and direct disciple of TKV Desikachar says, “The relevance of the practice today is because of its multi-layered benefits. Mantras work on many levels. On the physical level, they are an act of exhalation purifying many impurities; as one lengthens ones’ exhalation one also lengthens inhalation thereby energising oneself and making oneself lighter. On the mental level, it’s absorbing and concentrating, and the vibration of the effect of the mantra is calming; hence it reduces stress and agitation. On the level of the heart, it alleviates tightness in the heart space and releases negative emotions. Finally, on the spiritual level, which is the final objective of the Vedas, it is to link with the paramatma, our higher selves.”

In my experience, the beauty of the practice lies in its universality; anyone can do Vedic chanting—men, women, children, people suffering from mental physical ailments and yes, even those who don’t understand Sanskrit, as the vibrations of these mantras are all pervading and powerful, inducing us into a state of yoga through abhyasa [practice], vairagya [dispassion], shraddha [faith] and ishwara pranidhana [self surrender].

This was first published in the May 2015 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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You can make up your own mantra if you want to; the words in a mantra have no significance at all. Words and meanings are not what mantras are about. So, any ordinary phrase, any meaningless word, can serve as a mantra.

Whatever mantra you chant, it makes no difference, because the whole purpose of the mantra is to concentrate your mind.

Let us understand how mantra japa (chanting) works.

What is Mantra Japa (Chanting) and How It Works

When you chant a mantra, all the energy used in your thoughts is released to flow into the mantra. Only the mantra remains in your mind; all other avenues of thought are closed, all other outlets for your mental energy are shut off; there is nowhere else for it to flow.

Normally, when you are thinking, your energy flows in countless different currents; one thought travels North, another South, another East, another West. When you think, you travel in many different directions. You are not one, you are not a unity; you are divided. But, when you chant a mantra, all the energy begins to flow in one direction.

If we use a lens to converge the rays of the sun, fire can be created. The fire is hidden in the sun rays, but when they are separate, at the most some heat can be created, not fire. It is when they are concentrated together that the fire appears. In just the same way there is a great fire hidden in your mind, but as long as the rays of the mind are separate, only a little heat is there. Mantra is a method to concentrate the rays of your mind together. The moment this happens great heat and tremendous amount of energy is created.

Beware of Siddhis

If you consistently practice a mantra, many phenomena relating to energy and power will begin to happen in your life, and they will provide great nourishment to your ego. Whatever you predict will come true, whatever you describe will happen exactly as you have said; if you curse it will come to pass; if you grant a wish it will come true, because so much energy and power is concentrated in you that your statements begin to materialise. The only reason for their materialisation is that when a person can invest great power in the things s/he says, his/her words enter directly into the unconscious of the listener—the arrow flies straight to the other’s heart. And, when anything reaches the heart it starts taking effect.

Once your words begin to come true, your confidence will grow and you will feel ever more powerful. The more your words come true, the more you will feel yourself to be full of some divine power, some siddhi—the power to do miracles. This confidence will strengthen your mantra, and the mantra will increase your confidence; slowly you will come to experience many powers. Yoga has named these experiences of power as siddhis.

These siddhis are the greatest obstacle on the way to realisation. Patanjali has mentioned them in the Yoga Sutras, so that one can keep clear of them. Never move in that direction; if you have, then come back—the sooner the better, because all the time spent in their company is time wasted, and every time you travel further in that direction, your return becomes more and more difficult.

Godliness is a Different Search

My own point is that the world means the search for power, the search for siddhis; godliness means the search for peace, the search for emptiness—and, in this search you slowly disappear and dissolve. But, in pursuit of siddhis you will still be there in the end, and there will be no trace of godliness. In pursuit of peace, in the end, you will not remain; only godliness will remain. It is out of necessity that one of the two has to disappear, the two cannot exist simultaneously.

Yes, the power-trip into siddhis will strengthen you, and this is why those who practice the use of mantras seem to be so full of ego. The ego of the rich man does not even compare, nor that of the politician who prides himself on his position. And, there is a good reason for this. Money can be snatched away, money can be stolen; what is the value of money? And, one cannot rely too much on a political post. It is here today, tomorrow it may not be. But, the power of a mantra is more reliable. No thief can steal it, no public opinion can change its status. The power of the mantra depends solely on your own mind, not on anyone else. So, you can feel more powerful, more self-reliant, standing on your own two feet.

A seeker after siddhis has already gone astray, though there is going to be much in it to interest him/her—the ego is always ready to be fascinated by such matters. An ant was coming towards you, and through willpower you altered its course; the ego is highly impressed by such feats, even though the act in itself is of no importance at all.

Why I Don’t Give You a Mantra

Mantras are a source of power, and it is true that all the religions have devised mantras, because all religions fall from the search for peace to search for power. So, I don’t give you any mantra—nor do I have any to give you, because a mantra is given when the search is for siddhis, for power and prosperity. I am not going to strengthen your mind; I am going to dissolve it. I will cut into it, and then wait for the layers to peel off one by one. Just as the layers of an onion are peeled off, so the layers of your mind will gradually drop away until finally the whole onion has disappeared. Nothing of the mind will remain, and you will have attained the emptiness.

How to dissolve you—this is the great mantra. Concentration will make you more solid, meditation will dissolve you.

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