Spiritual Serendipity – with Sri Devi

Yoga and Veda Recitation Teacher, Sri Devi, likens spiritual practices to the performing arts as she feels both help you connect to your core. She encourages students to feel the mantra and allow it to do its work. How? Read on to find out…

By Sophia Ann French

What do yoga and the theatre have in common? I would say nothing, but I would be wrong. Yoga and Veda Recitation Teacher, Sri Devi, studied theatre in college but chose to teach theatre instead of being a performer. She ran a children’s theatre company in New York and Massachusetts (USA) for 15 years. But when she moved to Maine and started a family, she turned her attention to her daughters and family life, which is also when she began studying yoga. When she likened yoga to the theatre, I initially didn’t see how, but she explained, “I was teaching musical theatre, so there was a lot of singing and dancing. When we practise any art form, we connect to our core and figure out how to express it. That essence of connection with our individuality while knowing that we are in something together with other people is where I see the similarity.” When she explained it like that, I understood what she meant because Veda is high-caliber poetry, so in a way, it is also an art form that helps us connect and engage with life with joy. 

Like many students of Veda, Sri Devi discovered chanting practices through yoga. It took her many years to build a spiritual practice, and recalling her journey, she says, “I didn’t come from a spiritual family. We didn’t go to a church, and we didn’t have any spiritual community. But I knew that something was missing. I studied Buddhism for a while and explored spirituality. When I discovered the Hindu deities, I felt a calling and chanting came into my life when I attended a Yoga Teacher Training. I feel lucky to have attended this particular TTC because my teachers studied extensively in India and offered a full-bodied cultural awareness programme. Of course, what we were practising was kirtan and not Veda recitation, but even then, the chanting just stuck to me like glue. The vibrations of Sanskrit and the chanting gave me my first real and tangible experience with God, and I just wanted to know more about this practice.”

Spiritual Serendipity 

I love hearing stories of how students found their spiritual practices, and I often find that when students genuinely seek their spiritual path, they are miraculously shown the right direction. In Sri Devi’s case, her yoga teacher’s teacher is Prem Sadasivananda, a Sanskrit scholar and a beloved member of the Veda Studies community. Moreover, Prem is also in the same Indica Veda Studies Teacher Training programme that Sri Devi is currently studying. “I started attending Prem’s Bhagavad Gita classes online and studying Sanskrit with him. I wanted to study chanting more, but Prem wasn’t teaching chanting at that time. Then COVID happened, but right before that, my yoga school went on a trip to India, and during COVID, I started building an online community to chant. I’m a sound healer and a Reiki practitioner, so healing is part of my dharma. This community I started would meet weekly to chant, and we did that for around two years. The beauty of a spiritual community is that it amplifies our practice when we share it. I was still studying with Prem, and that’s when he told me about Shantala. As soon as I saw the Veda Studies website, I knew I had been looking for her. It is so amazing how we find these connections in life. I signed up for the Veda Studies Foundation Course and studied every self-guided course I could. Studying with Shantala helped me finally understand why I have always been drawn to Hindu deities. I love how she explains the deities and how they have a name and form but are all embodiments of the same universal quality inside each of us. This made me realise that when I’m chanting and when we’re all sitting in a community and chanting, we’re vibrationally aligning with this underpinning of energy. We all feel so separate in our lives and our minds, and chanting gets underneath that and enables us to connect with a feeling of oneness, not just inside ourselves, but collectively,” says Sri Devi.  

Like Sri Devi and several other students, studying and reciting Veda has enhanced the Indic spiritual practices I did before Veda recitation. Veda is the source of Indic Knowledge Systems, so it’s the foundation of these practices. Sri Devi agrees, saying, “Practice without context doesn’t allow us to connect 100 percent. Even Shantala tells us about the importance of studying with a lineage, and she has grown up with the tradition, so her family and her lineage hold her experience. Studying with Shantala has deepened my connection to the practice and made me a better student. Just studying with everyone from the Veda Studies community makes me feel like a tradition is holding me and gives a feeling of deeper connectivity to the source, to spirit, to God, to everything.”

Feel It Before You Read It

Sri Devi came to Veda Studies because of her love for chanting, and she is currently enrolled in the Indica Veda Studies Teacher Training Programme. She’s doing the programme to offer her students greater authenticity because while studying Veda, she understood just how precise and rigorous the practice is. It is not an auxiliary practice to yoga but a practice in itself. “Having done the TTC, I will teach with greater respect for the practice. It made me realise that you can’t just learn Veda recitation from a Youtube channel. I hope that through taking this TTC, I can be a voice for the importance and the value of understanding how to recite Veda correctly and how much it takes to do that. I hope to help people understand that a whole different thing happens when you focus on getting the sounds right and feeling that resonance. There is no quick way to do that. The Veda Studies programme helped me understand the value of focusing on each component of mantra practice,” explains Sri Devi. 

In addition to the practical aspects of Veda recitation, Shantalaji also focuses on theory. While Sri Devi loves the context that this provides, she advises beginners to experience the practice and then get into theory, “There is so much value in the vibrational quality of Veda. I love the theory aspect, too, but I will say that when you are just beginning the practice, don’t get bogged down by the theory and let the mantra do its work. I love how Shantala approaches theory because she gives context to the practice, but I enjoy its vibrational aspects, too.”

Words of Wisdom

Speaking of advice, I asked Sri Devi what advice she would give to an absolute beginner. “If you hear a Veda mantra and feel something, it’s calling you, and you should just go for it. It will change your life. And if possible, visit India. I’m grateful that I have been able to visit India, and it is a powerful journey, so if you can see India, go for it.”

To connect with Sri Devi, email her at [email protected]