OM Chanting Fail: Top 3 Mistakes Chant Leaders & Yoga Teachers Make When Leading AUM
How to Lead a Sensational OM as a Chant Leader
When you’re leading a chant, particularly one involving Aum, your primary role is to create a safe and resonant space. This post highlights essential practices for chant leaders to help participants feel confident and connected.
Three Keys to Leading Aum Chanting
- Provide a Clear Tone
Establishing a clear, stable tone is essential. Use a harmonium, tuning fork, or your own voice to set a sonic floor. Choose a pitch that’s comfortable for both you and the group. This step ensures everyone feels anchored and secure in the chant. - Cue the Breath
Synchronize the group by clearly instructing when to inhale and begin chanting. For example, you might say, “Inhale… Exhale with the sound of Aum,” and start slightly ahead of the group to provide a strong guide. - Come Straight Onto the Pitch
Avoid sliding into the note, as this can create dissonance. Start directly on the pitch to ensure cohesion. For example, sing “Aum” cleanly rather than sliding into it, which can make participants feel unsteady.
Leading the 4 Parts of Aum Chanting
Guide participants through the four components of Aum for a richer experience:
- A: Encourage participants to open their mouths fully and engage the diaphragm.
- U: Transition into the forward-moving sound smoothly.
- M: Seal the sound with closed lips and let the tongue rest lightly on the upper palate.
- Silence: Allow a moment of stillness for absorption and integration.
Top 3 Mistakes Chant Leaders & Yoga Teachers Make When Leading AUM
- Failing to provide a clear starting tone.
Hardly anyone feels safe chanting when the pitches are sliding all over the place! HAVE A CLEAR BACKGROUND SOUND. A tanpura app like iTablaPro, a harmonium, a crystal bowl... anything with a clear musical sound that people can drown their voice into will make them feel safer to explore their own voice sound. - Not synchronizing the group’s breath.
Again, if a chanter doesn't know when to start, they'll fear singing out alone on a cliff of silence! Cue the inhale so everyone's together, then start the Auṁ off on a clear note that matches your background sound. - Sliding into the pitch, creating dissonance.
Lots of Indian folks do this, sliding from a lower pitch into the note they sing on for the duration... it's a style thing, and is fine if you're doing it on your own in your home. But when you start a group chant on a slide... let's just say it gets slipperier and messier and you end up with dissonant cacophony!
If that's your thing (a sound hurting OM, not a sound healing OM) you do you! It's my advice to start on a clear tone, and stay with it, so your participants can feel the strong solid sonic container (not a slippery slidey one) and feel safe opening up their own voice with you.
Trust me, I've led thousands of group OM chants and have taught over 500 chant leaders from 65 countries so I've seen how different leadership tecniques work or don't work!
Leading Aum is about more than technical precision—it’s about creating a space where participants feel safe to explore the sound’s profound resonance. By focusing on clarity, synchronization, and a supportive structure, you can elevate the experience for everyone.
Ready to lead your next Aum?
All About Aum
A juicy chant exploration of the sound therapeutic benefits of 🕉
Chanting OM is what you make it! Subtle changes in chanting technique lead to a variety of different direct experiences of the full transformative power of sound. In this 45-minute mini masterclass and chant experience, Let’s keep the conversation going in the comments. It makes much more sense to just make my next FREE Yoga of Sound experience be a mini masterclass on Auṁ!
The LIVE class will be FREE. If the recording is good, we'll post the replay and it'll be available by donation, though we'll offer an excerpt here and on our youtube channel. So if you want the FREE experience, and the chance to hang out afterwards and chat with our Heart of Sound community, be sure to attend LIVE!
Serve your community with sacred sound!
Does your heart long to lead others in transformative chant experiences?
Do you want to be a kīrtan leader, nāda yoga or mantra meditation teacher? We made this free peace mantras chant leader training for you to get started with easy, universal peace mantras (non-dogmatic, non-religious) that you can lead with or without instruments.
Use this free course to lead a mantras for peace chant session!
Welcome to our global community of peacemakers! This sound yoga teacher training is completely free 💓
Free Sound & Mantra Yoga Teacher Training
Discover the best sound yoga therapy, mantra meditation, and nada yoga FREE resources here:
- Dive deep with the world's first and only online sound and mantra 200HR & 500HR Teacher Training
- More free sound baths and chant experiences of all different types are available at HeartofSound on YouTube / Sound Bath Playlist
- Get to know Anandra through her IG reels and media appearances.
