A two-and-a-half-minute recording of "OM Shanti," performed by Daphne Tse and Anandra George at the International Yoga Festival at Parmarth Niketan in Rishikesh on 5 March 2015, is a small window onto a chant that turns up again and again in yoga gatherings: a short sung invocation built around the Sanskrit word for peace. The video has no spoken introduction, no printed lyrics, and no program notes beyond its title and description. That leaves the listener with the performance itself, and with the question the title poses. What is being asked for when a room full of people sings "Om" and "Shanti" together? This piece is an honest reading of what the source material gives us, plus a guide to the chant's meaning and how to listen to it well.
The clip was filmed at Parmarth Niketan, an ashram on the banks of the Ganges in Rishikesh, during the International Yoga Festival. Rishikesh has been a center for yoga teaching and spiritual gatherings for a long time, and a festival held there draws people who come to practice, study, and sing together. The setting is part of the recording. A chant sung in an open, riverside ashram carries a different weight than the same notes in a studio, because the place itself is already oriented toward devotion and practice.
The video was uploaded to YouTube by the Nagarjuna Nandivada channel on 12 March 2015, about a week after the festival date listed in its description. That short gap is a reminder of how festival recordings tend to travel: shot quickly, posted quickly, and kept as a record of a particular week rather than as a polished release.
The phrase is built from two words. "Om" is the sacred syllable that opens and closes much of Indian devotional and meditative practice. "Shanti" is the Sanskrit word for peace, and in many invocations it is repeated three times: shanti, shanti, shanti. That threefold repetition is common in Sanskrit prayers, where peace is asked for in the body, the mind, and the wider world, or sometimes as a way of closing a practice and sealing its effect.
Sung rather than recited, the words slow down. Each syllable has to be held long enough to be heard, and the ear begins to notice the gaps between phrases as much as the phrases themselves. That is the basic technique of a chant like this: repetition stops being a thought and becomes a sound you live inside for a few minutes.
A video under three minutes gives you no time to be a critic, and it doesn't need you to be one. A few practical listening habits help:
- Listen once without doing anything else, with eyes closed if you can, so the voices are the only thing in front of you.
- On the second listen, follow the breath. Notice where the singers breathe, because the breath sets the tempo of a chant more than any metronome.
- Pay attention to the room. Crowd noise, the open air, and the quieter moments all tell you something about the gathering.
- Notice when the chant feels like repetition and when it starts to feel like a single held note. Most people find that shift happens somewhere in the second or third minute.
None of this requires knowing Sanskrit or having a yoga background. A short chant rewards attention more than expertise.
Recordings from events like the International Yoga Festival are often modest in production and limited in what they show. A camera on a crowd, a few minutes of song, and a title that names the performers and the place. Their value lies in documentation. They hold a moment that was never going to be repeated exactly, and they let people who were not in Rishikesh that week hear what was sung there.
Because this particular video carries so little commentary, it also leaves room for the listener. There is no narrator telling you how to feel. What remains is the chant, the place, and the question of what peace you are asking for when you sing the word.
If this chant has caught your attention, the natural next steps are simple. Learn the meaning of the individual words in Sanskrit, since "Om" and "shanti" each carry a long history in the traditions that use them. Listen to other recorded versions of shanti invocations and notice how different singers shape the same words. And if you have the chance, sit with a live kirtan or chanting gathering, where the room and the breath do much of the teaching that a short video cannot.
The clip from Rishikesh runs less than three minutes. It is worth the time, and worth listening to more than once.
