Kirtan: A Path to Peace, Happiness, and Wellbeing
by Darren Marc Levene
In my twenties and early thirties, I experienced periods of depression that would last for months at a time. I rarely spoke about it. It was simply something I lived with. Much of my suffering came from my mental and emotional reactions to life. Small things could trigger big responses. I imagine many people can relate.
Everything began to shift when I discovered yoga. For the first time in my life, I experienced inner stillness. I remember lying in savasana and never wanting to get up because I was in such a state of deep peace. Often, after others left the room, I would remain seated, absorbed in meditation.
Through meditation, I began to realize that peace was not something I had to create—it was my essential nature. While this realization didn’t immediately end my suffering, it revealed something profound: there was a deeper part of me beyond thought, beyond emotion, and even beyond the body.
Gradually, I learned to create a little space between what I came to understand as my true self—the eternal soul—and the thoughts and emotions that had so often overwhelmed me. Slowly, a greater sense of equanimity began to emerge, and the periods of depression became less consuming.
Shortly after discovering yoga, I discovered kirtan. Kirtan is a call-and-response singing practice rooted in Bhakti yoga, the yoga of love and devotion. Simply put, we sing to God. Where yoga and meditation left off, kirtan took over. Over the next several years, leading kirtan became a powerful pathway of healing for me, offering peace, happiness, and wellbeing in an increasingly chaotic world.
Over time, I noticed that kirtan was doing something very specific and very profound. While meditation often quieted my mind, kirtan opened my heart. Through the repetition of sacred sounds and names, something inside me softened. The constant inner dialogue—the judging, worrying, and replaying of old stories—began to loosen its grip. In its place arose feeling. Devotion. Connection. Love.
One of the great gifts of kirtan is its accessibility. You don’t need a trained voice, musical ability, or even an intellectual understanding of the Sanskrit words being sung. Kirtan meets us exactly where we are. The practice works through vibration and intention. The mind doesn’t need to understand; the heart already knows. I often say that even if you don’t know the words, your soul does. Something deeper than language recognizes the truth being expressed.
In kirtan, we sing names of the Divine—not as an abstract idea, but as a living presence. These names point to qualities we long for: love, compassion, strength, peace, wisdom, and grace. As we sing them again and again, we begin to remember that these qualities are not separate from us. They already live within us. In this way, kirtan becomes a process of remembrance—of who we are beneath our conditioning, our wounds, and our fears.
Modern life can be relentless. We are constantly stimulated, constantly connected, and constantly asked to perform and produce. Many of us carry unspoken anxiety, loneliness, or grief. Even when life appears “fine” on the outside, there can be a quiet sense of disconnection within. Bhakti yoga offers a remedy that feels both ancient and deeply relevant. Rather than asking us to fix ourselves, bhakti invites us into relationship—with the Divine, with one another, and with our own hearts.
There is something profoundly healing about singing in community. When we gather in kirtan, we breathe together, sing together, and share a common intention. The sense of separation softens. Walls come down. I have witnessed countless moments where people arrive guarded or heavy and leave lighter, more open, sometimes even joyful without knowing exactly why. The heart has its own intelligence, and kirtan speaks directly to it.
I am continually reminded of kirtan’s power as a healing modality through lived experience. Recently, while leading kirtan in Key West as part of a Florida kirtan tour, I noticed a woman who was in tears for nearly the entire practice. She wasn’t falling apart—she was singing. She was breathing. She was allowing something deeply held to move. She was singing her way through grief. Moments like this are deeply humbling. Kirtan has a way of unlocking sadness, hurt, and pain that we unknowingly store in the heart. In this sense, it is not merely soothing—it is transformative.
This experience brought to mind something Ram Dass once said: that bhakti yoga is about polishing the mirror of the heart. When the mirror is polished, the light of the soul naturally shines through. I have witnessed this again and again while leading kirtan. Even when people don’t know exactly what they are singing, or who they are singing to, something profound happens. The mantras—sacred sounds passed down through centuries—work directly on the heart, bypassing the intellect and reaching places words often cannot.
On a personal level, I have seen how reliable this practice is. There have been many times when I’ve arrived to lead kirtan feeling distracted, heavy, or simply not in a great mood. Without exception, by the time the chanting ends, something shifts. I feel more open, more grounded, and more at peace—more connected to my inner essence, which the ancient yogis described as sat chit ananda: truth, consciousness, and bliss. This is not an abstract philosophy for me; it is a lived experience.
Participants often report a similar shift. People leave feeling lighter, clearer, and more connected than when they arrived. And perhaps most importantly, the effects are cumulative. Each kirtan builds upon the last, gradually reshaping how we meet ourselves and the world. Over time, the heart becomes more available, the mind less reactive, and peace more accessible—not as a fleeting experience, but as a steady undercurrent in daily life.
In a world that often feels divided and overwhelmed, practices like kirtan remind us of our shared humanity. When we sing together, we are no longer strangers. We become voices in the same prayer, hearts beating in the same rhythm. Peace is no longer an abstract ideal; it becomes a lived experience. And those moments matter. They change us.
Bhakti yoga does not ask us to renounce the world. It asks us to love more deeply within it—to offer our joys and our sorrows, our doubts and our hopes, into something greater than ourselves. Through kirtan, we learn that happiness is not something we chase; it is something we uncover when the heart is allowed to open.
Looking back, I can see that my journey with yoga, meditation, and kirtan was never about escaping pain, but about discovering a deeper truth beneath it. Peace was never absent; it was simply obscured. Bhakti has given me a way to return to that peace again and again—through sound, through devotion, through love. And perhaps that is why kirtan feels so essential in the modern world: it offers a simple, embodied, heart-centered path back to ourselves—and to one another.
This spirit of bhakti lives at the heart of my new single I Am Complete, a love song to Krishna—known as the sweetness of God—featuring the beautiful female vocals of my friend Julia Berkeley. It is offered as a reminder that wholeness is not something we become someday, but something we remember when we turn toward love.
Find Darren at:
www.awakenwithdarren.com
https://www.instagram.com/darrenmarc111
Listen to his new single at: https://open.spotify.com/track/6TXaYGJT820scxOnFnGl0d?si=0d905e81cf8540f6 or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSx-EawG3vc
Darren Marc Levene is a musician, kirtan leader, and teacher devoted to the path of Bhakti yoga. Through music, mantra, and community, he shares heart-centered practices that support peace, wellbeing, and spiritual connection in modern life. Darren leads kirtan gatherings, retreats, and workshops around the country and offers his work as a living prayer for healing and wholeness. Learn more at www.awakenwithdarren.com
