Next time you're in a yoga class or sitting in meditation and you hear Om Shanti,
Shanti,
Shanti.
Here's what you can do with those words instead of just letting them float past you.
Shanti means peace.
But not the kind where everything around you goes quiet and calm.
It's more like an anchor.
Everything can still be moving around you.
Chaos,
Noise,
A hard day.
And you've got something steady inside that keeps you from being swept away by it.
That's the piece we're talking about.
And it's repeated three times because each one is actually speaking to a different source of disturbance in your life.
The first shanti is called Adhibhautika shanti.
This is peace with the world around you.
Think about the traffic that made you late,
The co-worker who snapped at you,
The plans that fell apart without any warning.
That's the territory this one covers,
And this is where you're asked to find peace anyway.
The second is Ati Devika Shanti.
This is peace with the forces bigger than any one of us.
The weather,
The unpredictable.
The things that happen that no person could have controlled or seen coming.
It's easy to feel small against something like that,
But this is where you're invited to find peace anyway.
The third Shanti is Athyantaka Shanti.
This one is closer to home because it's peace with what happens inside you.
Your own racing thoughts at two in the morning,
The anxiety that shows up without an obvious reason.
The ache that seems to come from nowhere.
This is peace with yourself.
Even when your own mind feels like the loudest room in the house.
So when you say it three times,
You're really covering the whole map of what makes a human life hard.
What happens around you.
What happens beyond you,
And what happens within you.
And here's the part I want you to really sit with.
You don't have to feel peaceful for these words to mean something.
You can be in the thick of any one of these three,
Maybe even all three at once,
And still say them.
It's less a claim about how you feel right now and more of a direction you're pointing yourself towards.
So next time you hear it.
You'll know exactly what's being asked of you.
Peace with the world.
Peace with the forces beyond you.
And peace with yourself.
Om Shanti Shanti Shanti.
