Kirtan Kriya · Sa Ta Na Ma · naming

They ran Kirtan Kriya twelve minutes a day. After eight weeks, naming got easier.

JM Thomas · 21 August 2026

You press your thumb to your index finger at the kitchen table and you say Sa.

The lamp is on, or the window is doing the work, and your other three fingers wait their turn while you keep the sound in your mouth.

Kirtan Kriya is that twelve-minute chant-and-tap. You came because you want those minutes to do something after eight weeks.

Thumb to the index finger, then Sa

Kirtan Kriya is a Kundalini yoga chant-and-tap people already use when they want a short daily pass. You say four sounds: Sa, Ta, Na, Ma. As you say each sound, your thumb taps one finger.

Index for Sa. Middle for Ta. Ring for Na. Pinky for Ma.

You chant those four sounds out loud for two minutes, you whisper the same four for two, you keep them quiet in your head for four, then you whisper for two and chant out loud for the last two. That is twelve minutes.

You can sit down at the table for this. The chair is fine. The lamp can stay on.

They kept the twelve minutes for eight weeks

Newberg, with Wintering, Khalsa, Roggenkamp, and Waldman, printed this 2010 paper in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease so you can find the same file if you want the lab sheet later.

They called it a pilot. Fifteen people walked in with memory complaints. One person with Alzheimer's scored sixteen on a short memory sheet and could not run the chant-and-tap. Fourteen people finished. Those people were ages 52 to 77.

They ran the twelve minutes every day for eight weeks. They used a CD at home and kept a log.

Read the paper at doi.org/10.3233/JAD-2010-1391 and at europepmc.org/article/MED/20164557.

Naming animals got easier

Category fluency is a naming test. You name as many animals as you can in one minute.

After eight weeks, that naming got easier for the people who ran Kirtan Kriya. The score moved. The paper printed the cells in the sources card below.

They also took blood-flow pictures of the front of the brain. Those pictures moved too. The numbers wait in the same card.

Five people listened to Mozart

A small side of five people listened to Mozart violin pieces for about twelve minutes a day instead of the chant-and-tap, and that listen is a real nearby practice you can keep if Mozart is already your twelve minutes.

The chant-and-tap group is the one that moved on naming animals.

Keep the nearby OM chant

OM is a nearby different chant people already use. You can see that chant next to the Sa Ta Na Ma taps in the compare picture.

If you already chant OM, keep it. The mantra page on this site stays with that syllable.

Yoga nidra is a rest practice people do while they stay awake on purpose. SATS is an hour people use when they want a scene to feel real. A 40 Hz listen is for waking hours if you want sound in the ears.

Keep those. This URL is about the twelve-minute chant-and-tap.

Sources