Carrie Grossman

Carrie Grossman, who also uses the spiritual name Dayashila, is a singer and composer of devotional music based in Great Barrington, in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. She came to kirtan, the call-and-response chanting of the Indian bhakti tradition, on a first journey to India in her early twenties, after studying at Brown University, and has spent more than two decades since then learning and sharing sacred sound. Her recordings of Sanskrit mantras and hymns include the albums Pranam, Homeward, The Ram Sessions and Soma-Bandhu: Friend of the Moon.

Her teaching mixes chant with meditation and reflective talks on the inner life. On Insight Timer, where she has shared her work since 2016, she gives talks on bhakti as the yoga of love, on spiritual bypassing and on honouring the sacred feminine, alongside a ten-day course on opening the heart through mantra, and she has recorded a spoken telling of the life of the Buddha. She leads kirtan evenings in the Berkshires and at Kripalu guides retreats that combine heart-centred meditation, music and chanting with time for rest and inquiry.