(UNDATED) One recent snowy Friday night, rather than watch a movie or slug about the house, I decided to do something new and, hopefully, constructive.

That’s how I wound up lying on the floor in a candlelit yoga studio, listening to gong music and chanting for prosperity.

Technically speaking, I was experiencing a “gong bath,” a yogic practice designed to induce deep relaxation. More specifically, the gong bath was part of an evening of yoga and meditation for “prosperity and abundance.”

Fifteen of us — men and women, old and young, black and white — began with a mantra (or prayer): Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo, which means “I bow to the Creator, I bow to the Divine Teacher.”

I directed my prayer to Jesus because that’s how I roll. But others in the class were of different faiths or, I would imagine, no faith. All prayed or meditated in their own way.

There was power, if not a religious consensus, in joining in that mantra. The yoga studio immediately felt like a sacred space.

After the mantra, we arranged ourselves on mats on the floor, and the instructor led us through a few yoga poses. “Don’t worry about getting the poses exactly right,” she said. “All you really need to do is lean in the right direction.”

I liked that thought. So many of us obsess about getting whatever we’re doing exactly right. When we fall short, we feel we’ve failed. That can lead to a paralysis — emotional and spiritual. But what really matters is our intention. All we really need to do to begin a journey toward any goal is to lean in the right direction.

So I leaned in, stretched, breathed deeply and tried to open myself up to abundance, in whatever form it might take.

Kundalini yoga is a highly spiritualized form of yoga, focused on moving energy around the body. It teaches that energy resides coiled — like a snake or a lock of hair — at the base of the spine. Yoga postures, breathing exercises and meditations help move the energy up through the body (through the chakras, or energy centers) to the top of the head.

I don’t know whether I buy into all of that, but I do appreciate the feeling of centered-ness and peace I found in the 90-minute session.

We worked up quite a sweat doing the five poses. Then, the instructor turned down the lights as we reclined on the mats with a blanket over us as she and her husband began sounding two gongs. The sound of the complimentary gongs really did feel like a massage. The gong bath went on for 22 minutes. Some folks fell asleep. A few even snored. I just relaxed, deeply, for the first time in months.

Next, we chanted a mantra for prosperity and abundance for 11 minutes. Each of the eight verses of the mantra began with the words, Har har har har (meaning, “God, God, God, God”) followed by different words evoking various characteristics of the Divine.

“Gobinday,” meaning “sustainer.”

“Udaaray,” meaning “enlightener.”

“Kariang,” meaning “creator.”

And so on.

Shakta encouraged us to examine things in our lives that might be blocking us from prosperity and abundance, be they self-doubts, fears or harmful relationships.

“Everyone’s birthright is to be happy,” Shakta told me later. “You didn’t incarnate to have a miserable time. You incarnated to take on particular tasks and to finish them and to go home victorious.”

When I think of abundance, I think of the freedom to love without limits, to be fully present with the people we care about, to be open to whatever God has for us to do in this life.

The class ended with another prayer in the form of a song called “Long Time Sun.” As we sang it in unison for several minutes, Shakta told us to think of it as a blessing for ourselves and for the people we love.

The words of the prayer were beautiful. I sang them for myself, for my colleagues, and for all of the people who matter most to me in this world:

May the long time sun shine upon you

All love surround you

And the pure light within you

Guide your way.

(Cathleen Falsani is the author of the new book “Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace.”)