Some say a full moon has a strange effect on people. Emma Cullinan twitches her nose and sings along with a group of 'moon chanters' - and tries not to giggle.
I have sat beneath a full moon and chanted "om". If I'd done this at any other time of the month I would perhaps not have "ommed" with quite such gusto.
"The full moon gives us energy," says Colm Nolan, who conducts moon chanting sessions once a month - at the lunar swell - in a Dublin garden. He helps people through a form of singing therapy at all times of the year but notices that the chorus ups the forte as the moon completes its circle.
The effect of the full moon has been studied for centuries and myths, including the tale of the werewolf, lead us to believe that we can become quite beastly when the moon is at its most rotund, hence the word "lunacy".
Many studies have attempted to test the notion that more people turn up at accident and emergency at the full moon,
with all sorts of ailments, notably animal bites. Yet it seems that for all the studies that apparently prove the theory there are just as many that don't. Nolan is not interested in lunar-effect sceptics because, he says, he knows he has more energy at this time and has seen it in others. "It doesn't help me to question it because it is my experience - I sense it. There is an extra energy in the singing groups which normally isn't there."
Eileen Keane, a singing therapist who runs the alternative therapy centre where the chanting takes place, says she notices a lot more activity in her workplace around the full moon. "Our energy is more open and we're more out there at the full moon," she says, pointing to the fact that the tide is high three days after the full moon and, because humans are made up mostly of water, it must affect us, too.
She says that women are more fertile at this time and that more babies are born. This links in with biodynamic farming, she says, in which crops are planted in line with the moon phases.
The 15 or so chanters who sang alongside Nolan at the August full-moon chant last week were certainly right behind
him. What Nolan did, they did - from waggling their tongues, twitching their noses like rabbits and repeating the same
sequence of words on the same note for multitudes of minutes. There were a few gigglers - it is, after all, embarrassing at the best of times to sit in a circle with a group of strangers imitating an animal's nasal twitches.
Yet many of us are strangely accustomed to such new-age antics. Anyone who's been to a yoga class - merely to attempt to keep the body supple - would have been subjected to a bit of ahhing, gasping and gathering all of life's ills in with the in breath and expelling them in a sharp puff. Yet I couldn't subject myself completely.
When the "om" bit came I thought, but this has become such a cliché. When we sang words that rhymed with "am", I couldn't believe that singing "ham" would benefit anyone except Galtee's advertising agency. As we bent our heads to our chests on the out breath and then tipped our heads back quickly on the in-breath - I knew any resulting lightheadedness would be due to a lack of oxygen rather than spiritual enlightenment.
But when we actually sang a tune - albeit 50 times over - I was back in the school choir. It came with the same behaviour - those of good voice and pitch perfection being heard above the less confident. There's the same cringing embarrassment when someone sings all alone in the wrong place, while everyone else is correctly silent between phrases. But no one laughs here. This is serious.
While moon chanting comes with a new-age tag, singing together is the norm in far more socially accepted situations, such as in choirs and church. Ensemble singing must tap into a basic human pleasure.
"Singing is a very opening experience," says Nolan. "People who are closed down often don't sing. It is a way of lifting the spirit. Chanting is a more precise tool. It can be used to open different chakras. You can even chant into a specific illness to bring about a change."
Keane also talks about helping her clients to "free the voice" through singing. "Using the voice is quite an emotional experience. The Irish song tradition is very much based on managing grief and loss. Singing is probably our oldest tool in managing our emotions and expressing them in a contained way. You can really express something in singing that is beyond the spoken word.
"I was singing at a wedding recently and feel that singers and musicians have the function of containing the incredible emotion for the group at weddings, Christenings and funerals."
Our moon chanting session isn't unlike a church service - with its heartfelt singing punctuated by lengthy silent pauses. I find it slightly uneasy, waiting and wondering about what will happen next, but Nolan is cool with it.
"Singing is a tool to create silence and a sense of peace," he says. "The silence that descends into the room during chanting is tangible and satisfying."
The togetherness that Nolan orchestrates extends beyond the room. All around the world people mark the full moon, he says, through chanting and meditation. "When people gather across the world with a similar, positive intention, then it becomes stronger: it brings about an energetic link around the planet."
In our session he seeks to harness harmony between cultures by singing a Jewish tune and then an Islamic one and combining the two. The tune had begun with a drum to symbolise that the first thing any of us heard was our mother's heartbeat and that we are all united in that. Shame, then, that when other percussionists joined in some were off beat - it seems the harmonisation of humans still has some way to go.
So does singing in the shower or car make us happy, I ask Nolan. He looks at me as if I don't quite get it. Or perhaps it's just a way that therapists get you to garble on into the silence. After a pause he says that you will probably be singing in the shower because you are already happy, and that singing will help prolong it. So dogs who howl at the moon must be enjoying good canine karma.
I may give lunar chanting a miss at the next full moon - but I might just turn up the car radio and give it my all.
* The next full moon is on September 7th.