A yoga of sound practice
After years and years of being intrigued by how I may bridge the gape between my yoga world and music world I may have grown into a way for my yoga and music to come together in a combined practice. For me the music has to meet the yoga, and be seamlessly integrated into the practice. And mantra is ready for just that – it stands on its own, as a component of yoga practice, that can be a focussed as a key yoga practice.
Mantra illuminates the mind. It also resonates with the body, therefore both are bodymind practices deeply aligned with yoga metaphysics – my primary interest in the primordial Source, and cultural context of yoga. To extensively explore a sound experience, in a sense music, born of yoga, and yoga born of breath and movement, ideally would require a much longer than an hour class setting format.
When I started to develop my own mantra chant practice during the lockdowns it opened much self enquiry for me. How may I share a personal meditation prayer experience in a traditional class? Without it becoming entertainment, especially as yoga is a complete practice on it’s own, and music so easily becomes a distraction? Not what mantra, as a sacred practice, should be. Yet mantra chanting can also be joyous, spontaneous, and a celebration, uplifting. One solution is to chant together, with the yoga students, and also practice yoga during the same event. This is what requires a different, longer than a class setting.
Understanding mantra chanting, and the understanding of yoga philosophy, as with the study of scriptures, is primarily derived from the actual practice of sounding mantra and doing yoga. Both are, or should be, experiential, embodied metaphysical philosophies. Such yoga and the yoga of sound can bring balance to our personal world, and activate the BodyMind as a Device of Universal Conscious.
Let’s chant and be happy
I have shared some simple, pleasing to me and well received mini forays into this collaboration of music and yoga within favourable setting in recent times. This is what we will set out to do for three hours (with a tea break) at the studio. Currently I aim for a Sunday Session the first weekend of a month. Please book, spaces limited. See my events listing for details.
Yoga & Mantra to Activate Relaxed & Conscious Being
Gentle deeply restorative yoga, with sound and mantra chant meditation to activate the BodyMind as Device of Consciousness.
