Maybe this qualifies as lazy blogging, but driving across the causeway this morning and seeing a beautiful blue sky before me as I was thinking about all that comes with taking chances and being open to change put some songs in my head. So here are some of my favorite songs about freedom:
“Every lover on a mission shift your known position into the light…Every glorious disaster every bond is gonna bring you faster out into the light”
I love how they just sing “FREEDOM!” at the end of the song (and there’s a theremin, how cool is that?)
I love to play this loud and sing it at the top of my lungs in the car when no one else is around. “This is my life and freedom’s my profession….There is a core and it’s hardcore / All is hardcore when made with love/ Love is a voice of a savage soul / This savage love is Undestructable!” (Of course, I found a video with lots of Eugene Hutz photos. Couldn’t help myself!)
Philip Glass always sounds like breathing, flying, swimming, living, soaring, etc. to me.
As the old saying goes: You can take a girl out of the South but you can’t take away her Southern Rock….
I’m a musician at heart, so I harbor some strong opinions about music in yoga class. Hearing music I don’t like can make me want to leave the room. Hearing music I love is like an out-of-body experience.
The studio where I practice incorporates music in class. There are times when the perfect song comes up at the perfect time. There are other times when I think “wtf – did you listen to the lyrics before putting this on the playlist?” It doesn’t really happen very often, just often enough to teach me a lesson.
For example, M.I.A. is the first woman I have ever called a db. Here’s one reason why. Did you read it? I have so little tolerance for people with reactive, shallow politics who go for shock value over substance – not to mention liars. There was a short period of time when M.I.A. would get played at the studio and the first couple times drove me crazy. I was so annoyed. I don’t want to hear gunshots and cash registers while twisting my heart open in chair pose, but I had no control over it. I wasn’t offended, just uncomfortable, so I didn’t bring it up with the teacher. I stayed with it and knew there had to be a lesson somewhere in this uncomfortable situation.
Finally, I remembered such is life. Here was the mat teaching me another lesson. Yoga is hard. We put ourselves in uncomfortable and difficult positions to find stillness and connect with intention. I’ve adopted this attitude towards the music in class. I can learn how to focus on my breath and intention even when I have to be around an obnoxious person or uncomfortable situation off the mat. If I can learn to breath and stay in my practice listening to M.I.A., Ke$ha, or the Rusted Root song (OMG that man is so whiny), I can teach myself to not react when someone cuts me off in traffic or stands too close to me in line at the coffee shop.
Music is so personal. One person’s perfect song is another person’s worst nightmare. I can only imagine someone having a hell of a time in gomukhasana listening to Satie or Del McCoury. We could both be go deeper into the pose with the music, just in a different way. I’ve accepted it as an added layer of challenge in a class and am still an advocate for using music in class – albeit mindfully.
Okay, I’m cheating a little bit on the writing challenge. I spent the weekend on the central coast and it was sunny, which is rare and glorious when it happens. I got yoga practice in, but was more focused on two straight days of uninterrupted relaxation with friends and good wine. Oh Paso Robles, I love you and your delicious hills!
So I’ve had this in draft form for a while. I ended up telling this story a couple times last week, so it’s only appropriate to share it now. I had a few days off from work last week and took a yin class that I had been trying to get to for a while. The teacher is also a musician and we struck up a conversation about music theory and yoga before the class. I was in nerd heaven having a short conversation about yoga that included the sentence, “You can go I-IV-V, but you can also throw in a ii chord or change the key.” Then she used twelve tone music as a metaphor in class. I went home and listened to the Berg violin concerto. I need more Thursdays off!
Yoga, music, it’s the same thing – but don’t take it from me….
(Now, in all honesty I should say that this is how I remember this going down. It’s not verbatim.)
I was at work in April listening to a question and answer session at the conclusion of a master class with the Russian pianist Vladimir Feltsman. As I wrote earlier, it was after thirty minutes of him patiently working with a musician who was not prepared to play for him. One of the audience members asked him for advice on developing technique.
“Technique? What is technique?” He said, “Putting my fingers on piano keys? There are nineteen-year-old kids at Julliard with technique playing Bach Goldberg Variations faster and more accurate than I. There are better dressed men with technique making more money than I do playing Chopin. But it is empty. Just noise.”
He pointed at two people in the front row and asked, “You – where does sound come from?”
One said, “When I touch the key on the piano,” Feltsman frowned and said, “This piano is inanimate object. How can sound come from inanimate object?! You,” he pointed at the second person, “where does sound come from?” The poor kid was clearly terrified and said something that inspired Feltsman to say, “Absurd!”
“Sound,” he said, taking a deep breath and a long pause, “comes from silence. Now the real question is: where does silence come from? Silence comes from a stillness. I’m not going to lure you into some ridiculous metaphysical discussion, because nothing good will come of it. It would be a pointless dialogue. Music is one way, one language, to connect to that place, that energy, that stillness. There are other ways to get there. Music is one spoke on the wheel – the spokes spin on the wheel, all of them are important, but they revolve around a center that does not move. The center stays still. It just is…and that is where sound comes from – silence, stillness. Otherwise, it is just noise.”
I think I was holding my breath while he said this. That’s it. That’s why I practice yoga.
When we were leaving the venue, I told him that his words on silence helped me understand why I have found the practice in yoga that I have been searching for since leaving my classical music behind. He interrupted me, threw his hands in the air and said, “Yes! Music, yoga – all same thing! Why people always have to separate this from that is absurd!”
I loved that he didn’t want to get all metaphysical – sometimes you can really talk something to death. He asked what kind of yoga I practice, said some really funny things that I really appreciate about people who run off to Nepal and get fancy Tibetan titles, and left it at that. Less talking, more walking.
When I speak, I want my words to come from that still place. When I move, I want that movement to come from that still place. That in itself defines the practice on and off the mat for me.
In April, I was watching a young college student butcher Beethoven in a master class with Russian pianist Vladimir Feltsman. I know it may sound harsh to say that, but I was sitting in the audience fuming that her teacher would not only to give her a piece she wasn’t ready to play but to offer her up as a candidate to play for Feltsman. She had no idea what she was doing – it was kind of hard to watch.
For about fifteen minutes, he worked patiently with her. He told her to stop moving her shoulders and other unnecessary movements (“less physical, more mental, yes?”). She pounded the piano at a fortissimo and he stopped her, “Why you touch piano like this,” he poked her shoulder, “would you touch a person like this? You touch person like this, they don’t like you and you hurt them. You touch piano like this, it doesn’t like you and you disrespect it.” Her tempos were inconsistent, she was playing wrong notes, and he had to tell her things like, “that’s not a half note, it’s a whole note.” He made her slow down messy passages and clapped behind her to keep time. He asked her if she had a metronome (“yes”) and if she practiced with one (shrug).
Finally, he stopped her and said, “Why do you try to fly when you can’t walk? First, learn how to walk, then learn how to run, and maybe someday you will learn how to fly.” He told her to find simpler pieces, practice scales, and work up to the Beethoven.
I heard the spirit of my first horn teacher telling me, “Fundamentals, young lady. Fun-da-mentals.” I heard a chorus of teachers who taught me how to practice. If I played a sloppy passage, break it down – what scale is this? arpeggio? Yes. Now play those and then play the passage. Take it to half speed and gradually bring it up to tempo. Change the rhythm, learn how it works. Fundamentals.
I heard my yoga teachers telling me not to recklessly kick up into headstand, but to engage bandhas and lift instead. I heard them telling me to drop to child’s pose if I’ve lost my breath.
The girl lacked a disciplined practice. She runs risk of injury from the way she moves her shoulders, elbows, and wrists. She will only get so far in playing the piece because she does not take time on the fundamentals. There is some flashy appearance of playing, but it lacks a sophisticated understanding the building blocks of the piece. All these things, summed up by lack of discipline in practice, could keep her from building a beautiful relationship with a piece of music, to get inside, make friends with it, and share its beautiful gifts with others.
Ever had that kind of practice throw its mat down next to you in class? Of course you have.
Ever had that kind of practice yourself? Me – absolutely.
Like when I thought I had successfully gotten to a point where I could incorporate chaturanga to upward facing dog through a whole class. I was looking up instead of down at the ground, lifting my heart from my toes to the top of my head. It was like when I got assigned my first Mozart concert and could play with the big kids. Then I wondered why my shoulder was hurting, even after correcting an ergonomic issue at work. Looking back, it seems so silly – like any one pose is better than another. I was so excited about being able to do a more advanced version of a pose, I got more interested in the idea of putting this in my repertoire than making sure I had built enough strength to do it correctly throughout the whole class. I was butchering Beethoven and needed to practice my scales. I caught myself. I dialed it back, built the strength and self-awareness to safely add the pose to my flow. Besides, I love low cobra. Just like in music, building a discipline is the core of a lifelong relationship with yoga.
So I’m thinking about tapas a lot this week. I just found out this week that I got accepted to a 200-hour teacher training that will start in September. I’m also finishing up assisting training and hope to be assisting over the summer before teacher training. I’m taking steps to deepen this practice. It’s filled a place in my life that has been empty since I stopped playing music. I am so grateful to the amazing teachers I had during my classical music journey – the lessons are 100% transferable.
Tapas is the spirit of inquiry; it is abut having the heart of an explorer. It is the willingness to work hard in practice, the desire to know oneself, the will to be honest. This desire will give us consistency. We will have good days and bad days, days when the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, and days when the opposite is the case. Years of consistent practice are not built on rigid self-discipline; they are built on the desire to know more.
Tapas is one of the most powerful concepts in the Yoga Sutra. The word “tapas” comes from the Sanskrit verb “tap” which means “to burn.” The traditional interpretation of tapas is “fiery discipline,” the fiercely focused, constant, intense commitment necessary to burn off the impediments that keep us from being in the true state of yoga (union with the universe).
Unfortunately, many people mistakenly equate discipline in yoga practice with difficulty. They see another student striving to perfect the most difficult poses and assume she must be more disciplined and therefore more spiritually advanced.
But difficulty does not in itself make a practice transformational. It’s true that good things are sometimes difficult, but not all difficult things are automatically good. In fact, difficulty can create its own impediments. The ego is drawn to battle with difficulty: Mastering a challenging yoga pose, for example, can bring pride and an egoistic attachment to being an “advanced” yoga student.
A better way to understand tapas is to think of it as consistency in striving toward your goals: getting on the yoga mat every day, sitting on the meditation cushion every day—or forgiving your mate or your child for the 10,000th time. If you think of tapas in this vein, it becomes a more subtle but more constant practice, a practice concerned with the quality of life and relationships rather than focused on whether you can grit your teeth through another few seconds in a difficult asana.
Tapas. The money for this training is no small thing to our household budget, so I want to stay as clear an focused as a can on this path – not take a moment for granted. I’m incredibly grateful to be here and have the support of my husband who has patiently seen me unsuccessfully search for this path on different instruments, art supplies, and a sewing machine. I couldn’t do it without him. Yay!
All this talk of tapas is making me hungry…and where’s my sangria?
P.S. I have another story from the Feltsman master class…I’ll post it one of these days.
“There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we’d all love one another.” – Frank Zappa
Think about all the songs you hear on a given day. If you can’t think of them, go to the radio and do a quick turn of the dial and listen to what’s out there. It’s okay, no one is watching and I can wait. Amazing, isn’t it, how many times in a day we feel disconnected from love yet there are people crooning and musing about it on every station!
When I was a kid, there was a local radio show on the soft rock station called Love Tones. A woman with a velvet voice would play requests over the radio. I always wonder who she was and if she knew that, for a brief period of time to my knowledge, middle school kids were using those soft rock ballads and dedications as weapons.
Maybe Kelli was a bully and made fun of your Esprit bag or the fact that you didn’t tease your bangs three to five inches off your forehead. Guess what would be on Love Tones that night? “Jason, Kelli wants you to know you have been a great friend and is ready to tell everyone she loves you. Here’s ‘Right Here Waiting’ by Richard Marx from Kelli to Jason.”
Karma’s a bitch, though. Sometimes you or a friend had to go to school the next day and insist that you did not send Forever Your Girl by Paula Abdul to the boy who peeks up skirts in Sunday school.
So, back to the Zappa quote – with all these love songs, why don’t we get it? Often, the question “why don’t we love each other” starts with “why don’t we love ourselves?”
Love is central to the practice of yoga. One reason we go to the mat is to learn how to love ourselves and, in turn, love others. Most of us would never talk to others the way we talk to ourselves. “You’re so stupid. You look terrible today. Why would that person want to talk to you? You’re not special. I can’t believe you have to take child’s pose right now, everyone else is doing a really fun flow in class, you’re missing out.” Imagine hearing someone in public talking to a child like this – why do we do this to ourselves?
I participated in a 40-day yoga immersion program based on Baron Baptiste’s book “40 Days to Personal Revolution.” Forty days of asana, journaling, nutrition, meditation with weekly group meetings at the studio. One day, we sat in a circle talking about the way we talk to ourselves and were asked to close our eyes and imagine a safe place. In this safe place, our four-year-old selves were standing, looking at us. What would we tell that child? We all wrote down affirmations and passed them around randomly. Each person closed their eyes and, one by one, we went around the circle and whispered affirmations to each other. A lot of us were in tears hearing people say things like “You are beautiful. You can do anything. You are safe. You are amazing.”
This got me thinking about love songs. What if we took love songs and dedicated them to ourselves? What if we used the love songs as weapons against those negative thoughts?
Were I reading this on someon else’s blog, I might roll my eyes. “Give me a break.” But it’s on my blog, so I of course think it’s brilliant. It’s a wacky idea, but one you can test out without anyone else noticing. Like kegels. (You’re doing them right now, aren’t you?)
So try it out.
Here’s the late Eva Cassidy singing Time After Time. (I’m kind of limited by what’s on YouTube – so I invite you to take a moment, close your eyes, and send this song to that person in you who needs love.)
“if you’re lost you can look and you will find me time after time / if you fall I will catch you / I’ll be waiting time after time”
Or find a song a love song you can offer up as prayer. I love this song by Lucinda Williams called Unsuffer Me – when I practice deep hip openers at home, I like to put it on to help me let go and surrender to the pose.
“surround my heartbeat with your fingertips / unbound my feet untie my wrists
come in to my world of loneliness and wickedness and bitterness / Anoint my head with your sweet kiss / My joy is dead I long for bliss / I long for knowledge whisper in my ear /Undo my logic / undo my fear / Unsuffer me”
I’ll send songs to you on this site from time to time that you can dedicate to yourself or offer up as a prayer. If that doesn’t work for you, just enjoy the music.
A couple months ago, I had one of those days at work when I just had to leave early. I was frustrated, wondering why the hell I ever signed up for this arts thing, and exhausted. I caught an early afternoon yoga class and took a shower by the time my husband came home from work. We made dinner, I sat on the couch in comfortable clothes and looked through Netflix for something to watch.
In one part of the film, he is describing how he writes music. I found a transcript of an interview where he talks about it:
“..as if I looked out in a field…but I saw there was something there, but I couldn’t quite make it out, but if I sit long enough I begin to see the shape of a building perhaps and after a while I might see a few trees and this and that, but basically I am straining to see in the same way that I am fighting to listen, trying to hear and trying to hear things. I barely can hear it.”
It was so humbling to hear one of the greatest living composers (who I once drove to dinner but was too shy to tell him how much I love his music) …sorry…one of the greatest living composers talking about how hard it is for him to hear the music he is writing.
I realized, upon hearing this, that it is similar to how I finally came to a regular yoga practice.
So I’ve written about my false starts with yoga, What finally got me on the mat? How did I get to a point where I don’t run when someone says something in sanskrit or make excuses to leave when I hear the world kundalini?
I felt a call to find a spiritual and creative outlet. I needed to commit to something to understand the commitments in my life. I was driving through town, passed a yoga studio and saw “40 Day Transformation” advertised in the window. I went to their website, signed up, and found what I was looking for. I discovered there are people in the yoga community who are very down-to-earth and don’t take themselves too seriously.
I don’t sit in circles and do freaking monkey breaths. I have fun – I fall, I get tangled up, I stand on my head and my arms, I lose my breath and find it again. I feel alive again.
As I became disciplined about the practice, I went from being completely disoriented in my life to acknowledging I was in a foggy field. Then I found a path. As I follow this path, the buildings and trees come in to focus and fade in the background. This path is taking me through beautiful and challenging territory. The air is sweet and the birds often sing.
