Music and Yoga

  This past Sunday morning, in my 9:00 am yoga class, which I have probably taught for nigh onto 20 years now, my students willingly and even cheerfully did 58 sun salutations with me, one for every year of my life.  I made a mix tape that included music from each decade, influenced heavily by my East Coast soul upbringing.  'Clean Up Woman' by Betty Wright.  'Tighten Up' by Archie Bell and the Drells.  ("We not only sing, but we dance as good as we want!")  I asked my mom what her favorite song was when she was pregnant with me, and she said, "Oh, your father and I had a song that was 'our song.'  It was 'You Belong to Me' by Patti Page."  And so that was the first song I played.  Not your typical music for yoga practice.

  I'm not usually a fan of music for yoga, but today was an exception.  The music did make the 58 Surya Namaskars fly by, and singing along with the Mamas and the Papas as an entire class gave me goosebumps.  We even did the Electric Slide-asana to "Good Times" by Le Chic!  I'm grateful to my students who indulged me today so gracefully and celebrated freely with me.

  Yet I did notice the slightly maniac way the practice affected me, what with all the flying sun salutations, me shouting over the music like an aerobics instructor, and the music constantly evoking emotion, memory, and body sensation.  Which is of course what I LOVE about music.  And why I don't play it for yoga practice or teaching.  Even though today was joyful, I am aiming to get at a place that is even juicier than joyful in my yoga and meditation practices.  Music, for me, is a stream of personalized associations which are mostly intensely pleasurable, some achingly melancholy, some blindingly painful.  The music often takes me somewhere against my will.  

  Where I am moving toward in my yoga practice is a deep listening.  It's hard for me to listen to the subtle song inside with all the discursive mental reaction to the music and/or lyrics I am hearing.  I noticed that I didn't feel the usual deep quiet that I feel after a yoga class, the satisfaction that I have come to take almost for granted as an after-effect of my practice.
  Don't get me wrong: I adore music.  I love to dance, often with my headphones on and something like "Disturbia" filling my head and body with a primal instinct to move that cannot be denied.  It is divine to be pulled along like that into a stream of such aliveness and joy.
  Yet the yoga space doesn't include music.  For me.  I am a lover of silence, as well as music.  And yoga is the work where I adore the open ended, sometimes even scarily wide open field of silence.  That is where the big transformations happen, that is where I am truly listening so closely, with such devotion and passion, that the subtle dance I need to dance with that silence presents itself, blessedly.
  And there is nothing on earth like that dance.