Yoga Groove is a style of asana practice that intentionally combines the transformational powers of yoga and music to help us move closer toward the light inside us all. By engaging the body, mind, heart and soul through a musically charged class we honor both systems as different paths up the same mystical mountain. The intention behind Yoga Groove is not to play ambient, background music for your yoga class but rather recognizes not only the very real effect music has upon us but also the scientific theories that prove how music lives inside us.
Quantum mechanics and string theory tell us our world of isolated and separate physical forms is an illusion. These modern, scientific disciplines explain what ancient yogis discovered through mediation – everything we see and are is interconnected by and composed of pulsing energy fields. String theory is so named because these vibrations when seen through high-powered microscopes mimic the motion of a stringed musical instrument! These vibrating “strings” or energy fields are magnetically drawn toward each other’s motion and bond together to grow into the physical world of earth, tables, walls, and bodies. Tantric philosophy calls this universal pulse, spanda, commonly translated as “motion” or “vibration”. More intriguingly, spanda is also translated as “shimmering delight”! We are fundamentally constructed from this universal pulse, from this nature that “delights” in everything. All we perceive as isolated form exists more accurately as a massively shimmering energy field. Humans are made of motion and when this vibration hits our ears, we hear sound.
Author and composer, W.A. Matheiu, in his brilliant book, Bridge of Waves: What Music Is and How Listening to it Changes the World, describes music as absolutely elemental to the human body. The earliest audible music was likely the sound of humans walking,
“A walking body makes whole body music. Drummers sit in closed rooms practicing beats for years to perfect their representations of the metabolic and physical entrainment we get on the natch by striding long over level ground. A few minutes of paying attention to your walking, with its mix of simple and complex swinging periodicities, will demonstrate like no other experience how our body is the original music that has never left us“ (10)
Precisely because all of life is vibration and music’s pulse is inexorably rooted in our physical body the experience of “amplified” music, whether it be banging rocks, an acoustic instrument or today’s electronics is capable of shaking us to the core. Our body and soul immediately recognizes its own true, vibrational nature in a heightened, more colorful form. Thus, music is able to dive deeply into our intimate truth, in Sanskrit this is called “sat.” Music is also a reflection of our ingrained, primal and pure consciousness, known in Sanskrit as “chit.” When played with verve in community, music has the power to spin us ecstatically into “ananda” or bliss. Satchitananda. Yogis the world over know this sacred term and music’s power is a complementary creative manifestation of our divine spirit.
Yoga Groove asks you to commune in the enlivening practice of joining yoga and music to honor the sacred with the sacred. We use the support, inspiration and memories of music to work at our edge for growth and allow us to descend deeper into the heart. We hope you come along.
Chris Calarco is a yoga instructor and student with a deep passion for music and yoga.
