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Music and Mantra as Medicine – The Healing Joy of Snatam Kaur’s New Songs and U.S. Tour Dates

Marina Muhlfriedel — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 02:28:57 +0000

Music and Mantra as a Source of Strength

Sometimes life’s most challenging moments gift us insight into how our spiritual practices hold and heal us when we need them most. At a time when world-renowned, Grammy-nominated devotional singer, touring musician, and teacher Snatam Kaur is creatively flourishing, she is also helping to care for her father, Sat Santokh, as he copes with cancer. Snatam’s lifelong Kirtan practice — both private and publicly, at concerts and classes — has proven to be a poignant comfort to her in this difficult time.

A New Single, a New Album

August 18 marked the debut of “Bani Guru,” the first single from Soul Bird, the upcoming album release (mid-October on Be Why Music) Snatam recorded with her mother, Prabhu Nam Kaur, and her 14-year-old daughter, Jap Preet Kaur. This first single is dedicated to Sat Santokh.

“Bani Guru” positions the three generations’ sweetly stirring vocals front and center against a delicately streamlined harmonium, guitar, and percussion arrangement. While sharing a tonal resemblance to one another, each of the women contributes a distinct quality to the song. Together, they project something special — transcendent and authentically devotional. Beauty and purity shine within the track.

“Bani Guru” and Soul Bird grew from an ambitious passion project Snatam and Prabhu Nam Kaur are pursuing together — cataloging and recording their family legacy of nearly 200 songs and chants from the Sikh tradition. This album is a part of that project, and for it, Snatam suggested to her mother that they share something with special meaning and pick whatever intuitively comes. Prabhu Nam Kaur turned inward, and “Bani Guru,” a Shabad or sacred poem that is sung from the Sikh tradition, came up.

“The words of this Shabad, ‘Bani Guru Bani Hai Bani,’ mean, ‘The song of God is the Guru, and then the Guru — the teacher and the wisdom — is the song of God,’” said Snatam, on the eve of the single’s release while simultaneously helping care for her father and prepare for the U.S. portion of her Light of Sacred Chant Tour. “The mantra is about going to the song of God for that connection. It’s profound because that’s the practice my mom taught me—that if you want to access the wisdom, sing, and it will come.” The next line of ‘Bani Guru’ translates to, ‘One who serves this energy of the song of God, who serves this energy of wisdom, then that wisdom or Guru manifests on the earth plane and in our lives.’

“At this time, with my father dealing with cancer, ‘Bani Guru’ is just the medicine we need to keep chanting and connecting to — praying for that energy of Guru to come through in our lives in a very real physical way with community support and all the little miracles needed day by day when dealing with cancer,” she said. “I feel the Guru come to our aid through life itself, through our own hearts, our family, our friends, and even the challenges we face.”

The Wisdom of a Committed Kirtan Practice

Snatam’s music career is deeply rooted in the Kirtan practice she was taught by her mother. “Two of the things I learned from her,” she said, “is, first, to go to Kirtan in times of trouble and need. Lean on Kirtan to find the good energy and ideas and a sense of relief. The second is to find a way to really open my heart to the Kirtan practice so that it becomes something that is alive for me — awake, juicy, and passionate. It takes a lot of cultivation of a daily Kirtan practice to find that space. It takes a desire to find that internal passion or connection with the heart, but once you do, it’s totally worth it because you find the capacity within as you are singing to open like a flower in the Sun.

“So that’s what I look for in my Kirtan practice, in the songs we record and those we choose to play on tour. I try to find a way to be in my heart space and connect to the flow of God and Guru with passion, love, and joy. It’s not always easy, or even possible for me, but this is what I strive for and what I feel my mother has mastered.”

Light of Sacred Chant Tour / L.A. Concert September 17 with Special Guest Jahnavi Harrison

That loving, celebrative sense of juicy, passionate awake-ness is palpable in Snatam’s live performances. From September 10 to 29 (with a show in Los Angeles on September 17 at the Wilshire Ebell Theater), she’ll tour the U.S. for the final stint of her Light of Sacred Chant Tour. This will be Snatam’s first Los Angeles concert since 2019, and she invites people to gather and honor the profound changes everyone has experienced and to chant in community, cultivating a renewed sense of love and joy while healing divisiveness with one another and within ourselves.

Performing with Snatam are her band members Ram Dass (piano and vocals), Grecco Buratto (guitar and vocals), and Sukhmani Rayat (percussion, tabla, and vocals). For Snatam’s Los Angeles show, she will be joined by special guest and popular chant artist Jahnavi Harrison, who will be sharing one of her chants, along with another chant that she and Snatam are collaborating on for an upcoming recording.

Healing as We Chant Together

“We’ve toured Europe and Latin America this past year, and I’m looking forward to really connecting to the flow of what’s happening within the concerts at home in the States,” said Snatam. “I feel the chanting itself is healing medicine, and I believe we can heal ourselves through collective chanting—that there are a lot of miracles available to us. I know how much transformation this energy has brought into my life. I feel blessed and honored to be a part of these group experiences, especially after not being in North America and connecting with many of our sacred chant communities for so long. Connecting through chant is one of the most powerful ways to build community, and I’m really looking forward to sharing that opportunity again.”

The Light of Sacred Chant concerts begin in a very meditative, heart-opening way and move into a lot of celebration and joy. “We’ve incorporated some fun pieces into the set, and the audience participation has grown to a new level,” she said. “With many of our songs, we’re doing traditional chanting back and forth. But then, there are some really engaging vocal collaborations with the audience that create a beautiful, jubilant experience. As a band, we’ve come to a really strong place where together we can tune into the audience and serve through the music and chanting.”

Snatam and the band are also completing a new studio album scheduled for release in early 2024. “I’m really excited to share some of the new music my band and I have been working on for the album at the concerts. We’re coming to a new level of trust and love with each other musically, and it’s given us room for improvisation in our live show.”

Click for Light of Sacred Chant concert tickets, and listen to “Bani Guru” (released by Be Why Music) here. Explore classes with Snatam, her husband Sopurkh, and other teachers at Kirtan and Kundalini, their online sacred music and yoga school, dedicated to supporting the spiritual journey of as many practitioners as possible. Find these and other resources on Snatam’s Linktree.

www.singtheworldawake.org

Marina Muhlfriedel is a native Angeleno and self-described creative omnivore with extensive experience as a writer, film producer, and musician. She serves as Communications Administrator for the Tai Chi Foundation, teaches Mindfulness Meditation to at-risk populations, and is a senior teacher at Club Kundalini, having begun her spiritual journey in high school as a student of Yogi Bhajan.

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SongKeepers are Guardians of the Earth and Vibration

Reya Manna — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 15:00:17 +0000

The Tradition of SongKeepers Around the World

In lore, they go by many names: the SongKeepers, Song Catchers, Songline carriers. They were considered the Memory Keepers of the Earth. From many different traditions, it is the SongKeepers who help hold the frequency of the planet by means of chanting and song. Through their voices, the Earth is held in resonant vibration with the perfection of life.

SongKeepers vocalize ceaselessly in devotion, praise, and alignment with Source. They may know how to find sacred places, make it rain, bring a good crop, or restore someone to health. This all occurs through the power of song. Historically, these practices have been documented, reaching the Western World through the lens of modern understanding, which views music as an art form or entertainment. This allows the magic of song to be hidden in plain sight.

Ceremony and Song

SongKeepers are song ceremonialists. They hold sacred space and they facilitating transformation through vocal vibration. Many SongKeepers were taught the ancient mysteries, entrusted with sacred and cultural songs of their people, and learned to work closely with the natural world. Many indigenous cultures or schools of mysticism had songs or chants they would use which had been handed down from generation to generation. These songs honoring aspects of life, place, rites of passage, times of year, or other markers. In some cases, written songs were handed down from mouth to ear. In other cases, the transmission was given directly from Spirit to the chosen aspirant.

Understanding the Art of Alchemy

SongKeepers are those who understand the art of alchemy through sound and vibration. They can utilize this wisdom to stabilize higher consciousness, cause the land to flourish, heal the afflicted, liberate the collective, and manifest new realities. Their songs remind us of who we are.

Everything is vibration. Every rock and tree and creature is vibration–in addition to every condition of the mind, body, and environment. Singing is vibration. When we resonate sound, it vibrates our bones, which has the capacity to alter the expression of our DNA.

Any condition in your body, mind, or environment with which you are struggling or challenged exists along a vibrational bandwidth. These bandwidths contain thoughts, feelings, health conditions, relationship patterns, and more.

The good news is, if you are facing challenges, you can alter your experience by shifting your vibration. Illness or despair cannot exist in the steady state of high vibrational frequencies. Hence, the songs aren’t just nice melodies or meant for entertainment. They contain so much more.

The Energy Exchange with the Earth

Human beings are designed as part of a Whole. There is an energy exchange that occurs between humans and earth, between humans and the unseen. We experience one side of it every day: through the food we eat, water we drink, our shelter, our resources, our breath, our life. All are given to us by Mother Earth and by this vast unseen world. Quantum Physics shows us that everything is vibration; nothing is solid or fixed. In addition, discoveries suggest that our eyes are only able to perceive 1% of the visible light spectrum. We live in a world within which we are receiving, being nourished and sustained whether we know it or not.

We are put a part within this whole. In order to maintain balance, reciprocal actions are needed to complete the feedback loop. There is a giving that humans must provide the earth and the unseen. Humans are tasked with appreciating, offering, and protecting the land, the spirits, animals, and resources. Without this complete feedback loop, our world is out of balance. The Earth needs us to appreciate, honor and sing to her. She is a living being. The Earth feels our support and love, just like any person. Think about what happens to people if they are not cared for or if they are ignored and neglected. Are they healthy and thriving? Just like us, the earth flourishes when she is appreciated.

In the past, the balance of the ecosystem and the homeostasis of the land were intact. Songs were taught which contained this healthy vibration of place, of harmony, balance and oneness. They were sung to nourish the land and the people who sang them. People were inextricably linked to one another and to their environment, recognizing the connection of all life. At this time in our history, connection has been lost to traditions, to earth honoring practices, to ourselves. Yet, the songs that contain the vibrational strength of the earth and the memory of who we are – are still present and being sung for those who can hear them.

SongKeepers Around the World

SongKeepers come from many different cultures from around the world…

“The Aboriginal people of Australia believe that the land is alive and that to keep it alive, they must sing to it” (from the novel “White Spirit” by James and Lance Morcan). In addition, through the singing of songs, the Aborigines navigate the landscape. The use of songs to find their way is known as songlines or dreaming tracks. These songlines are the journey of creation. They depict the origin of the universe and a time when the Ancestral Spirits created life and resided over the land.

These songs contain the vibrational reality of nature as well as the heritage of their cosmology – hence enlivening the singer with the world of the dreaming and further enlivening the dream. The songs would lead the Aborigines to the “spirit of place” that they were singing. And the songs would reinforce the identity of that reality, in the fullness of its aliveness.

For Indigenous people of North America, music and life were intertwined with nature. Singing was used as a means of communication with the ancestors and the spirits of the land. Whirling Cloud Soman from the Ute peoples stated, “Songs come from creation itself.” And “Songs come from the earth. We are merely vessels through which it can flow and come forth and give joy and give culture” (from the article, “Music and the Land: The American Indian Tradition”).

Music is a means of receiving from Life, remembering our origins and communing with the magic of Great Spirit that pervades all things.

Singing then becomes a conversation of giving, receiving, and thanksgiving.

The role of a human being, then, is to be a conduit of creation itself.

Mantra As Self-Generated Sound Healing

Mantra is chanted in religious traditions including Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism. Mantras can be found in ancient languages; these are also known as seed, or “cause” languages. These refer to languages in which the spoken words depict reality, compared to English, which is a phonetic, or “sound it out” language. In these mantric languages, each syllable activates the energy meridians of the body through the placement of the tongue against the roof of the mouth and the movement of the navel with the breath.

Mantra practices are self-generated sound healing, which shift the brain wave state of the meditator and align the practitioner with the reality of the words spoken. These practices work to whatever end a person seeks, including: love, money, success, or even enlightenment. At higher levels of practice, monks, nuns, yogis, and sages chant as part of an individual or group practice to influence the future of our world toward its highest possibility, bring heaven on earth and for the liberation of all beings from suffering.

The use of sacred songs extends to Curandero or healer traditions throughout South America. These include the Cofan of Ecuador, the Quechua of Peru, The Yawinawa of Brazil, The Kogi of Columbia, and countless others. The Healer learns a litany of songs to sing in ceremony, for healing, removing bad spirits, attracting wealth, really everything under the Sun. The use of song goes beyond ceremony. Song is a way of life. It is part of their fabric of relating with each other, nature, and the unseen world. The songs are both passed down through the generations, as well as given from the spirit world.

In Siberia, Shaman are the bridge between worlds. Shaman use singing, drumming and music to induce trance states. They work on behalf of individuals and community, addressing issues within the context of the non-visible spectrum of reality, aligning with the rhythms of nature to affect change.

In what can be considered the “Western World”, there exist mystical branches of the mainstream religions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Within these traditions, can be found scriptures, invocations, chants, and prayers that when steeped in devotion align us with the causative aspect of Divine Creation, and vibrationally maintain the frequency of peace on earth.

In Ancient Egypt, the hieroglyphs depict the use of sound vibration being used by priests and priestesses in order to open up portals for communication with higher realms. Some research suggests that many of the temples and even the great pyramid were resonant chambers used to transmit sound vibration, activate higher consciousness, supply energy and even maintain the anchoring of interplanetary consciousness on the earth.

Sound, Vibration, and Music are referenced in countless creation myths throughout the world. In the Pueblo Indian creation myths, the spider sung creation into existence. In the Bible, “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God,” suggesting creation was spoken into existence. In Hindu tradition, the sound Om is the primordial sound of creation. In Hebrew, the first letter of the alphabet is Aleph – said to be the sound of the first out breath or exhalation. In Aztec mythology, the God Quetzecoatl blew a conch shell rippling out vibrations that created the first emanations of life.

Sound as Communication

What these traditions have in common is the use of singing and sound as a communication channel between heaven, earth, and humans. This supports balance and right relationship. The singing is living, available and necessary for our highest, as well as that of our world.

We are not individual beings, living separate and apart from one another – lonely and isolated.

We are all part of planetary consciousness.

We are being called at this time, to join the Legions of Beings in the seen and the unseen worlds holding the vibration of the New Earth.

With so many traditions, lost and forgotten, there is a way forward. At this time in history, there is a surge of earth energy, of cosmic consciousness coming through the ethers, emanating from beneath the surface of convention and organized belief. There is a resurgence, a revival of Gnosis. The presence of spirit beyond the veil is speaking loudly, reaching through to shake us from our routine and inviting us into communion.

We are being called out of the sleep of compliance and conformity and back to our hearts, to the heart of the earth, to the heart of creator – to be active participants in the symphony of creation – an orchestration that very much needs us for its living and thriving.

We feel this call for connection and for new ways of being to emerge through the space between us. In order to restore our feeling of connection, we need to cherish each other, take care of the Earth, honor our direct access to spirit. Recognize that we matter. We make a difference.

Even the vibrations that we hold can greatly impact the outcome of someone we’ve never met. The change doesn’t have to be anything grandiose, it can be found in the still, small moments. Sing to the Earth.

Remembering the Songs of our Ancestors

We must remember the songs we’ve forgotten. The songs of our ancestors. The songs of the land. The songs of the future. The songs of the children. The songs of our hearts. The songs of each other. We must begin to restore our relationship with the music of life. As we become lovers of life, life becomes a lover of us.

This is the recipe for SongKeeping

SongKeeping is to hold the vibration of life so solid and strong in melody and harmony, in unison, in breath, in vibration – that the power of goodness, the power of the heavens shake the illusion and falsehood to dust.

You can be a SongKeeper too!

SongKeeping isn’t about being a performer or having the “perfect” voice. It’s about using the voice you have as a conduit of love, as an instrument of peace and devotion, and feeling the world around you respond in kind.

Thank you to all those benevolent beings who hold the vibration of the planet so life can continue.

The journey forward is guided by following the singing in life. Keep walking in the direction of what makes your heart sing. If you sing to the Earth, eventually, the Earth will show you what to do.

If you would like to learn more, join us for The SongKeeper School. This is a six month program of sacred singing, earth honoring and ritual.

Learn more about SongKeeping and the power of music with Reya Manna. https://reyamanna.com/events/innerworlds

The Voices of the SongKeeper School

https://youtu.be/bbKF307ajxc

The Inner Worlds of The SongKeeper School

https://youtu.be/skbaEhE6Ks8

Reya Manna

Reya Manna, MSW, MDiv, CPC is a best-selling author, singer, sound healer and visionary working for the transformation of humanity and the planet. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy, a Master’s degree of Social Work and a Master of Divinity. She is a Certified Professional Life Coach, Reiki Master, Naam Yoga Teacher, Harmonyum Practitioner, and mom. For over 20 years, she has been immersed in the multidisciplinary spiritual, self-help, and psychological fields – with emphasis on religious studies; native wisdom traditions; transpersonal psychology; yoga and sound healing. Through combining these varying modalities, she has formed a unique approach to working with individuals, families and groups to assist them in finding their voice, accessing their highest potential and doing the greatest good for the world.

In addition, Reya is the founder of The SongKeeper School – a program of sacred singing, earth honoring, and ritual. Reya is also the founder of the program “Sing the World Awake!” – a motivational music, movement and conversational experience to activate children’s highest potential through song and catalyze transformation in our relationship with ourselves, each other and our planet. She is currently located in the Los Angeles, California area.

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Yoga Soundtracks Volume 2, a Lushly Uplifting New Album from Johanna Beekman and Ben Leinbach

Marina Muhlfriedel — Fri, 14 Jul 2023 17:03:47 +0000

Meeting of the Spirits to Create Yoga Soundtracks

Singing yoga teacher and festival favorite Johanna Beekman first met Grammy-nominated producer and multi-instrumentalist Ben Leinbach a decade ago when they were introduced by fellow yogic musician Benjy Wertheimer. Each with a passion for integrating multicultural influences, the pair developed an artistic synergy that enriches their collaborations with a distinct, light-filled energy.

The seven tracks on their new album, Yoga Soundtracks Volume 2, released July 14, 2023, by Be Why Music, project a lavish aural landscape, ideal for yoga and meditation practitioners or whenever soul-nurturing calm is the intention.

The project is a follow-up to Ben’s 2015 Yoga Soundtracks Volume 1, which featured various Kirtan vocalists. Yoga Soundtracks Volume 2, however, is a true partnership with Johanna. The album gleans previously produced tracks from her catalog— some of which they worked on together and others that Johanna produced independently—and reimagines them. Lush mixes enhanced with additional instrumental and vocals tracks imbue the recordings with new breadth.

Most notably, while Ben and Johanna have each released a lot of inspiring devotional music in sacred languages like Sanskrit, the language of yoga, this project replaces Sanskrit mantras from several original recordings with layers of soulful English lyrics and rich vocal beds that utilize Johanna’s voice as an instrument within the arrangements of global instrumentation. Ben has long been drawn to creating fusions of world music and elegantly intertwines its diverse tones and rhythms here. Matched with Johanna’s meld of gospel, Kirtan, and soft pop, the result is a unique yet familiar take on yoga music—soothing, deeply aspirational, and prayerful.

Exploring Lyrical Familiarity

“I really wanted to universalize the language,” Johanna recently told us while on the road in Portland, Oregon. “My goal was to create a yoga soundtrack for an intentional, mindful practice, where we could weave the poetry of Rumi into the lyrics at times. Ben and I decided to use these existing luscious soundscapes as a basis for something that could reach a larger audience, serve people’s practices, and help them access a different part of the brain and nervous system.”

They also created “mash-ups” of multiple songs of Johanna’s. The first track, “Love Lives,” a dreamy, soulful welcome to the album, combines three of her originals. “We completely changed the lyrical content on that one,” Johanna said. “It starts with an intro from one song, changes keys into another, and finally opens up into this epic torch song. Together, they feel fully merged.”

Elaborating on the project’s genesis from his recording studio in San Anselmo, California, Ben added, “Hans Christian, a very talented multi-instrumentalist and producer based in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, who has worked with Johanna, was listening to some tracks she and I produced through the years and said, ‘You know, you’ve got a lot of great music here, a lot of great instrumental tracks backing the vocals. Why don’t you put together an instrumental album out of them?’ Johanna and I thought that was an interesting idea.”

From Instrumental to Incorporating Vocals

“Yoga Soundtracks Volume 2 started as an instrumental project, which was succeeding,” said Ben, “but Johanna’s such a great singer, we soon came around to wanting to feature her vocals. The idea was to create music that you could do yoga to, that was chill and relaxing, had cool hypnotic grooves, and little tidbits of English mantra. Words of spiritual wisdom are thrown in with reminders about compassion and love that can move you back into your heart space. We wanted to see if we could incorporate English into this type of album without it distracting or taking the focus away from practicing yoga or the general listening experience.”

It was a fruitful effort, with “Rise,” the album’s second track, for instance, built on the foundations of the Buddhist mantra Om Tare on Johanna’s Beyond Love album. “Rise” tunes into the energy of the Green Tara, Mother to all Buddhas and endless compassion, with English lyrics tenderly invoking that compassion. “In compassion, we arise, into magnificence…” The track features Indian-American singer and flutist Sheela Bringi.

Similarly, “May the Whole World Know” originally appeared on Johanna’s Heart Beats One album as Om Shanti. With added instruments, including Benjy Wertheimer on esraj and tabla, and Johanna’s English lyrics, the original transforms into a floating yearning prayer — “May the whole world know peace.”

Johanna’s Journey

Johanna was born into a spiritually engaged family, with music and yoga central to her upbringing. Her parents, George and Susan Grace Beekman came from the Midwest Bible Belt and moved to Oregon with the intention of raising their children to believe what they choose to believe. They still practice yoga daily, and Johanna’s father worked with Krishna Das and Ram Dass. Auspiciously, Ram Dass blessed her while she was still in her mother’s womb.

Says Johanna, “I landed pretty close to the tree and found it’s my dharma to lead a deep, spiritual, prayerful life where I weave all of the elements that have been really powerful to me.

“I’ve been singing since I could speak and writing songs about love since I was eight or nine. My first song was called ‘Just a Little More Love.’ It was about love being what the world needs to heal. I grew up singing interfaith gospel, and that’s also really one of my dharmas, to bring the gospel of the East to meet the gospel of the West,” she said.

Since then, Johanna has released seven albums of her own. She is a 500 RYT yoga instructor and brings her gospel-inspired Kirtan to festivals and workshops along with her signature Lullaby Yoga™, a restorative class accompanied by her soothing, heart-opening music.

Ben’s Journey

Ben didn’t fall far from the tree either. His parents were both musical. His father played piano and flute, and his mother dabbled in drums. “She was also a pretty good dancer and had good rhythm. I think that’s where most of my rhythm thing came from,” he said.

“Early on, I found that hearing music allowed me to feel at a deeper level. That really drew me in.” After taking drum lessons, playing in rock bands in high school, and exploring jazz, Ben attended Berklee College of Music before finishing up at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

He moved to the Bay Area, performed in jazz and rock ‘n’ roll clubs, and soon got a job at Spark, a (now defunct) recording studio in Oakland, where he moved into recording engineering. Honing his studio skills, working on everything from hip-hop and rap to jazz, Latin jazz, and rock, Ben eventually started recording and producing other artists and his own music. One day, in the early 90s, Grammy-nominated sacred music artist, Jai Uttal, showed up at the studio to record his classic “Beggars and Saints” album. The project opened the door for Ben to work in East meets West yogic music, and Ben and Jai developed a long-term partnership. This also led Ben to record and produce Kirtan projects with Johanna, Deva Premal and Miten, Snatam Kaur, Donna De Lory, Jaya Lakshmi, David Newman, Mike Cohen, Brenda McMorrow, Katie Wise, Rob and Melissa, and others.

Weighing the intersection of music and yoga, Ben said, “I think music can be a direct path to the transcendence, the spiritual or the emotional realm —so direct that it doesn’t even need language to get there. Music seems to fit right in with anyone on a spiritual path trying to deepen their experience.

“And that’s not just the good stuff. That’s feeling the joy, the bliss, and the excitement, but also the melancholy, the suffering, sadness, and despair. You need to be able to tap into the experience and the full spectrum to have a rich life. That’s an important part of the spiritual path. These are the common elements that all human beings experience. I like to create music that allows everyone—or whoever hears it — to feel the commonality we all share, the same emotional experience. Hopefully, that leads to more love and more peace in the world.

“To me, that’s part of the spiritual and yoga path—to find more peace, love, and compassion—feeling you’re part of this life experience and connected to it.” Check out Yoga Soundtracks Volume 2 . For information on Be Why Music, please visit https://bewhymusic.com/.

-Gurumayi Chidvilasananda

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New Years Actualization; Inspirations + Encouragements For The Year Ahead

Amy V Dewhurst — Sun, 01 Jan 2023 19:14:08 +0000

Meher Baba

“People wait for the big moment, the great event, and forget that happiness comes from building steadily on the small daily things of life.
People wait for that special moment to express love and forget that love springs from thoughtfulness practiced every day.
People wait, but waiting is future and NOW is always the time.”

-Meher Baba

Gurumayi Chidvilasananda

“Recognize that you have the courage within you to fulfill the purpose of your birth.
Summon forth the power of your inner courage and live the life of your dreams.”

Swami Satchidananda

“The light is within.
It is already there.
Take your time to see it.”

-Swami Satchidananda

Paramanhansa Yogananda

“You must not let your life run in the ordinary way;
do something that nobody else has done,
something that will dazzle the world.
Show that God’s creative principle works in you.”

-Paramahansa Yogananda

Yogi Bhajan

“When you understand who and what you are,
your radiance and everything around you
becomes creative and full of opportunity.”

– Yogi Bhajan

Mahatma Gandhi

“Keep your thoughts positive because your thought become your words.
Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior.
Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits.
Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values.
Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.”

-Mahatma Gandhi

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought.
The mind is everything.
What we think, we become.”

-Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Swami Sivananda

“Put your heart, mind, and soul into even your smallest acts.
This is the secret of success.”

-Swami Sivananda

Swami Vivekananda

“Never say no, never say, ‘I cannot’, for you are infinite.
All the power is within you.
You can do anything.”

-Swami Vivekananda

Sri Ramakrishna

“The winds of grace are always blowing,
but you have to raise the sail.”

-Sri Ramakrishna

Sri Sarada Devi

“Even the impossible becomes possible through devotion.”

-Sri Sarada Devi

Sri Sai Baba of Shirdi

“Don’t give up! Your miracle is on the way!”

– Sri Sai Baba of Shirdi

To Check Out Amy’s Work Go To; Sense + Color, You Can Reach Her At IG: Amy_V_Dewhurst + AmyVDewhurst@SenseAndColor.co #PutYourGoodWhereItWillDoTheMost

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Ascending Into The Light; Words Of Wisdom On Death, Transition + New Life

Amy V Dewhurst — Sat, 31 Dec 2022 20:07:46 +0000

Anandamayi Ma

“Having been born as human beings, we must not waste this opportunity.
At least for a few seconds every day, we must enquire as to who we are.
It is no use taking a return ticket over and over again.
From birth to death, and death to birth is samsara.
But really we have no birth and death.
We must realize that.”

-Anandamayi Ma

Swami Muktananda

“We exist in Consciousness, and we merge back into it.
We are that consciousness.
This is called sadhana.”

– Swami Muktananda

Amma

“Death is not complete annihilation.
It is a pause.
It is like pressing the pause button on a tape recorder.”

-Mata Amritanandamayi (Amma)

Ramana Maharishi

“The body dies, but the spirit transcends
it cannot be touched by death.”

-Ramana Maharishi

Meher Baba

“Neither seek death nor fear it,
and when death comes to you it is converted
into a stepping stone to the higher life.”

-Meher Baba

Sri Aurobindo

“Death is but changing of our robes
to wait in wedding garments
at the Eternal’s gate.”

— Sri Aurobindo

Guru Nanak

“Death would not be called bad,
O people, if one knew how to truly die.”

-Guru Nanak

Thich Nhat Hanh

“Our greatest fear is that when we die we will become nothing.
Many of us believe that our entire existence is only a life span beginning the moment we are born or conceived and ending the moment we die.
We believe that we are born from nothing and when we die we become nothing.
And so we are filled with fear of annihilation….

“The Buddha has a very different understanding of our existence. It is the understanding that birth and death are notions.
They are not real. The fact that we think they are true makes a powerful illusion that causes our suffering.
The Buddha taught that there is no birth; there is no death; there is no coming; there is no going; there is no same; there is no different; there is no permanent self; there is no annihilation.
We only think there is. When we understand that we cannot be destroyed, we are liberated from fear. It is a great relief.
We can enjoy life and appreciate it in a new way.”

– Thich Nhat Hanh

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

“When death finally comes you will welcome it like an old friend,
being aware of how dreamlike and impermanent
the phenomenal world really is.”

– Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Jiddu Krishnamurti

“Tell your friend that in his death,
a part of you dies and goes with him.
Wherever he goes,
you also go.
He will not be alone.”

– Jiddu Krishnamurti

Jalal al-Din Rumi

“Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes.
Because for those who love with heart and soul
there is no such thing as separation.”

– Jalal al-Din Rumi

To Check Out Amy’s Work Go To; Sense + Color, You Can Reach Her At IG: Amy_V_Dewhurst + AmyVDewhurst@SenseAndColor.co #PutYourGoodWhereItWillDoTheMost

The post Ascending Into The Light; Words Of Wisdom On Death, Transition + New Life appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

The Doors’ John Densmore; The Other Side

Amy V Dewhurst — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 16:10:00 +0000

It’s a winter sunset in Santa Monica.

John Densmore stands at the edge of the ocean. As the sky changes color, blue to yellow to crimson gold, he rhythmically taps a hand drum, and recites his own spoken word poetry, “And the Sun God Ra….!”

The cold waves rage closer towards his feet until he’s finally forced to move. He keeps the beat, as he treads backwards, casually mentioning, “Ya know this is where we wrote Moonlight Drive” He half-hums, half-sings the tune, “Let’s swim to the moon, let’s climb thru the tide…” The seagulls interpret this as a cue to take flight. A single feather floats down past his face. He lifts one eyebrow, giving a “Hm…what do you think that means?” look.

In the weeks prior Densmore inducted friends, The Jefferson Airplane, into the Hollywood Walk of Fame and played with Ringo Starr at Olivia Harrison’s LA book launch. But you wouldn’t hear it from him. No, he’s effortlessly weaving in and out of Harry Belafonte lyrics, political theory, environmental ethics, indigenous prayers and polite conversation, beating his drum all the while.

I ask if it’s true his childhood home was paved over to build part of the 405 highway. He laughs, “Yea, that’s good Amy, and I think [The Beach Boys’] Brian Wilson’s did too. Now wait a minute, let’s get metaphoric. My roots are a freeway on-ramp. That’s very LA, wouldn’t you say?” I nod in agreement.

God This Is The Stuff

In the Los Angeles suburb of Westwood, there’s a sign that says “San Diego Freeway North,” where the Densmore home once stood. A few blocks away is a still thriving Catholic parish. John’s mother would drag him and his sister to St. Timothy’s Church every Sunday morning. The septuagenarian recalls, “I went up to the balcony because I didn’t like the smell of frankincense. The mass was in Latin, so it was like, ‘What is this mumbling?’ and the drunken Irish organ player is just slamming away on the thing. I’m sitting alone up there, 10 benches, nobody but me, but the bench is rattling, it’s vibrating, it’s so loud. And for an eight-year-old, that was like acid. It was like heaven. It was like, ‘Wow, vibration!’ and it’s shaking my psyche and it plants music in my head. I’m like, ‘God, this is the stuff.’ So, all my young life, I was completely in love with music.”

Cool In Training Source; John Densmore

At around eight-and-a-half John’s parents rented him an upright piano. His pet parakeet Bill would practice with him, sitting or strutting on the keys, sometimes even singing along. Mrs. Densmore made sure John worked on what was assigned, and not just he and Bill’s arpeggio interpretations. He reflects “Even as a kid I knew that what made the difference between a great musician and an ok one was what was between the notes. Ya know, the feeling you give the silences and the sounds.”

The Densmores’ orthodontist advised against the clarinet, so the junior high band director suggested drums. Learning the nine rudiments on a rubber pad was borderline torture, but John loved the powerful feeling of sitting behind a kit. In the high school marching band the teen made his way through the bass, the cymbal and finally the snare. “It was so far back that being in a band wasn’t cool yet” he grimaces, “Being a jock was cool.”

Chasin’ The Trane

The marching band drummer gigged at local Catholic school dances, but bars and frat parties paid more. To appear of age, Densmore and his friend scored fake IDs in Tijuana. They used them to sneak into jazz clubs like the Lighthouse and Shelley’s Manne Hole. Densmore states proudly, “Kerouac and Cassidy saw Charlie Parker. We saw John Coltrane.”

Jazz Machine Elvin Jones Source Getty Jones

The iconic jazz saxophonist John Coltrane was known for bringing listeners on a journey, transcending planes of consciousness, and seemingly changing the atomic structure of the air. John and Grant sat transfixed during a 30 minute rendition of “Chasin’ the Trane” in which Coltrane, and his drummer Elvin Jones were in telepathic conversation, making musical alchemy.

After one such set the underagers slinked backstage. John smirks, “We heard Coltrane say ‘Hotel’ to Elvin, and for the next few days all we could say to each other was ‘Hotel, hotel.”

Waiting For The Sun

The jazz freak attended Santa Monica City College and Cal State Northridge (then San Fernando Valley State College). “I loved music but never thought I could make a living at it.” He remarks, “I was a music major, got A’s, but then I changed to business because I wanted to make money. But I got D’s in business. That was trying to tell me something there.”

To keep up with the cats they jammed with, John and Grant tried LSD. Grant got caught in a Charles Mingus album cover while Densmore watched an Acacia Tree breathe. “Yea and acid was legal then,” he remarks, “Before I smoked any pot, I took acid. I had terror for the first five minutes. I was in the void or whatever, and then I saw God in every leaf for eight hours straight. Afterward nothing had changed and yet everything had.”

A few weeks later the duo reconnected with a buddy from high school days. Robby Krieger had been kicked out of private school and was living up in the Pacific Palisades at his parents’ place. He was a guitar player influenced by Robert [Crossroads] Johnson, and Jimmy Reed. Krieger turned them on to Dylan. They turned him on to LSD. Soon they all formed a band called “The Psychedelic Rangers” who dosed far more than they gigged.

Let My Love Open The Door

“The acid was shattering to the nervous system,” John recalls, “The silent guru, the one Peter Townsend likes, Meher Baba once wrote on his chalkboard ‘If drugs open the door, and leads disciples to me, that’s fine. They should close it after that.’ The meditation, the chanting, it’s a lower-slung longer journey, but it’s a sustainable one.”

Robby had heard of a Transcendental Meditation class being taught at the old Masonic Temple, off Santa Monica Boulevard in West LA. The group received their preliminary instruction from a TM teacher before being initiated by its founder the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. John recalls, “This is a year or so before The Beatles discovered him. So we go to this little room, 40 people, and, oh my God, the love vibe is palpable. There’s this little guy in white with the beard and robes, and it was the antithesis of the vibe I got from a priest at Catholic school, with black outfits and the tight collar, and [he wags his finger] ‘You’re a sinner’ and oh, it just blew my mind. So, we started meditating.”

Maharishi Was Our Booking Agent

One day a self-assured UCLA grad student named Ray Manzarek and his girlfriend Dorothy attended the program. John retells, “And Ray kept saying, ‘No bliss, no bliss,’ because he was comparing it to acid, which is like, bam. And meditation, like chanting, it’s a long discipline. Ray comes up to me, “I hear you’re a drummer, you want to come down to my parents’ garage and jam?”

John was already in a few other bands but made his way to the Manzarek’s Manhattan Beach pad. He retells, “And Jim’s there and he’s so shy, it’s ridiculous. I think to myself, ‘This is not the next Mick Jagger,’ but then I get these words handed to me on a piece of paper, ‘Day destroys the night, night divides the day.’ Whoa, break on through to the other side, it was like hearing drum beats when I read them. And so that was the beginning.”

Ray’s brothers quit the band, and John brought Robby to a rehearsal. The two made a pact to let go of all their other projects and commit to this one. Densmore jokes, “I don’t think Maharishi knew it, but he was our booking agent. He put the band together.”

Stoned Immaculate

Jim Morrison was a UCLA film student, living on a Venice Beach rooftop, taking LSD and writing lyrics for a rock concert he saw in his head. Morrison wasn’t a musician. He was an introverted artist finding his voice literally and figuratively. The only band of the era to opt out of a bass player created a safe space for the singer to explore his sound. John remembers, “He would bring in these crumpled pieces of papers, coffee-stained napkins, and notebooks with incredible lyrics. He was talking about a connection to the void, the words were trying to tell us that there is something else.”

A couple miles East in the Densmore house, John placed a picture of the Hindu God Krishna, a candle, and a copy of Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi on his bedside table. His new friends came over for a spaghetti dinner. To John’s relief, they were on their best behavior when Mr. Densmore asked if the boys had a name for their band.

The Doors From Venice (L to R Ray Manzarek, John Densmore, Jim Morrison, Robby Krieger) c. Henry Diltz

Ray, John and Jim cruised South on the 405. Morrison shoeless in the passenger seat lit a joint and asked, “What do you think of the name ‘The Doors’?” Ray explained that Jim had gotten it from the Aldous Huxley book The Doors of Perception and Jim explained that Huxley got it from a William Blake poem that read, “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” Mr. Densmore responded, “The Doors’ is the worst name I ever heard for a band,” John boasted, “I told him that his reaction meant we were on the right track!” Soon after a marquee on the sunset strip changed its letters to read, ‘The Doors – The Band From Venice.”

I Guess I Like It Fine, So Far…

The Doors played the London Fog Club five hours a night, four nights a week. With about 30 songs developing including drafts and covers they had to find a way to fill the time. John thought to the unhurried improvisations of Coltrane and Jones. Ray thought to a Ravi Shankar album, of which his friend had designed the cover. Densmore exclaims, “Oh my God, it’s just so mystical long ragas. Which gave us the idea to break the three-minute [radio play] barrier, to do “Light My Fire” for seven minutes, “The End” for 10 minutes, and “When The Music’s Over” 11 minutes. So that came from ragas.” Years later John and Robby attended the Kinnara School of Music where they learned from the maestro, “Ravi was telling us, not literally, ‘You guys in America want to orgasm too quick. Take a long foreplay and you’ll have a bigger payoff.”

Best Seat In The Chateau Marmot Source; Unknown

The payoff came just hours before The Doors got fired from The Fog, when booker Ronnie Haran saw their set. She convinced her boss to make The Doors the house band at The Whiskey-A-Go-Go where they opened for popular acts including The Animals, The Rascals, The Turtles, Buffalo Springfield, Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention and even the Van Morrison fronted, Them.

Elektra offered The Doors a deal. Company president Jac Holzman bought a billboard on the Sunset Strip to announce their first album’s release, and by July of 1967 The Doors’ “Light My Fire” was #1 in the nation. John Densmore reflects, “Yea, I hoped to pay the rent for a decade. And as you can see, my hair is white and I’m still talking about it 50 years later. It was some kind of blessing. Something came through bigger than the four of us, and we needed this sort of, stable mattress of me and Ray and Robby to be the foundation for Jim to be on top of psychically and sonically.”

We Got The Numbers

Between 1966 and 1971, The Doors played more than 350 shows in the US, Canada, Mexico and Europe. This included iconic venues such as Ondine’s Discoteque, The Fillmore East and West, The Avalon and Winterland Ballrooms, The Hollywood Bowl, Madison Square Garden, and the Isle Wight Festival in East Afton Farm, England. Six Consecutive albums; The Doors, Strange Days, Waiting for the Sun, The Soft Parade, and Morrison Hotel went certified platinum (and sometimes multi-platinum) in the United States and platinum, gold and silver internationally.

The Doors’ massive popularity was likened to a Dionysian Feast. The once-cautious lead-singer’s anti-authoritarian, freedom-at-all-costs ethos were fully expressed when he didn’t change lyrics for a network television censor, and when he became the first rock performer to be arrested on stage. Charges required multiple venues to cancel already scheduled shows. Frenzied fans protested. The band braced for impact. The self-proclaimed “Lizard King” questioned the honor of the American judicial system and the sanctity of the first amendment.

Riders On The Storm In Europe Source; Unknown

John admits, “So yeah. It was hard. Jim was not easy, let me tell you. I lobbied for a year to stop playing live, because it was so great, and then it got not great due to his self-destruction. We knew there was a big elephant in the room, we didn’t know he had a disease, alcoholism.”

Everything Would Appear To Man As It Is, Infinite

As a birthday gift a friend bought Morrison time at the Village Recorder. A studio built in the old Masonic Temple off Santa Monica Boulevard, where John and Robby first met Ray at the TM training. Jim recorded his spoken-word poems, from An American Prayer. He reads, “We live, we die and death not ends it…”

Eight months later a report came in from Paris that Morrison had slipped off into the infinite. Forever 27.

John reflects, “So yeah, I was on a rocket ship. It was exciting. I’m proud of it, but I’m glad that meditation and yoga, Robert Bly men’s work and whatever other stuff helped the rocket ship landing not be so bumpy. Because at the downside of that peak, some folks died. Well, many.”

The Other Side

On the Santa Monica sands, the winter winds whip. The 78-year-old continues to tap his hand drum while he extolls, “Carl Jung said that the first half of your life you’re out there doing a lot of stuff and the second half of your life you’re analyzing what the hell did it all that mean?”

I ask if he’s talking about the Jung quote, “The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.” He grins, still drumming and says, “Yea, that’s the one.”

Bloody Red Sun Of Fantastic LA c. Amy V. Dewhurst

John’s ability to translate deep teachings and dark meanings is in-part what has always made his artistic expressions so captivating. His first post-Doors memoir Riders on the Storm was a New York Times Bestseller and source material for the Oliver Stone cult-classic film, The Doors. His second work The Doors Unhinged has become required reading for music business majors in universities across the country.

The Seekers

John Densmore’s latest offering, The Seekers, is a special kind of book. A trojan horse of spirituality in which he layers ancient wisdom, lessons learned and thought-provoking prose inside entertaining rockstar stories. Inspired by Gurdjieff’s 1927 classic Meetings with Remarkable Men and insisted upon by friends and family, the easy-read is nothing short of magnificent.

Within it John thanks teachers like Robert Bly, Peggy Feury, Fred Katz and even his junior high band leader, Mr. Armour. He pays homage to great instrumentalists like Ravi Shankar and Emil Richards. He tells legendary Laurel Canyon tales like Van Morrison working out the words to his seminal album, Astral Weeks. He talks about the time he got kicked out of a Jamaican recording studio by a then-unknown Jimmy Cliff and weeping when he read Laurie Anderson’s good-bye letter to her husband Lou Reed. Densmore somehow segues from jazz drummer Elvin Jones to beloved Pushti Marg scholar Shyamdas in the same sentence. And oh yeah, there was that time he smoked a joint with Willie Nelson. Naturally.

‘Til The Stars Fall From The Sky… c. Amy V. Dewhurst

Fan favorite passages include musician Tom Petty’s reflection on Jim Morrison’s well-lived life; “Tom said, ‘Some artists, the very very great ones, come along with the flame turned all the way up. And the flame is all the way up and you use a lot of fuel fast. And you’ve just got to get the heat that comes off of it.”.

John’s appreciation for the godmother of punk, Patti Smith giving it all up to raise her family, “[Patti] became a mother and a housewife. What? The woman who wrote ‘Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine,’ had settled down in the Midwest?! At first it seemed unthinkable, but it was a heroic move.”

And the last moments with his mother on the Earth plane, “They had obviously told her I was on my way because she was lying in her bed, all decked out with turquoise earring, a turquoise necklace, and slightly smeared lipstick. A ninety-four-year-old woman still wanting to look good for her son is an image that will stay with me forever.”

Amongst the Hafiz quotes, Gita passages, Ram Dass moments, and Neil De Grassi Tyson data Densmore assures the reader,“I have had the opportunity to meet and interact with some extraordinary people. To be a member of The Doors and have the unusual access I have been afforded is one of the greatest blessings of my life. But what I’ve learned is that anyone can access magical moments these gifted artists live in.”

Back on the beach in Santa Monica he shares, “I play hand drums and read poetry at small events, and some nights it’s so powerful because the audience and I are so connected. It’s as exciting as Madison Square Garden.”

What You Seek Is Seeking You

The sun takes its time syncing into the Pacific.

John Densmore pauses for a moment, breathes in the crisp cool air. He rat-a-tat-tats out a few final beats, turns to me and says, “Ya know Joseph Campbell said, ‘The goal in life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe.’”

I think to myself, “Seems like you have that one figured out…”

As though he heard the thought he shrugs.
I smile.

At the same time we both start humming “Let’s swim to the moon, let’s climb thru the tide…”

Heartbeat of the Universe, John Densmore c. Amy V. Dewhurst

Join John Densmore at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena

The Seekers Book Reading + Signing
Friday December 16, 2022
7pm
For tickets click here

The Seekers is now available where all books are sold

Click here to purchase.
Click here to learn more at Hachette Books.

To keep up with John Densmore

Check out his website, JohnDensmore.Com
Follow John on Social; Facebook , Instagram.

To Check Out Amy’s Work Go To; Sense + Color, You Can Reach Her At IG: Amy_V_Dewhurst + AmyVDewhurst@SenseAndColor.co #PutYourGoodWhereItWillDoTheMost

The post The Doors’ John Densmore; The Other Side appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Deep Dive: A Meditation Album with Shiva Rea and Rara Avis

Aria Morgan — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 20:31:26 +0000

Deep Dive Offers Meditations for the Flow of Life with Shiva Rea and Rara Avis

Created by Shiva Rea, world-renowned yoga/movement facilitator and creator of Prana Vinyasa Flow and Rara Avis, CEO/Co-Founder of YogiTunes, Deep Dive is a multi-faceted experiential movement mediation offered in the spirit of Sahaja, the natural, spontaneous flow of life force that exists within us all. Rather than asking us to create, to perform or to “do” something with our breath, Deep Dive invites us to take a step back and for the breath, itself, to breathe us. In doing so, we are invited into a Sahajic state of bliss, one which arrives from within, through a re-awakening of the spontaneous rhythm and flow of breath.

Deep Dive offers two formats of experience. One incudes five separate shorter journeys, each with its distinct elemental pattern, as well as a holistic, unified experience of 30 minutes of breath-centered, gentle movement instrumental meditation, akin to the typical length of a Yoga Nidra session.

LA Yoga Magazine caught up with Shiva Rea while she was on an airplane, heading to Diwali for the Festival of Lights. We laughed and shared a lovely interview while Shiva was strapped into her airline seat. In many ways, the context of the interview itself parallels Shiva’s ability and willingness to dive into the flow of each moment. No moment is “perfect” if viewed through an external lens, and yet, every moment is perfect when we exist within the present, one breath at a time.

Deep Dive – the Collaboration

Rara Avis and Shiva Rea have collaborated for nearly twenty years, offering yoga-movement-meditation experiences. Their partnership began back in the early 2000s, when Shiva taught at Sacred Movement in Venice Beach.

Shiva was one of the first yoga teachers to offer a fusion of yoga and dance movement meditation. Her classes were often filled with live accompaniment – drums, sitar, vocals and DJs. The music served as a gentle pulse during the yoga portion of class, and expanded into more encompassing rhythms during the free-flowing, tribal dance portion of class. The experiences were brand new for us at the time, a fusion of the Sahajic state that yoga brings along with the ecstatic state of dance, resulting in a blissful movement meditation. Rara was a frequent collaborator in these organic rhythmic offerings.

By the time it came to collaborating on Deep Dive, “We had a very natural foundation,” remarks Shiva. “Rara had just taken our teacher training in Costa Rica, and though we’d prefer to be in the same space, he’s in Canada, and when I did the voice over, I was in the English countryside while in quarantine last summer, surrounded by sheep.”

“Rara’s music is a testament to the power and the epic experience of the breath as a journey. Rara’s rhythms give people an opportunity to move with the breath, wherever they are, which is a powerful Sadahana.”

Deep Dive as an offering reminds us that “ breath is the the first mantra. Our heartbeat,” explains Shiva. Our pathway to feel what we are living lies in each breath.

Rara Avis adds to the conversation, “A conscious, connected breath practice is perhaps one of the most understated, powerful tools we have at our disposal. It links our autonomic nervous system to our conscious waking minds and helps us tap into the limitless potential we have as human beings to build resilience, strength, compassion and awareness.”

Deep Dive – the Experience

begins with an invitation to enter that sacred space of Self. Shiva’s voice prompts us to root into the earth, to feel that wave of the breath in us, to allow our pelvis to rock back and forth. She prompts us to look into the field of our body and release tension by exhaling from the crown of our head, descending out of our body like a sacred waterfall.

Deep Dive offers a primal experience of movement meditation. It is incredibly basic in its beauty and simplicity, inviting us to experience nature as within us all, a realization often glossed over in our quick-paced, hyper-focused life. The act of unwinding oneself in this first meditative offering aligns us with a fluid, watery presence within. Shiva’s voice is soft and nurturing. Rara’s accompaniment is in perfect sync and harmony. The collaboration itself is one of unity and deeply-held connectedness.

In the introduction, Shiva’s voice prompts us to use our arms, if we so desire, and sweep them overhead, gathering energy in a natural way, to open our inner ear and listen, and to connect with our heart in gratitude and refuge.

The first guided breath cycle is a Solar cycle, one in which we inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth with the solar mantra of the sun: “HA.” This cycle is good for cleansing and releasing.

The second guided breath cycle is a Lunar breath, a softer inhaling, drawing in golden light and pausing on the exhale, diving it into three parts. This cycle dramatically calms and eases the nervous system, inviting a spaciousness within.

The third guided cycle is akin to the practice of Nadhi Shodhana, an invitation into a unified Solar-Lunar breath. Shiva invites us to breathe into the right side of our body (with or without the use of physical, hands-on breath retention) and complete one half of this breath cycle by exhaling out of the left side of our body: in doing so, we offer the sun to the moon. The breath pattern balances itself as we breathe into the left side of our body and exhale out the right side of our body, offering the moon back to the sun.

Shiva’s voice completes the experience by reminding us that we have 21,600 breaths a day every day. Can we experience a sense of awareness in just 100 of those breaths, perhaps? Can we remember our sense of purpose in just a fraction of our daily breath cycle? We are invited to remain in this space of ease for as long as we wish.

Shiva Rea Shares Meditations on Deep Dive

Deep Dive as an Energetic Offering of Sahaja

When asked to comment on the energetic tone of the piece, Shiva explains, “Every breath we take travels through our bloodstream into every cell of our body. It touches all of us, like a droplet of water in an immersive sea.”

Most breathwork is integrated into asana, remarks Shiva, “and doesn’t give people permission to feel that sea of breath.” Whereas most yogic breath forms are rooted in classic rules, which may appear to feel rigid and constrictive to some, the state of Sahaja is the opposite: a space of flow, diving into the natural movements of life, a rising and pulsing of energy. Sahaja is anything but rigid or controlled.

Whether Deep Dive is experienced as separate practices or as one complete offering, it accomplishes this invitation to awaken into Sahaja, and in our post-pandemic world, this invitation is truly one of sacred medicine. Deep Dive offers invites us to reunite with our inner Truth through a journey into the depths of the unknown, the sublime and the sacred within us all.

When asked about how Deep Dive is a healing practice, one to soften the edges of the rigidness and deeply held fear state that many were forced into during the last few years, Shiva acknowledges that Fear is useful in a primal sense. But too much of it leads to contraction. It restricts our movement. “Sometimes, we feel ashamed when we begin a pranayama practice. It’s so hard to breathe! we might think. That’s the exit of cortisol, or fear in our nervous system. We are overstimulated,”

Shiva continues,”If we lovingly ask the breath to help us and to take refuge in it, even just for a short while, we experience each breath as life. And if we just love our breath, invite the breath to meet us, to love us, to move us, and to inspire us, we can transform the mental and emotional stress we are in.”

This invitation to experience each breath as innate intelligence, unfolding slowly and without judgment, draws us deeper into ourselves. Breath by breath, wave by wave: through this process, we release the rigidity of fear embodied within.

Rara Avis shares meditation music on Deep Dive

Bhavana and Sahaja

As with many artistic offerings rooted in the spirit of Divine Expansion, words don’t do Deep Dive justice because Bhavana– the meditative experience itself– is necessary to cultivate the feeling of Sahaja, expansion or bliss.

Deep Dive draws us in with its rawness, an indescribable truth and honesty, deeply felt on a visceral level, and within the very essence of our being. On one hand, Deep Dive is an invitation to trust the Breath as the source of intelligence, to allow the breath to breathe us as opposed to feeling that we have to control and create a specific breath pattern to achieve a prescribed result. On the other hand, Deep Dive is an invitation to expand into the unknown, a space of creation and possibility that unites us all in Love.

Listen to Deep Dive

Deep Dive is released on Six Degrees Records and currently available on streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music.

Aria Morgan

Aria Morgan is a yoga teacher, doula and music lover who finds inspiration in nature: ariamorgan.com.

www.ariamorgan.com

The post Deep Dive: A Meditation Album with Shiva Rea and Rara Avis appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Into the Forest: Sing with Sacred Music Artist Jahnavi Harrison

Felicia M. Tomasko — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 00:17:28 +0000

Jahnavi Harrison Shares Bhakti Yoga through Sacred Music

Sacred music artist Jahnavi Harrison is currently touring the US for her Into the Forest Tour, named for her most recent sacred music album. Join her on Thursday, November 3, at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre, at 7:00 PM.

Jahnavi evokes the environmentalist John Muir saying, “Into the forest I go to lose my mind and find my soul.” which gave inspiration for name of both the album Into the Forest and the tour. Whether we are in nature or a theatre, in the city, or in the forest, we can connect to the art of devotion to find our souls.

She’s sharing her clarity of voice, purity of purpose, and a direct line to the essence of bhakti. Bhakti is the Sanskrit word for devotion. This refers to the practice that allows us to experience our connection to the divine within us as well as the divine aspects of the world around us. It is more than chant, music, or song.

Bhakti Yoga is the path that allows us to open our hearts. It is available to each and every one of us. There are so many methods we can use to connect into this path of practice. Those of us who live in Los Angeles are fortunate to be able to have the experience to not only sit and experience sacred musician Jahnavi’s devotion, but to sing with her and to sing in community with each other on Thursday, November 3, 2022. (Use the discount code SINGVIP50 for a limited time offer of 50% off tickets.

A Path of Practice

Each and every time Jahnavi shares her approach to Bhakti Yoga, she draws upon the legacy of her upbringing. She grew up at Bhaktivedanta Manor in England, a spiritual sanctuary famously donated by late Beatle George Harrison as part of his own practice of Bhakti Yoga.

Her immersion in sacred song includes a number of album releases, including the album, Like a River to the Sea.

Jahnavi has garnered a long list of supporters who share their love of her work. Willow Smith has recorded music with Jahnavi and calls her, “One of my favorite artists of all time.” Famous chant artist Krishna Das says, “When Jahnavi sings and plays one feels that one is eavesdropping on the music of the Gods. One only has to have ears to hear her and know immediately that we are in the presence of grace.”

She has appeared on Russell Brand’s podcast. He says the following about her, “This woman is amazing. I’ve seen her perform, it’s holy and sacred.”

Sing with Jahnavi Harrison in Los Angeles

Thursday, November 3 at 7:00 PM. A Night of Mantra Music with Jahnavi Harrison. Wilshire Ebell Theatre, 4401 West 8th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90005 For 50% off tickets, use the discount code: SINGVIP50 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/jahnavi-harrison-an-evening-of-mantra-music-meditation-tickets-391173950817

Felicia M. Tomasko

www.blissnetwork.com

The post Into the Forest: Sing with Sacred Music Artist Jahnavi Harrison appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

How Hindu Goddess Kali Inspired Rock ‘n Roll’s Most Infamous Icon

Amy V Dewhurst — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 18:45:33 +0000

Kali Ma

Her name is Kali – She is the Hindu Goddess of Liberation, of change and transition, of endings before beginnings. She is beloved by billions of devotees worldwide, and though you may not know Her by name, you’ve probably seen Her image “hiding in plain sight.” For She inspired Rock ‘n Roll’s most infamous logo.

In 1970 the Royal College of Art in London got a call from the rock n’ roll band, the Rolling Stones’ office. They inquired about students proficient in poster design for their upcoming European tour. An artist who had showed promise in that format was selected and sent to meet the band’s lead singer, Mick Jagger.

John Pasche was 25 at the time and pursuing a Master of Art degree. He remembers, “My design for the tour poster went down well and later in the year Mick invited me to his home to talk about a logo design that he had in mind to use on the Stones own record label.”

John’s First Commission with The Stones – Europe 70 Tour Poster

Paint It Black

John continues, “During the meeting, Mick explained that he wanted a logo design which would stand alone as an image without including the Rolling Stones name. A bit like the Shell logo for the petroleum company. He also showed me a picture of the Hindu Goddess Kali which he had seen in his local corner shop and asked to borrow it. He just said he liked the image without specifically explaining why. I was conscious that there was a lot of interest in Indian culture and religion at the time.”

Kali Mata

The two talked through some concepts pulling inspiration from Kali. Pasche explains, “For me it was the tongue sticking out of her mouth that was the spark of the concept of using a disembodied mouth and tongue as the logo. It seemed to symbolize anti-establishment and rebellion which was seen as the bands image at the time”

The art student worked for a few weeks, and presented some preliminary sketches. John retells, “ At the next meeting with Mick, we both agreed on one of the sketches which is very much as the logo is now. He needed to show the rest of the band who were happy for me to proceed to finished artwork.”

The Original Rolling Stones Logo Sketch By John Pasche

Tongue + Lips

John Pasche’s “Tongue and Lips” logo first appeared on the back cover, inside cover and label of the 1971 Rolling Stones’ album Sticky Fingers. A record that frequently ranks on “best of” lists. It contains Stones classics like, “Brown Sugar,” Wild Horses,” “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,” “Moonlight Mile” and “Dead Flowers.”

Artists Andy Warhol and Craig Braun designed the album cover that contained an actual zipper. They were nominated for a Grammy Award for best recording package in 1972 and are sometimes erroneously credited with having designed the infamous logo.

Stones Travel In Style

Over the last 50+ years the logo has appeared on t-shirts and stickers, stadium stages and private jets, baby clothes and bottles of alcohol, it’s one of the most requested tattoos of all time, and the shape was even built AS a stage at the 2006 Superbowl half time show. It’s regarded as the most recognizable logo in the history of the rock ‘n roll industry.

Of the “Tongue and Lips” phenomena Pasche, now 77 reflects, “I had no idea at the time that my logo design would be used for over 50 years but I put that down to the fact that the band have been making music and touring all that time without wanting to change their logo. I am obviously happy that the logo seems to be liked by young and old. The interest in retro design and fashion has certainly helped.”

She Who Is The Mother Of Time

For being a conduit to one of Kali’s most infamous forms of the modern era, Pasche says, “At the time I didn’t know much about the Goddess Kali but discovered that in Hinduism, she was the goddess of time, doomsday, and death, or the black goddess. Also that she evolved to a full-fledged symbol of Mother Nature in her creative, nurturing and devouring aspects. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mick knew a lot more about this than I did and that is why he chose her image to show to me.”

John Pasche with his iconic Rolling Stones Design

Pasche has enjoyed a rich career designing art with music legends like The Who, David Bowie, United Artists Records, Chrysalis Records and more, is a recipient of multiple industry-renown Design and Advertising awards, Music Week awards and Communications Arts awards.

He concludes, “From the day I created the logo I have always felt that it was the perfect image for the Stones and am flattered that a lot of other people like it too.”

Jai Kali Ma!

John Pasche Design

To View John Pasche’s Work Go To JohnPascheDesign.com

To Get Your Own Hand-Signed Rolling Stone’s Logo Art Check Out RollingStonesLogo.com

To Check Out Amy’s Work Go To; Sense + Color, You Can Reach Her At IG: Amy_V_Dewhurst + AmyVDewhurst@SenseAndColor.co #PutYourGoodWhereItWillDoTheMost

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The Documentary Brilliant Disguise Shares A Powerful Spiritual Story

Shelley Karpaty — Fri, 23 Sep 2022 17:02:12 +0000

Brilliant Disguise Shares How K.C. Tewari Influenced a Generation

Brilliant Disguise is a feature-length documentary that tells the life story of a humble Indian man, K.C. Tewari. K.C. Tewari was not a household name, but he helped influence the spiritual paths of multiple generations as well as the influx of Eastern spirituality in the West today.

The film gently unfolds as the viewer is shown the stories of Westerners who visited with K.C. Tewari in India in the 1970s. During the counter-culture revolution of that time, Ram Dass and other Westerners made their way to India and met a handful of exceptional beings who changed their lives forever. One of those was the famous Indian guru, Neem Karoli Baba. What many people don’t know is that before Neem Karoli Baba (Maharaji) left his body, he instructed K.C. Tewari to take care of those Western seekers.

The Power of Acceptance and Truth on the Spiritual Journey

Brilliant Disguise is a meditation as well as a roadmap of consciousness through the perspective of a unique man. Whether you believe in consciousness, the Divine, G-d or some other energetic source, once you see the film, your belief may expand or be validated. This is because of this moving story of K.C. Tewari, who exhibited a non-judgmental energy and acceptance that was remarkable to the Western seekers.

The story of this extraordinary man in the film is told through recounting personal experiences from a variety of noteworthy musicians, writers, and seekers of truth. These intimate accounts are interwoven with archival footage of K.C. and his family. Together, we bear witness to the story of an extraordinary person. When first met, Tewari may have appeared to be an ordinary family man and the headmaster of a school; but he was far from ordinary.

Personal Stories of An Extraordinary Teacher

Kirtan artist Jai Uttal described K.C. Tewari with his white head of hair, acting like an antenna channeling the unseen energy of devotion, his beak-like peaceful face, and warmth of heart. He exuded the vibration of truth. The devotees described him again and again as a conduit to the Divine embodiment of unconditional love that it is everywhere; readily available to anyone who believes.

If you are open to the belief that there is a benevolent force, the messages of proof are found throughout Brilliant Disguise. From the wind blowing the foliage behind Krishna Das and Raghu Markus as they recounted tales of Tewari as if on cue, invoking to the story of Radha explaining his ninja-like tendencies, blending into the woodwork and the unconditional loving support of a child who was ill.

If the stories weren’t enough, the film has actual footage of Tewari entering the transcendent state of consciousness known as samadhi. One way to consider samadhi is that it is like a spiritual coma. In this state of samadhi, he spent time on another plane of existence. Through the film, we have the blessing to see how his centered, deeply devoted, concentrated energy and love of the Divine transcended his way of living and impacted everyone around him. In addition, Tewari understood and honored the power of women in the spiritual life. This is seen through his beloved wife, who was as much a saint as he was. K.C. Tewari was a “be here now” instructor of the most genuine kind.

Experience the Magic in Daily Life

I highly recommended this film to anyone who needs a dose of magic. For that’s what this film exudes – magic through stories from people who witnessed the extraordinary within the ordinary. Brilliant Disguise honors the profound love of K.C. Tewari, whose faith was so deep, who devoted his life service to others and now his vibration will live on forever. By the end of the film, you will have felt like you had a deep meditative experience with a sense of hope and a vibration of love.

Isn’t that what life is about, after all? Love, faith, mixed in with some magic.

See Brilliant Disguise in Theaters

Brilliant Disguise will be playing at select theaters, including the Laemmle Monica Film Center.

Join Director Raghu Markus and guests for a Q & A on Friday, September 30.

Rent or Buy Brilliant Disguise to Watch at Home

The film is available on iTunes, Amazon, Google Play and on Vimeo On Demand.

You can visit ramdass.org/brilliantdisguise to learn more.

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/kctewari

Shelley Karpaty

Shelley Karpaty is a yogi living in the Bay Area where she brings her spirit into writing, recruiting and career coaching. Medium: medium.com/@skarpaty and Instagram @shelleykarpaty

www.medium.com/@skarpaty

The post The Documentary Brilliant Disguise Shares A Powerful Spiritual Story appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Mickey Hart: God Is Sound

Amy V Dewhurst — Fri, 09 Sep 2022 04:58:57 +0000

Mickey Hart is known to many as a drummer for the Grateful Dead and Dead and Co. Percussionists know him for introducing “World Music” to the masses through Planet Drum, and his latest album, In The Groove. Academics know his as a producer, and preservationist. Doctors and scientists know him as a supporter, proving the medicinal power of music. And still some know him as a husband, father, and lifelong friend. The psychedelic cowboy, divine horseman, rhythm devil, songcatcher.

From his studio in Northern California, Mickey Hart states, “It’s about transcendence, and that’s what certain kinds of music does. It takes you from this, your normal waking state, to another virtual space outside of that, and that’s one of the powers of music that I’ve enjoyed over the years, to be able to enhance consciousness and do many things that you can never do without it. So yes, I am in the business of transportation. I don’t have trucks, but I do have music.” A dharmic assignment that some say he signed up for before birth.

The Cosmic Background

“My parents happened to be rhythmically astute. Both of them were drummers, so it kind of runs in the family” Mickey remarks. The couple won the mixed doubles competition in rudimentary drumming at the 1939 World’s Fair. “In the womb, the bass is the heart” he explains, “My mother’s heartbeat was beating a tattoo of about 140 decibels, very loud. So I was imprinted, just like everyone is imprinted, with a rhythmic signature even before you come out into the light.” Mickey’s family hid a drum pad and snakewood drumsticks in hard-to-reach corners of his grandparents’ apartment, but the four-year-old always found them. He notes, “That set my whole life on course, and it never ever veered off of that.”

Mickey Hart -Early days back East source; MH FB

Mickey and his mom moved to the attic of an old Cape Cod house on Long Island. The Italian truck driver who lived below had five kids, and a longing for quiet. “He took exception to my drumming skills,” Hart recounts, “At about 5:30 [pm] just when he came home from work, he would come up the stairs and bang on the door, and my mom would be there with a broom and she said, ‘over my dead body.’ [he laughs]. And so, my mom helped a lot, defended my right to play, because remember, druuums are loooud.”

Meeting The Mentor

When Mickey walked into the Lawrence High School band room, he crossed a threshold. “There was magic in that room because there was a magician in it,” he once wrote. The teen bought a stack of hall passes off a friend with a printing press so he could hang around band teacher, “Jonesy” and the array of drums that he harbored. This earned him a rap-sheet with the principal. In his senior year, he quit school and enlisted in the Air Force. He was ready for his initiation.

“Druuums are loooud” source; Music Archive

Hart dropped his tray down onto the mess hall table of the Strategic Air Command outside of Madrid, Spain. Someone slipped him a note, “Be prepared to defend your belt at four o’clock tomorrow. Or else you’re a dead man.” He apprehensively entered the dojo with Pogo, the base judo instructor. Instead of destroying the young braggart, Pogo developed him into a European armed forces judo champion. Every available moment was spent training, lifting, learning how to harness inner energy, and hone mental focus (even in his sleep). “He became my first teacher in the higher sense,” Mickey acknowledges. After 18 months he was totally transformed and Pogo reassigned. They never saw each other again.

Akiwowo Oloko Ile! source; Music Archive

Mickey served as a drummer in the Airmen of Note, an elite big band unit that traveled through Europe playing American military classics. He moved off base and in with a metropolitan playboy he had met while buying a used Alfa Romeo. At one of his roommate’s parties, the percussionist put on Babatunde Olatunji’s Drums of Passion and the jetsetters went wild.

Mickey explains, “Baba had all these drummers playing, but he combined the brass of New York City, Nigerian percussion and the street. It was a giant underground hit; sold millions of records. When I heard that music, and I heard the talking drum on it, it changed my life. I never was the same after that. And that sound resonates even to this day in my mind. So he started back then to influence who I was to become.”

Knockin’ On The Golden Door

Out of the Air Force and into the musicians’ union, Mickey milled around the basement of the Roseland Ballroom hoping for a weekend gig. A letter came from his dad out in California who had just opened a music store. The twenty-something spent the next two years intimately learning the workings (and the things that don’t always work), on a variety of drums. Count Basie’s percussionist Sonny Payne invited Mickey to their show at San Francisco’s Fillmore West theater. That night a nameless, faceless, never-again-seen stranger, introduced Mickey Hart to a guy named Bill Kreutzmann.

About a month later, “Bill the drummer” banged away with his newly named band before jumping off stage at the Straight Theater, saying something like, “Sit in for the second set.” By the time the two borrowed drums from a friend’s house, got them in a truck, and up onto the stage the next set began. Mickey hadn’t yet met these people, nor heard their songs, but the musical conversation that occurred was extra-sensory, soul recognition, sorta stuff. He affirmed, “We knew it right away. Bill knew it, I knew it, the band knew it, Jerry [Garcia] knew it. Jerry said, ‘So that’s Grateful Dead music! We could take this around the world!’”

Drums And Space

In 1665, the Dutch Physicist Christian Huygen proved the “Law of Entrainment”– that two objects vibrating at different speeds in close proximity will sync with one another. It happens as frequently with mechanical items like clocks as with coworkers’ menstruation cycles. This can happen at an accelerated pace when both beings are committed to it. “We practiced every day, all day,” Mickey recalls, merging into what he and Bill called a rhythm machine, a tractor beam.

Rhythm Devils In Flight! Mickey Hart + Bill Kreutzmann on plane, 1968 © Rosie McGee

“He would take the right stick, and I would take a left stick and I’d hold him behind, he’d hold me behind, and we were able to play as one. And we lived together too!” Mickey says laughing. “So you really get to know somebody. Every waking moment was spent practicing, playing. There were thousands and thousands of hours put into being able to play like one drummer or eight hands. That wasn’t by accident, we knew we were meant for each other. It’s kind of like getting married, you have that relationship that is very close and you feel each other’s mind, body, everything, the whole sensibilities about a person, it draws you close to them, and we have that for each other. And we focused on drums, drums being the connecting fiber in our relationship.”

Now Is The Time Past Believing

Bill, rhythm guitarist Bob Weir, and bassist Phil Lesh lived in a second band house at 24 Belvedere Street in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district. Because all the bedrooms were already taken Mickey took up residence in a closet-kinda room, half under the stairs. There was a knock on the door, Mickey retells, “Phil Lesh gave me a record, Drums of North and South India, that Alla Rakha was on.” The newest group member grabbed his Indian drum, the tabla, and was primed to play along. He came out confused, asking Phil to confirm the credits which said there was just one, not five or six drummers. The Eastern polyrhythmic time signature blew his ever-expanding mind. “It felt at first unattainable.” Mickey admits.

Ustad Alla Rakha Qureshi + Pandit Ravi Shankar source; Music Archive

A few weeks later, Hart was invited to attend a performance of virtuosos Ravi Shankar and Alla Rakha. Back in high school he worked as a soda jerk at a jazz club to watch Latin legends like Tito Puente’s sticks travel the kit. Now he was mesmerized by Alla Rakha’s fingertips dancing atop the tabla. The Hindustani classical musician from a village outside of Kashmir taught the marching band drummer from Brooklyn “rhythm games.”

Mickey reveals, “I had to really focus a little bit more than I would in the normal four- fours and threes and sixes, which are the rhythmic signatures of the western music. They play in what we would call odd time signatures, five and seven at nine and all these time signatures that were outside of the rhythmic lexicon. When I found this, it just totally intrigued me.”

American Beauty; Mickey Hart + the Grateful Dead on a trail ride near Mickey’s Novato ranch, 1969 © Rosie McGee

Nestled into a new ranch home in the Novato Mountains, Mickey and the band gave themselves over to these rhythm games for months. It soon led to songs like “The Eleven.” In time, the intricate layering of beats opened infinite possibilities within each song, each set, each concert. Hart offers, “And that changed my life, and the Grateful Dead’s life as well…”

While The Music Plays The Band

The rise of the Dead has been meticulously chronicled in books, films, magazines, the cassette tape trade, and early days of the internet. Mickey jokes, “I know what I did every day of my life — any time I’ve ever played.” There are warehouses of their recordings, and an official archive at UC Santa Cruz. There are places of pilgrimage, and historic dates revered, because as the great impresario Bill Graham once said, “They’re not the best at what they do, they’re the only ones who do what they do.”

“They’re A Band Beyond Description” – GD © Roger Ressmeyer via Getty Image

The Grateful Dead never played the same show twice, and they did it more than 2,000 times, over 30 years. Warner Brothers Music president Joe Smith called it, “One of the great phenomenons of the entertainment world.” A group reluctant to take a publicity photo became what many millions consider the greatest rock ‘n roll band of all time. The top grossing tour act, who gave their music away to tapers, officially sold more than 35 million albums. They were inducted into the Rock n’ Roll hall of fame, received a Grammy for lifetime achievement, and even won an award for packing a record number of people into New Jersey’s Meadowlands. Hallowed ground.

“When I Paint My Masterpiece” – Vegas ’93 © Jay Blakesberg

54 years, 10 months, and 3 days after materializing into the band Mickey states, “We didn’t even have a set list. We just went out there and started a song, and then someone offered another, and then we went there, and then the same thing happened. So, we played for hours without a chart, without a map. We were all going on that adventure together, and we knew it. We were out there in the zone, and we wanted to take people with us. And we’ve been able to raise consciousness for millions of people.”

Mickey, Jerry Garcia + Joseph Campbell © Jay Blakesberg

The allure, the magic, the mystery, the ritual, the rite can perhaps best be described by pioneering anthropologist Joseph Campbell, who gave a lecture at UC Berkeley declaring, “I go to this building with EIGHT thousand people in it, and they’re all standing for FIVE hours in a rapture. And I had suspected that there might be something interesting to observe because of the name, the Grateful Dead. That is a phrase that comes from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and it refers to those dead, which is what we are when we are un-awakened…”

Deadheads in Rapture © Jay Blakesberg

Campbell continues, “And what I felt there was something that seemed to me, to be a true religious experience. Namely, these people were all one; the heart is burst open and one loses oneself in a spiritual experience of compassion, of suffering and living and joying with others who, in the same mode, are having this experience. And so, it seemed to me there, that we had an awakening of the kind that the great religions first intended. And that it somehow involved everybody. There were kids there, there were old people there, and in other parts of the building you could see there were people there just dancing and dancing…. It seemed to me, and I’m meaning this very seriously, a prime religious experience that transcended all the bondage and definition of ‘who’ and ‘what’ [which] are the curse of the world today. And so, this I would say, is the answer to the atom bomb.”

Let Our Chant Fill The Void, That Others May Know

There was a popular bumper sticker selling in stadium parking lots that read, “There’s nothing like a Grateful Dead Show.” And while each assembly illuminated a new hue of ascendance some were notoriously surreal. One of them was Egypt ’78. By all differing accounts an undeniably mystical odyssey into otherworldly antiquity.

“Yes, that was a beauty,” Mickey reflects amorously.

Hamza El Din source; Music Archive

As the Aswan Dam was being built across the Nile River, local villagers knew they would forever be displaced. A Nubian Oud player named Hamza El Din traveled by donkey to collect the stories and songs of his people. He made his way to Marin County, California where Mickey met him.

Hart reminisces, “Hamza, very soft, Hamza was the quiet side, which I had never found before. I mean, he was silence; he was quiet, he was calm, he was centered. He wasn’t loud, everybody around me was loud. This was the other side. When I found Hamza, it all snapped in, and it was like the romancing of the air, as opposed to the auditory driving, which is the loud side. It brought people in, it wasn’t the music that went out, it was like you went into the music, and you had to listen very carefully.” Hamza introduced Mickey to the Tar –a hypnotic frame drum from North Africa that has a recalibrating, calming, cooling effect.

Sometime later, a long-held dream of the Grateful Dead and extended collective started to take shape. Donning rarely-worn business suits, Phil Lesh, GD publishing’s Alan Trist, and GD manager Richard Loren convinced multiple government agencies in several countries to allow for a big adventure. The Grateful Dead family of 50+ arrived in Egypt during the last night of Ramadan. The celebratory mood helped ease logistical endeavors, like importing The Who’s sound equipment in from England, and mic-ing the 5,000-year-old tomb of Pharaoh Cheops (of which Jerry Garcia reportedly remarked, “This should be weird enough.”).

Tar School Orchestra, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, Jerry Garcia Egypt ’78 © Adrian Boot/Urban Image

At the right paw of the Great Sphinx in Giza’s Sound and Light Theater, the show began. Mickey orates, “Hamza had a school of tars in a place called Abu Simbal and there were 40, 50 drummers from the school up on stage playing this beautiful 12-beat pattern, which was my favorite. And then Jerry came out, and Bobby came out, the band just joined in.”

Hamza and his orchestra patted out the sacred wedding song” Ollin Arageed”. The native tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap cycled into the familiar clap-clap-clap-clap-clap-clap of “Not Fade Away.”

The 178 Deadheads who had chartered a 747 from the states did not miss a beat. The sound traveled past the monuments in the Valley of the Dead and all the way into metropolitan Cairo where First Lady Jehan Sadat had allowed the special permit for this unusual event.

Mickey smirks, “Another funny thing was they had a fire on the side of the stage where they would heat the drums and pass them out one by one, and they kept rotating the drums, with the humidity, the drums would sink in tone. And the fire was blazing, the drums were being heated up over the fire, they were being passed around and there we were in Egypt! There was Bill Walton, there was Bill Graham. Ken Kesey was there, all kinds of people came. It was wild.”

Egypt ’78 Full Moon Lunar Eclipse © Adrian Boot/ Urban Image

As the sun set each evening silhouettes watched from the distance. Were they adversaries, onlookers, Isis, Osiris, Anubis? On the third night a Full Moon Lunar Eclipse at 23 degrees in Pisces shadowed the Sahara Sky. The nomadic Arab tribe, the Bedouins, emerged forth into the light. They tied their camels and secured their caravans to dance with the Deadheads to “Fire on a Mountain.” This audible, astrological, intercultural confluence is believed to have opened another dimension.

In a film about his life, Bob Weir avowed, “Time went away. Future past, all of it was right here…when the pyramid was lined up with the Sphinx, I would hear echoes in a sound that seemed to go far beyond this place and time. At dusk the mosquitos come out and I looked at my arm and it was covered with mosquitos. And I’m thinking ‘Ok welcome to hell.’ And then something flies by my face.It was a bat. I look across the stage, and the stage is swarmed with bats and they’re taking out the mosquitos. They’re saving our asses! There’s a rock n roll band on a thousands of year old stage, at the foot of the great pyramid, surrounded by a cloud of bats and I think to myself, ‘Take me now Lord, I want to remember it just like this.”

Late into the dark desert night, the entourage traveled by camel and horseback to an oasis, where there was talk of Israeli and Egyptian leaders at the US’s Camp David reaching a Mid-East peace agreement. The compass always points.

Mickey + Bill Graham Riding On The Edge In Giza source; S+C

In the month that followed, Mickey traveled by ship down the Nile River recording maritime songs with his new Nagra. A sojourn that would impact the preservation of indigenous music on a mass scale. He reflects, “So yes, so that’s what happened with Hamza. We were friends until the end, and he taught me a lot. I loved him. He was one of my guides, one of my doors, one of the doors that I went through my rhythm door.”

Drum Circles

In San Francisco in the mid-80s, Mickey opened a newspaper to see Babatunde Olatunji was playing nearby. The one whose album had awakened something within the young airmen in Madrid, so many roads ago. Hart recollects “He came to town at a club, and I went down there and I just got into a conga drum line or something. We were all playing and afterward I asked him, ‘Hey, I’d like you to open for my band, at the Oakland Coliseum on New Year’s Eve. And he didn’t know who I was, and he never heard of the Grateful Dead. So he just kind of blew me off. And then I guess somebody told him afterward, and he called me and he said ‘Yes, I’ll be there.’ And of course, he called all of his people from all over the world, and he opened for the Grateful Dead. Magnificent performance.”

Baba © Jay Blakesberg

The Nigerian drum master’s tribal beat amplified out through KFOG San Francisco Public Radio and a National TV broadcast. Mickey smiles, “And so he came into our world, and he became like Baba, like Dad, like father to all of these deadheads who wanted to learn about drum circles and about using the drum for healing, using the drum for meditation.”

The primordial, familiar feel of drum circles quickly caught on. From Dead Show surroundings, they migrated onto college campuses and summer camps, corporate retreats and city squares. Varun Soni Ph.D. Dean of Religious life at the University of Southern California confirms, “Whenever the Grateful Dead performed with other musicians, Deadheads would do deep dives into their respective catalogues in order to learn about different genres and approaches.”

Mickey + Baba source; MH FB

Dr. Soni continues, “Through Mickey Hart’s personal relationships and professional collaborations with other virtuoso percussionists like Alla Rakha, Zakir Hussain, Babatunde Olatunji and others, Deadheads were introduced to rhythmic sounds and styles from all over the world. As a result, they started their own drum circles and communities, and became part of an ancient and global percussion lineage of trance and transcendence.”

That lineage reached critical mass in 2004 when Mickey’s organization Rhythm for Life and Remo Belli distributed several thousand instruments to nearly 5,000 percussionists. Breaking the Guinness Book of World Records for largest drum ensemble. Mickey deduces, “So that’s how it was, you felt powerful after a rhythm meditation.”

Rhythm For Life Drum Circle © Susana Millman

A Call To All Nations

“Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhh….” The Dzintars Latvian Women’s Choir reached a crescendo. Jerry Garcia leaned over Mickey’s shoulder, “We got it.” Mickey, sitting behind the soundboard at George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch lit up, “Yea that one was really powerful.”

From the rainforests of Papa New Guinea to his son’s heartbeat in utero, Mickey and his team have recorded, preserved and produced music and soundscapes from around the world. They created the “Endangered Music Project,” a collaboration with the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, which presents recordings from musical traditions at risk. Their captures and curation have become “The Mickey Hart Collection” with the Smithsonian Institution. Mickey has produced albums of Hamza, Babatunde, Ustad Sultan Khan, Airto Moreira and Flora Purim, Native Americans, Indigenous Balinese, Haitian Vodou and many more. He has released 17 solo albums with consistent collaborators and introduced “World Music” to the masses.

Produced By Mickey Hart © Patty Healy c/o Blakesberg Retro Photo Archive

In a pre-internet era, Hart and comrades like Frederic Lieberman, Elizabeth Cohen, and many others voraciously collected drums and information about drumming from all ends of the Earth. This resulted in a peg-board style organization system in his barn, lovingly referred to as the “Anaconda.” Its molten skin became authored books Drumming at the Edge of Magic, Planet Drum, Spirit of Sound, and Songcatchers.

In 1996, 3.5 billion people watched the opening ceremony of the Centennial Olympics. Mickey, Zakir Hussain, Giovanni Hidalgo and Philip Glass’s composition “Call to All Nations” was performed by more than a hundred local percussionists and singers from around the world. Boxing heavyweight Muhammad Ali lit the Olympic flame and fireworks flew up into the sky. Somewhere out there, Jonesy was looking on saying, “You did it, man.”

May All Beings

Local poet laureate, lyricist Robert Hunter handed Mickey an unmarked cassette tape of something he quick-recorded off of public radio. Mickey pressed play, rewind, pause, play for many years before discovering it was the only known recording of the Gyuto Monks of Tibet; an exiled people whose spiritual practice included multi-phonic vocalizing. That is, chanting three chord mantras from deep within their throat. The fervent collector was on a quest to meet and record them.

Some 15 years later, His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama declared that the dharma should be experienced by everyone, and thus for the first time in history, allowed these powerful prayers to be recited outside of the monastic environments. Beloved Buddhist Scholar Tenzin Robert Thurman arranged for this sangha to come to Amherst, Massachusetts.

Mic-ed Up For Mantras © Susana Millman

Author and Grateful Dead publicist Dennis McNally shares fondly, “Mickey’s curiosity about the world, combined with the events of Tibet and them being in India, and so forth, morphed into something in front of our eyes. On an off day of the tour, Mickey, [sound engineer] Dan Healy with myself tagging along, went to Amherst College and recorded the monks. Over the course of the day Mickey was chatting with the abbot and said, ‘Oh Well, doing shows is what we do. We’ll do a show for you’. And he turns to me and says, ‘Sell it out Denny’. With various people we did put on a show at Berkeley Community Theater. It was not only sold out, at intermission there were still five people hoping against hope sitting on the steps of the theater.” This collaboration evolved into an album and West Coast Tour.

Mickey + The Gyuto Monks of Tibet! © Susana Millman

While traveling from Marin County to San Francisco’s East Bay the monks intuited, “We sense a lot of pain over there.” At their request, GD manager Danny Rifkin pulled over the passenger van so the Tibetan monks could do a side-of-the-road purification puja for the inmates of the San Quentin Prison.

Rifkin reached out to campus chaplain Earl Smith asking, “What’s the single best thing we can do?” Smith responded, “Some kind of program for children of these prisoners would do more for their spirits and their hearts than anyone could imagine.” McNally continues, “In the course of all this, Danny finds out, and shares with Mickey, about the choir, and the chapel, and Mickey who never met a sound he didn’t need to record said, ‘I have to record them.’ So bit by bit the arrangements were made to have this recording session in the chapel.”

Mickey and the team produced, He’s All I Need, an album of the San Quentin Mass Choir. Chaplain Smith has said, “We had a mix of staff and inmates doing what had never been done before. We had female staff members join the choir, and correctional officers playing the organ and drums.” In those moments they weren’t prisoners, and guards, (“who” and “what”) but Christians coming together to sing the gospel.

Mickey with San Quentin Mass Choir
© John Storey / Getty Images

This unifying record was funded by the Grateful Dead’s charitable arm, The Rex Foundation, and proceeds were returned to the prison ministry to enhance their programming. Danny Rifkin and Chaplain Smith co-founded Project Avary to assist children of incarcerated parents. Of their time together, traveling with and recording the Gyuto Monks, Tenzin Bob Thurman says, “The Grateful Dead, and the Gyuto monks being in the same business of transportation with people is correct. And of course, the transportation is to move them out of their habitual rigid identity, into some sort of higher vision, feeling connected to other beings and the universe in a positive way, seeing the possibility of love and compassion dominating over hatred and violence and horrible things in the world.”

“He’s All I Need” San Quentin Mass Choir © John Story / Getty Images

Basic Human Needs

Mickey and his equipment manager Ramrod backed a truck up to his barn. They loaded it with djembes, and cow bells, bullroarers and slit gongs, hoop drums and shakers, tambourines and gourds. Anything that made a noise. They drove it up to Woodstock MC, and humanitarian, Wavy Gravy’s Camp Winnarainbow. This getaway for underserved youth had some pretty tough characters ages 7-14. Mickey wondered how he could help them break through to the “spirit side.”

The disparate group played a variety of beats in the camp barn, and creek bed, until the campers clicked in together. One day Hart handed out copies of the The Ojibwa Dance Drum and declared they would be making their own power drum, his very first.

Camp Winnarainbow source; CW

In Wavy’s own words, “Mickey Hart brought rhythm to Camp Winnarainbow with a large and awesome drum he built from scratch with the camp children. The children participated in creating the drum fully, starting with obtaining a piece of cowhide and scraping it to prepare the drum skin and decorating the final product. Many of the children then repeated the process by creating their own treasured personal small drums to add to the ensemble which continued to accompany camp evening programs and fire circles year after year. After several years the big drum was loaned to the San Francisco Airport where it went on exhibit. How cool is that?”

Returning With The Elixir

Mickey’s grandmother had Alzheimer’s and hadn’t spoken in almost a year. As they rode in a car together he characteristically beat a small drum. She smiled and said, “Mickey!” He recounts, “And I said, ‘Grandma you spoke!’ The drum had triggered that response in her.”

Over the past 30 years, Mickey has been devoted to exploring the healing power of rhythm on damaged, diseased, or dysregulated systems in the body. He declares, “Shamans traditionally used drums and rattles to heal. So music and rhythm therapy isn’t something we’re inventing. But through scientific investigation we’re greatly expanding our knowledge.”

Neural Networks! Mickey + Adam Gazzaley, M.D., Ph.D. © Susana Millman

Hart addressed the U.S. Senate Committee on Aging about the healing effects of music, and is a board member of the nonprofit organization the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function. Mickey has been working with Adam Gazzaley, MD, PhD at the University of California San Francisco Sandler Neurosciences Center. Dr. Gazzaley warmly expresses, “Mickey and I have spent many years exploring rhythm and the brain to assess the benefits of a rhythm training experience on cognition. The results are very exciting and show a positive influence on memory in older adults. Planet Drum had a huge influence on me in the early 90s, as I set off on my path as a neuroscientist. Working with Mickey has been an incredible experience. He is always in rhythm and his mind never stops beating. I am incredibly grateful for his friendship and the influence he has had on my science.”

To Go Up The River

Director Francis Ford Coppola was struggling to find the soundtrack to his film. He saw the “Drums” section of a Dead Show and sensed the solution was near. Mickey, Bill K, and their crew mic-ed every indigenous instrument they had, but none of it sounded like an airstrike. They knew they needed to build something special for the Apocalypse Now Sessions. The Beast and the Beam were born.

Drum Jungle – Apocalypse Now Sessions © John Werner

The Beast is a large piece of circular steel that Mickey’s collection of percussive instruments hang from for easy action while in the zone. The Beam is based on Pythagoras’s monochord. It is a piece of wood or metal with piano strings stretched across several feet and tuned to reach unbelievably low pitches.

Mickey explains, “These instruments take you on a slipstream, it’s sort of like a superhighway of the senses if you will. Doing it in concert, I’m able to go down very low, down to 15 cycles, which is extremely low. It’s almost where hearing drops out and you only have feeling. And I put that down every night, so people can go to these spaces, maybe called yogic spaces, where you feel something, you’ve never felt before, and it’s calming, and they’re centered, and it’s spiritually rewarding, and it changes you.”

Mickey + Bill Walton Backstage with the Beam! © Jay Blakesberg

While Coppola, concert goers, doctors, scientists, healers and even an astrophysicist love these sounds, perhaps no one more so than the basketball and broadcast legend Bill Walton who generously shares, “When I first came across the low-end of The Beam in the early 1970s, I knew immediately that I had found something so powerful, stimulating, personal, important, and critical to my overall well-being, that I had to have more…so I relentlessly badgered Mickey, until he had no choice but to get me my own. My first Beam, was the original one, from the first days of the Rhythm Devils and Apocalypse Now.” Bill used it for many years, until he needed to return it to Mickey.

The NBA and UCLA player continues, “One New Year’s Eve, at the Bill Graham Civic, where I was practicing counting backward to fulfill my sacred duties as Father Time, Mickey appeared, without a warning, and softly proclaimed, ‘I have something for you.’ Right then and there, Mickey presented me with my own personalized, brand new, and improved Beam, big, long, glistening, spectacular, gleaming in the golden light, with a beautiful engraved message, ‘To Bill Walton, if it’s worth playing, it’s worth playing loud! Mickey Hart’

“I still play all the time, and loud too, sometimes the neighbors down the street call to ask if everything is OK, generally though, not until their houses start shaking…and when I’m privileged enough to witness Mickey play his Beams, I never hesitate to ask him to turn it up, so he can take us down, to the bottom, to the foundation, to the core, of life itself.”

Mickey yells playfully, “Thank you Pythagoras, wherever you are!”

Planet Drum + In The Groove

Zakir Hussain is considered the pre-eminent tabla player of our time. He is a chief architect of the World Music movement who has received two of India’s highest honors. Back in 1970, he was a 19-year-old new to NorCal. Zakir relives, “I visited Mickey at the barn in Novato, he handed me a strange looking hand drum and said, ‘play this.’ I looked at him and wondered why I am not asked to play tabla and proceeded to find my way with that drum. Suddenly all inhibitions about stepping out of my ancient tradition and creating a groove on an out of the box drum melted away and I found myself in a wonderous place. The beginning had commenced.”

Pump Song – Mickey, Zakir Hussain + Friends at Novata Ranch, 70s © Patty Healy c/o JB Retro Photo Archive

Zakir was teaching at the Ali Akbar School of Music in Berkeley, CA. Through his father Alla Rakha’s arrangement, the young man joined the tribe who had taken residence in Hart’s ranch. Mickey remarks, “And that was it, living as close as you could be as rhythm brothers since the 70s!”

Around this time, Hart was recording his first solo album. Zakir remembers, “Mickey sent me on a small Cessna plane to Reno to pick up Chief Rolling Thunder, we returned with the Chief and joined in on a prayer chant to bless the beginning of the recording process. It felt at that moment that we were collectively standing on a way different plateau of awareness; it was pristine and simple and felt blessed. That is when I knew that Mickey and I are tied together for the long groove run.”

Mickey + Zakir source; MH Facebook

In the early ‘90s, Hart and Hussain assembled some of the greatest drummers alive to create a percussive ensemble and album. Planet Drum won the first-ever World Music Grammy. It spent an unprecedented 26 weeks at #1 on the Billboard Charts. Those lucky enough to get their hands on a copy would rip the cellophane off, crack the plastic case open, and get transported to another world.

It would still be a few years before the internet went public, so this was the first time the populace heard the sounds and rhythms of undisturbed Earth. There were Udu chants from Africa and hoop drums from the Artcic. Berimbaus, balafons, bamboo, bird chirps, windchimes and ocean waves. The language in the liner notes was like a treasure map to far-off lands.Who are the Yoruban? What are temple caves? How can you make a song by banging your hands against your chest?

Planet Drum In The Redwoods © Susana Millman

Nigerian talking drum lineage holder, Sikiru Adepoju explains, “Planet Drum is not just a group of drummers. We are peacemakers and musical ambassadors. We are all drummers from different cultures. We don’t speak the same language, but we have one common language: the language of the drum. We are always learning from each other. I never know what the music will sound like until it’s finished. We compose the music instantly— not writing down notes, just listening and playing. Our music reaches a broader audience because it includes so many cultures. At our shows, Deadheads, Indian fans, Spanish fans, African fans, all jump up and down to the beat. Our rhythms bring people together in community.”

Planet Drum Ensemble © Susana Millman

Sikiru continues, “ A lot of people don’t know what “World Music” means, but it includes everything: Jazz, Blues, Rock, Reggae, Calypso, Afro-Beat, and Traditional Music, different languages, and different musical styles. We combine this all together in one, and create a new style known as “World Music.” Musicologists regard Planet Drum as one of the most important records of the 20th century. In 2009, the ensemble won their second Grammy award for their album Global Drum Project.

Grooving with Global Drum Project © John Werner

Like almost everyone spinning on this sphere, these touring musicians’ schedules reconfigured over the last two years. Of this liminal time Mickey ensures, “Once you see everything in rhythmic terms, you say well, war is bad rhythm, peace is good rhythm, love is good rhythm, hate bad rhythm. The world is out of rhythm, the world’s out of time. How do you put it back together? Well, the only way I know, I don’t go shoot them up, what I do is I use vibration and pull people into that slipstream and allow them to raise their consciousness. Vibration is everything in music and in life. If you have a misunderstanding with your partner, it’s rhythmic, and you say okay, how can I put myself back in rhythm? Okay, this is out of rhythm, this is a rhythmic event. Oh, we got to find the groove again.”

Mickey, Zakir, Sikiru, and Giovanni Hidalgo, a master of Latin rhythms of the conga, bongo and timbale joined together again to help mass consciousness get back in the groove. In early Spring, the Planet Drum Ensemble debuted elements of their new album to a sold-out crowd at Stanford University’s Frost Theater.

Concert-goers were desperate to get out of their houses, hear music and hang out with friends, but were still a little uneasy about the precarious state of the world. Mickey implores, “That’s why we made In The Groove a dance band record. I wanted people to dance, to move. You’ve got to change it up, you can’t stay in your old groove. So the idea is to get your life in rhythm, and be able to enjoy it.”

Four seconds into “King Clave,” at the Frost and there was a notable shift. Sikuru states, “This song is special because it features Baba Olatunji’s voice at the beginning. Baba passed away in 2003. His voice on the track keeps his memory alive and keeps his energy present. When we perform “King Clave”, it feels like Baba is still right there standing with us.”

The song’s music video was co created with B-Corp, Playing for Change. It features more than fifty dance and percussive players from around the world including Zakir’s brothers and Giovanni’s father. It played within the United Nations’ General Assembly to remind delegates of the universal heartbeat of humanity.

In The Groove! © Jay Blakesberg

In The Groove was released on August 5th Planet Drum devotees remain amazed that these musicians keep achieving new potency of percussive medicine. Zakir adds, “In The Groove is the next step up on the ladder of rhythm cycle awareness on a more intimately collective level amongst us than ever before. We have been together for these 30 years, it felt like a blink of an eye but the deeper understanding of each other not just as friends but as keepers of our respective traditions is magnified a thousand-fold and that respect and reverence is on display here.”

Giovanni notes, “I praise the Lord that he give me this great opportunity because it’s not only a team, that’s my family, a lot of loyalty, a lot of love and a great understanding. We can help heal the people with our rhythm. I’ve seen it happen.”

Mickey closes, “I hope everybody who listens, really gets what we put into it, out of it.”

Don’t Tell Me This Town Ain’t Got No Heart

“Bwwwwoooiiiaaaaainngggghhhhhh”
“Bwwwwoooiiiaaaannnggggghhhhhh”

Two downbeats of the song “Shakedown Street” and 70,000 people jump to their feet. It was Saturday night of the “Fare Thee Well” concerts. A reunion deemed by press as “the last show.” Little did they know. It had been 20 years since The Grateful Dead played Chicago’s Soldier Field Stadium. Jerry Garcia’s transition out of the Earth Plane, left many to miss him in a “longtime way.” Now here it was two decades gone by and the soul of the music, and the spirit of the community as alive as ever.

The Chicago PD estimated that almost 300,000 deadheads descended on the city, with cover bands playing in airports across America. Planes were filled with new-old-friends, trading road trip tales spanning half a century. Folks shared photos of their grown kids named after Dead lyrics, and grandchildren born to these tunes. Former college housemates got hall passes from their wives for the weekend and a new generation who never saw Jerry, ran up railings and jumped over walls to catch a glimpse of the living legends up on the stage. Gasps, shrieks, and rose-handed hugs enveloped kith and kin; reigniting relations shrouded in time.

“I Love You More Than Words Can Tell” © Jay Blakesberg

Mickey wrapped out the teary-eyed moments of the final bow by saying, “The feeling we have here — remember it, take it home and do some good with it.” An undeniable imprint was left on all who attended, and the 175,000 who watched from home. By New Years Eve, a new incarnation of the Grateful Dead wheel had turned.

Dead and Company has been touring as steadily as possible for the past seven years. Mickey marvels, “We’re all quite taken back by how its flipped generations. Its like a flip card and all of a sudden here you are from the 1960s, we’re out here in the 2000s, and they’re grooving on it, they’re dancing to it, they know the lyrics, it’s a spiritual thing.” Just like mantras remembered from lifetimes ago, fans effortlessly sing along to every song. Of the 400+ originals in the Grateful Dead catalogue, historians note that “Drums” has been played the most. This second-set staple is a time when Mickey and Billy draw concertgoers into the percussive groove of the world beat. Join the slipstream. Ride the horse.

In the cyclical motif from which the Grateful Dead pulled their name, so too, the band has invited others to join them on this voyage. Dead and Co bassist Oteil Burbridge has recently accompanied the duo for the “Drums and Space” part of the show.

Oteil emotes, “I’m really honored to have officially been made a Rhythm Devil. Drums were actually my first instrument so getting to play drums and space every night makes me feel that same magic I felt as a kid. That sense of wonder never goes away. It’s amazing to think how long he’s been doing it and that he still hits so friggin hard! He’s done and is still doing so much for drums and music in general on this planet. Mickey’s spirit is irrepressible. Truly. It’s really something to behold.”

Dead and Co’s tours sell out in seconds, and entire internet forums are dedicated to trading tickets. The subculture that has surrounded this band continues to course across the country (and to Mexico!).

Mickey muses, “I look out there and I’m the only one that ages. They’re still 20, 30, 40 years old. This music seems to be built to last, I guess. With Dead and Co. we were playing stadiums, sometimes two nights in a row. It’s enormous, the amount of Deadheads that are coming out. It seems as though the Dead music and the Dead culture have been passed down through generations like father to son, father to daughter, mother to sister and all that stuff until finally it’s flipped its way into this century, this decade. So how, why? It’s probably because of the trance, because of the zone that we play in, because of the kind of music we play…so yes, it came full circle, and I’m just amazed, powerful spiritual material, that’s the only way you can explain this.”

Hart pauses thoughtfully and continues, “It’s also a community, many bands don’t have communities, they have audiences, they come and go. So I guess it’s completely different, the universe, psychologically, physiologically, it’s people getting together that are like-minded, that are calm and peaceful, love each other. They take what they have felt at the concert and do some good with it out in the world. And that’s the best payoff you can get. I always think ‘don’t leave it here kids, this feeling, take it home, do some good with it’, and that’s really what’s behind all this. Besides having a great time, laughing and playing music and making a living, and so forth, it’s knowing that it makes for a better world.”

“Moving With A Pinch Of Grace” – Photo by Brande Jackson source; Dead and Co IG

Mickey continues, “So it’s been an incredible ride and it’s not over yet.”

God Is Sound

There are few people on the planet who have surrendered themselves to sound vibration as fiercely as Mickey Hart. Talking about a life of trance and transcendence, rhythm and rock n roll, producing, preservation, and music as medicine, the transportation captain, Mickey Hart simply states,

“Basically, I use this as my meditation, as my yoga. I stretch, and I do my yoga poses every day. I’m constantly on my mat. But music takes you there, it really takes you there.”

Nada Brahma. God Is Sound.

Get In The Groove

The Dolby Atmos mix of In The Groove is now available here. This revolutionary technology allows for an immersive percussive experience, with drum beats and vibrations enveloping the listener above, below and around them.

Stream In The Groove here.

To learn more about the Planet Drum ensemble check out: PlanetDrum.com

To keep up with Mickey Hart, visit his website and social media channels; MickeyHart.Net, FB, IG.

#ForeverGrateful

Author’s Note; Infinite thanks to all who contributed to this offering in words, images and energy including; Rachel Anne, Susana Millman, Dennis McNally, Jay Blakesberg, Bob Minkin, Rosie McGee, Adrian Boot, Zakir Hussain, Sikiru Adepoju, Giovanni Hidalgo, Oteil Burbridge, Bill Walton, Wavy Gravy, Adam Gazzaley, MD, PhD, Tenzin Bob Thurman, Varun Soni, Ph.D., Chaplain Earl Smith, John Werner, John Storey, Jahanara Romney, Jen Fountain, Karen Wiessen, Rose, Ben Baruch, Felicia Tomasko, Anna Rychlik, SI, NB, NK, MZ, AA, BG, The GD, PDE and of course…Mickey Hart. #NFA

For source citations, copyright info, collaborations please email; AmyVDewhurst@SenseAndColor.co

To Check Out Amy’s Work Go To; Sense + Color, You Can Reach Her At IG: Amy_V_Dewhurst + AmyVDewhurst@SenseAndColor.co #PutYourGoodWhereItWillDoTheMost

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Celebrating 25 Years of Ani DiFranco’s Living in Clip

Amy V Dewhurst — Mon, 01 Aug 2022 18:25:35 +0000

When You’re A Big Star, Will You Miss The Earth

It was the late 90’s, before Spotify and iTunes, Napster and MP3s. Albums didn’t drop onto streaming services and immediately upload onto our phones. Corporate-run radio stations dictated who heard what, when. Rebellious youth tried to fight the system. Grunge bands sued the conglomerate Ticketmaster for their concert-tour monopoly. Women in babydoll dresses and Doc Marten boots kicked and elbowed their way to the top of the charts by singing about something other than love, marriage, and men. But it was still a pretty-patriarchal game. That is, until a feisty singer-songwriter arrived on the scene.

Out Of Habit

Today we celebrate 25 years of Ani DiFranco’s Living in Clip. An album that not only empowered millions of women, but rewrote the record industry playbook.

The story starts in the 1970’s in Buffalo, New York – a once bustling steel city, famous for the Erie Canal. There, a nine-year-old Ani DiFranco got her first acoustic guitar. She met a guy named Mike, who she describes as, “a local songwriter, troubadour, gigging, barfly kind of poetry and philosophy reading, sort of an intellectual, but also an alcoholic, and real character. Like the unofficial mayor of Buffalo. Everybody knew him. He took me under his wing, and he started bringing me to his shows. And I was playing with him when I was a little kid in bars.”

At 18 Ani moved to New York City for a stretch. “I was walking down 12th Street; I saw this sign that said, ‘The New School for Social Research,’ and I was like, ‘What’s that’? I signed up for Feminism 101 right away, and I encountered all of these amazing thinkers who taught me to question all my presumptions, and things that I was accepting, to really start honing in on, ‘Why do I feel bad all the time?’, disconnected, not sure if I even exist in many ways. It’s because all of my ways of thinking are coming from outside of me, and even the language that I use to process is a patriarchal design. So really starting to unpack all of that, by reading these second-wave feminists Audre Lorde and bell hooks, Carol Gilligan and Alice Walker, the list goes on and on…”

The unpacking happened out loud, over a guitar, on bar and club stages. DiFranco openly examined where all the rules came from; who they benefitted, who they oppressed and how they informed her direct experience. Ani recounts, “I made a record like a two-track recording, voice and guitar, straight to two-track tape, just DAT tapes. I did it in a couple hours and there’s my first album, and the second one was like that. But right in the beginning, I wrote ‘Righteous Records.’ Just as a sort of, it was a joke with myself, [She makes a funny voice] ‘Like yes, I got a record company, you’re talking to the CEO.’ I put an address on that cassette and letters started coming in. You remember those days, right? Talk about pre-internet. Letters would come into that P.O. Box and say, ‘Can Ani come play? We have $150 from the women’s center at whatever college, and can she come play the take back the night parade?’ My answer was ‘f*ck yes,’ every time. It was organically through that first cassette really that I started touring.”

Over the next decade DiFranco would evolve into a fixture of college towns, folk festivals, feminist marches, reproductive rights rallies, as well as environmental and political cause events. She and band members Andy Stochansky and Sara Lee traveled by a beat-up van, and then eventually a bus. They felt like real pros when they could finally afford a front-of-house soundman. An essential member of any touring act.

Sounds Like A Whole New Show

The group recorded their performances throughout 1995-1996. They strung them together onto a two CD set, complete with tour photos, liner notes and lyrics; an immersive experience in the days when you could hold art in your hands. Living in Clip – the seemingly autobiographical album (affectionately named for the road amps that were always about to blow) ushered in a new era of folk rock. Ani’s bare-it-all honesty transported listeners out of their suburban bedrooms and college dorms into a new paradigm where “business as usual” was no longer welcome. She offered differing lenses from which to view social politics, the emotional aftermath of the sexual revolution, the collateral damage of casual relationships, the perception of strong women, vulnerable women and the stigma they had to be one of the other. She was one of the first to openly sing about bisexuality, abortions, one-night stands, and the like. Each song was (and is) an anthem, giving voice to a new generation desperately seeking an updated vocabulary.

The Living in Clip groundswell began in independent record stores in the North-East. Soon Indys and the big chains across the country sought the double-disc. The words the [she said in the funny voice]) CEO had scribbled on an old cassette evolved into an independent record label, “Righteous Babes Records.” “I didn’t have a grand plan, nor did anyone I hired. We were garbage picking our furniture in the office, this little one room in downtown Buffalo… All I knew was what I didn’t want to do. I got interest from record labels and I had lunches and dinners and meetings, and I just felt like ‘eww’ every time. Not that they’re bad people, but it’s like these are not my people, these are not my revolutionary people. So I knew I didn’t want to go there, because I felt like that would change everything.”

Press from major magazines wanted a glimpse of the musical-activist who remembers, “They would hardly say anything, but they would come to take my picture, that’s how it starts. And every photo shoot, I felt like a soulless corpse afterwards. It would take one photo shoot in that world for me to question my existence.” Although she stayed true to herself, and her audience, the “machine” did continue to come calling, the track “Shy” was nominated Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance and Rolling Stone magazine called Living in Clip “One of the most important recordings of the ‘90s.”

And It Helps Her Through Her Day

Over the last 25 years, thousands of women have shared anecdotes with Ani of how the album changed their life, “The stories that have come back over the years are just all really specific and beautiful. Some of them are more like, ‘You saved me. I didn’t kill myself, because I had your music to know that I existed.’ Certainly saving somebody from annihilation, from doom, is a great feeling. But I think some of my favorite letters and reflections are,‘I started off somewhat okay, I got your music and then I f*cking x, y, z I slayed. I came into my own power, I started doing my own thing, which is this, and here’s what I’ve been doing.’ Which so many inspirational people doing cool ass shit….”

When a now-40-something fan recently gushed about how much this album changed her teenage life, Ani simply stated, “Well they (second-wave feminists) did that for me, I did that for you, you’ll do that for somebody, and that’s how women become themselves I think…”

Living in Clip

To join the many thousands who have been changed by this album, see Ani on tour this summer; AniDiFranco.com

Living In Clip Vinyl 25th anniversary re-Issue is now available at Righteous Babe Records here.

Listen to the album on iTunes here or Spotify here.

To Check Out Amy’s Work Go To; Sense + Color, You Can Reach Her At IG: Amy_V_Dewhurst + AmyVDewhurst@SenseAndColor.co #PutYourGoodWhereItWillDoTheMost

The post Celebrating 25 Years of Ani DiFranco’s Living in Clip appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Sun Mountain Sea – Irresistible New Yoga-Pop Album from Joss Jaffe

Marina Muhlfriedel — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 18:18:26 +0000

Joss Jaffe’s Breezy, Uplifting Sacred Pop Music

Joss Jaffe has released his fifth album: Sun Mountain Sea. It invokes the bright, breezy light and resonance of his native Southern California. The 10 tracks overflow with warmth and humanity. They are a balm for these trying times. This latest project on Be Why Music is at once introspective and inspiring. Joss is well-known for his uplifting vocal skills, as an electronic and acoustic multi-instrumentalist, music production, and as a yoga conference and transformational festival luminary. His soothing hug of a voice, matched with stirring rhythmic undercurrents, and the aspirational wisdom of his lyrics, make Sun Mountain Sea his poppiest and most personal effort to date.

In contrast to his last album, Meditation Music, an aurally spacious and calming instrumental collection, words and story are key elements of Sun Mountain Sea. Themes of nature, love, yearning, and striving permeate the songs with an empowered sense of self-discovery. Joss’s outstanding electronic music chops create a foundation of continuity between the releases.

Featured Guests Dave Stringer and DJ Taz Rashid

While the album overall radiates Southern California, Joss wrote the affirming, almost prayerful lyrics of the opening cut, “Sun to Shine” in India in 2008. They remain deeply relevant, maybe more than ever. The track is about overcoming adversity and features Grammy-nominated artist Dave Stringer, who provides backup vocals on more than half the album and produced Joss’s vocal sessions for the project. Joss and Dave have worked together extensively over the last 20 years, and their voices blend here like bright watercolors.

Yoga festival superstar, DJ, and producer DJ Taz Rashid also guests on Sun Mountain Sea and is featured on “Inner Way,” lending a distinct lightness and joy to the track. Joss first worked with DJ Taz in 2018 when he appeared on his debut album, Dub Mantra, and continues to collaborate with him. “Inner Way” lovingly invites listeners to tune into their core compass, find the flow, and follow their unique inner way.

Checking In with Joss Jaffe

Lyrically, Sun Mountain Sea’s tunes effortlessly move from the boppy sci-fi, metaphysical love song “Energy Field” to the contemplative reflections of “Reverie,” and we welcomed an opportunity to hear from Joss about the overall concept.

“The tracks are all love songs, of one kind or another, and the fact that they’re sung in English makes this album very different for me. Three of my albums focus on my interpretations of mantras,” said Joss. “A number of the songs on Sun Mountain Sea have a retrospective aspect to them; one is even called “Reminisce.” It’s an album about looking back but also looking forward, taking the good with the bad. It’s very personal to me.

“The album takes elements from different parts and different times in my life and puts them together in a new way. I think that may be similar to what so many people are going through right now. We’ve all been stuck at home the last few years with a lot of time to think and ruminate on things — over time, the separate pieces blend together.

“There’s a sense of dark and light merged in many of the songs,” he said. “It’s not purely happy and sunny— it’s a mix, a journey through the yin and yang of life. There is a lot of optimism throughout though. I think those who look for it will recognize the sun in it, like a musical mood pill to brighten things up.”

Joss was born in Santa Barbara and grew up in Southern California. He started playing guitar, writing songs, and producing music while still in elementary school, which, set against the backdrop of his mother teaching yoga, established fertile groundwork for his career to grow. He wrote the lovely track “Between the Mountains and the Sea” during his high school years as an ode to the wonder of Santa Barbara’s natural setting.

Drawn to Indian music, particularly tabla, sarode, and raga vocal music, Joss studied for ten years with Indian musical masters Ali Akbar Khan, Swapan Chaudhuri, and Zakir Hussain. In addition to the new release, Joss has numerous upcoming concert dates and maintains a full schedule of teaching workshops, classes, and retreats. Learn more about Joss Jaffe. Purchase Sun Mountain Sea.

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Snatam Kaur Shares Healing Music on Nirankaar

Marina Muhlfriedel — Fri, 13 May 2022 22:59:59 +0000

Creating Healing Music Around the World

Since the 2001 release of her first solo album, Prem, Grammy-nominated devotional singer Snatam Kaur has inspired countless people with the stirring silken quality of her voice, the gentle wisdom of her writing and teaching, and her uniquely radiant presence.

Healing Mantras on Nirankaar

Her 16th major album, Nirankaar, comes out May 13 on Be Why Music and features opulently orchestrated mantras that are especially pertinent and healing for these times.

Traveling Around the World for the Into the Light Tour

May also marks Snatam’s return to the concert stage with the commencement of her Into the Light tour of Europe, Israel, and the UK. The same group of accomplished musicians she collaborated with on Nirankaar will appear with her. They include her producer, Ram Dass, on piano and vocals, Grecco Buratto, guitar and vocals, and Sukhmani, on tabla, percussion, and vocals. Together, their sound invokes the blissful, ecstatic experience chanting can bring.

Sharing Prayers of Peace

The Into the Light tour was originally planned as a post-pandemic way to gather jubilantly, acknowledge the change and growth we’ve all been through, and find peace together. However, since the invasion of Ukraine, the tour’s focus has become even more profound. While lightness and celebration still underscore the shows, the war has personally devastated Snatam. Each concert will include chants for peace in Ukraine and the world and send out shared prayers of peace. A portion of the tour’s proceeds will be donated to Direct Aid for Ukrainian Refugees and each venue will provide opportunities to donate directly.

When Snatam was a teenager, she traveled to Russia and Ukraine with a peace group called the Giraffe Project to forge positive connections between American teens and their Ukrainian and Russian counterparts. “I really connected with both countries and with the young people we encountered,” said Snatam while preparing for the tour. “So, this war has just shattered my heart. I’ve felt deeply overwhelmed by it.”

“When the invasion began, I joined a 40-day global peace meditation and started meditating for peace as a part of my personal practice, inviting others to join me through various platforms. Now we’ll be able to do so in community at the shows.”

Teen-aged Snatam Kaur with youth in the Ukraine

Snatam fondly recalls walking with a group of Ukrainian teenagers along Kyiv’s empty cobblestone streets, playing guitar and singing Beatles songs in the middle of the night. She holds the experience and connection close to her heart.

Snatam Kaur and her Lifelong Practice of Healing Music

Snatam was born in Trinidad, Colorado, and raised in the Sikh and Kundalini Yoga tradition, immersed in a household filled with traditional Sikh Dharma, music, and chanting. Her mother, Prabhu Nam Kaur, is a Gurbani Kirtan singer. Growing up, chanting, singing, and practicing Kundalini Yoga provided a deep source of strength to Snatam. Following her mother’s path, she felt drawn to singing and performing and often traveled with her parents to India to study with Sikh musicians.

Today, Snatam’s mantra recordings are among the most popular in the world. Their renown has spread far beyond the Kirtan, Kundalini Yoga, and Sikh communities, conveying her spiritual warmth and deep humanity into an increasingly harsh world. Her relationship with Oprah Winfrey and a 2019 Grammy Award Show performance of “Darashan Maago” from the album Beloved helped introduce her to a vast audience that continues to expand.

Mantra Beyond Tradition: Snatam Kaur Shares Healing Music to a Universal Audience

Snatam’s appeal is universal. The purity of her voice and her spirit of love and devotion transcend the boundaries of individual traditions. As a touring musician, teacher, author, peace and environmental activist, and co-founder of Kirtan and Kundalini, an online sacred music and yoga school, Snatam has become a beacon to people worldwide attuned to in living in spiritual lightness.

Imparting the knowledge she’s gained in her life to others is an integral part of Snatam’s work. Even in her early touring years, she felt motivated to teach. “I met people along the way, in different places, who would have a powerful feel-good experience at a show or festival and want more,” she said. “I thought that if I could help them learn to chant and develop a spiritual practice, they could continue independently.”

She began teaching workshops along with her concerts, culminating in the 2016 release of her book Original Light. “I wrote the book to help people create meaningful daily practices modeled on the Aquarian Sadhana — the spiritual morning practice I grew up with, including recitation, yoga, and sacred chanting.”

Over time, that same impetus led to the idea of establishing a school. “For quite a while, my husband Sopurkh Singh, who teaches Kundalini Yoga, and I dreamed of having a school,” said Snatam. “Initially, we envisioned it as an in-person place to learn, but when the pandemic hit, that, like everything else, changed. We co-founded Kirtan and Kundalini in June 2020 to support the spiritual journey of as many people as possible, wherever they were, especially with so many people experiencing isolation. The fact that the school is online has allowed us to offer mantra, tabla, harmonium, yoga, and meditation classes to students everywhere and build a beautiful community. It’s a dream come true for us.”

Mantra and Meditation

Snatam is hosting special in-person Mantra and Meditation workshops during the Into the Light tour. These five-hour events are based on the mantras Akaal, Ongkaar Nirankaar, Ang Sang Waaheguru, and Ardaas Bha-ee, all of which appear on Nirankaar. In addition to chanting, each workshop includes yoga, breathwork, and meditation instruction.

Exquisite, simplified recordings of the four mantras were recently released in conjunction with the album as a new Mantra and Meditation series. Snatam created the tracks so anyone could chant along to enhance their practice. She is teaching online workshops for each mantra through Kirtan and Kundalini, then rebroadcasting them on her YouTube channel. Support Snatam and download Nirankaar on the Be Why Music store , or stream it on Spotify and other DSPs around the globe.

https://www.laemmle.com/theater/playhouse-7

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Shakespeare, the Buddha, and the Cat in the Hat Walk into a Bar

Phil Goldberg — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 17:06:26 +0000

The Dharma Bum’s Guide to Western Literature: Finding Nirvana in the Classics by Dean Sluyter

I love diving deep into great literature. I love receiving spiritual wisdom through the written word. Not very often do I get to do both with the same book. Then again, I’m not Dean Sluyter, whose mind is a divining rod for messages that most of us fail to discern. He did it for movies in Cinema Nirvana, and now he’s done it for selected works in the Western literary canon. In The Dharma Bum’s Guide to Western Literature: Finding Nirvana in the Classics, he sees enlightenment wherever he looks. It’s a perfect topic for a long-time meditation teacher, pop culture aficionado, and former English instructor at a top East Coast prep school, and he approaches the task with expertise, engaging prose, and a joyful relish.

You will no doubt be familiar with at least some of the authors in The Dharma Bum’s Guide. As Sluyter puts it, he explores “the books that we read, or were supposed to read, in high school or college.” And you will not be surprised to find luminaries like William Blake, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Emily Dickinson in a “spiritual” book, although you will be surprised by much of what Sluyter finds in their works. What’s especially Sluyteresque is the not-so-obvious choices. Just as he uncovered nuggets of illumination in movies like The Godfather and Jaws, he digs them out of classics like Moby Dick, Macbeth, Waiting for Godot, and the slave narrative of Frederick Douglass.

Really? Well, yes, because as Sluyter suggests, if the infinite is really infinite, it must be everywhere, even in the seemingly dark places, and even in authors who might not have admitted to having a spiritual bone in their bodies. He uses Douglass’s story, for example, to explore the nature of dukkha and moksha, suffering and liberation, whether physical or spiritual. Moby Dick turns out to contain not only gory scenes of whale hunting but sublime glimpses of the transcendent. There are lessons on conscious dying in one of John Donne’s love poems. Who knew?

Like all successful classroom teachers, Sluyter specializes in making his material both clear and entertaining. As he says in his introduction, “If it’s not fun, what’s the point?” So, along with the heavier tomes, he takes a jaunt through The Cat in the Hat, finds awakening messages in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, draws lines of connection from rap and Zen to Chaucer and Toni Morrison, and nominates alternative national anthems from Mr. Rogers and Aretha Franklin. Literature was never this much fun, or this enriching for the soul.

The beating heart of The Dharma Bum’s Guide is the revelation that all those books on the English 101 syllabus can be Dharma gates, portals to awakening. Sluyter’s enthusiasm is contagious as he shows how to read Hemingway as haiku, or derive mindfulness lessons from Virginia Woolf, or see the parallels between Huck Finn’s journey and the Buddha’s, or find the solution to Gatsby’s problems in St. Paul’s teachings on love. And he finds hints to meditation — with an emphasis on naturalness and effortlessness — everywhere: Whitman’s “I loaf and invite my soul.” Dickinson’s “Not knowing when the dawn will come / I open every door.” Keats’s “Still, still,” Huck and Jim literally going with the flow as the river carries their raft downstream.

Digging deep in that way takes a certain kind of creativity and boldness. Those Sluyter has, along with a sparkling writing style of his own. You’ll be entertained; you’ll be elevated; you’ll be enlightened—more enlightened than you were before, at least—and if you learn from the author’s method, you’ll never again view great works of art in quite the same way.

Phil Goldberg

Philip Goldberg has been studying the world’s spiritual traditions for more than 50 years, as a practitioner, teacher, and author. An Interfaith Minister, public speaker, and workshop leader, his numerous books include Roadsigns on the Spiritual Path; American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation, How Indian Spirituality Changed the West; The Life of Yogananda: The Story of the Yogi Who Became the First Modern Guru, and his latest, Spiritual Practice for Crazy Times: Powerful Tools to Cultivate Clarity, Calm and Courage. He blogs on Elephant Journal and Spirituality & Health, cohosts the popular Spirit Matters podcast, and leads American Veda Tours to India. His website is www.PhilipGoldberg.com.

www.philipgoldberg.com

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William Blake’s Poetry on Dharma Influenced The Doors

Dean Sluyter — Tue, 29 Mar 2022 17:00:21 +0000

Visionary William Blake Explored Nirvana through Poetry

To a natural-born visionary like William Blake, the divine is revealed by — the divine is — every ordinary object. We can try to reject it, but it’s always up in our face, like blowing sand. As he famously put it:

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.

Blake’s own doors of perception were cleansed early — blown wide open, really. He grew up in the Soho section of London in the mid-eighteenth century. When he was four years old, he saw God leaning his forehead against the window, and it left him screaming. By age eight he’d grown more at home with his expanded perception and could enjoy the sight of a tree filled with shining angels. Later, as he watched his brother Robert die, he saw Robert’s soul rise joyfully through the roof and into the heavens. No big surprise, then, that his contemporaries dismissed him as a lunatic; it took more than a century till he became a beacon to Dharma bums everywhere.

There’s a theory that Blake suffered from ergotoxicosis, a condition that gives rise to hallucinations — or spiritual visions, depending on your point of view. Known among peasants since the Middle Ages as Saint Anthony’s fire, it’s caused by eating rye bread infested by purple ergot fungus, which, in the twentieth century, was refined into LSD. (The Doors got their name from the Blake passage above, as did Aldous Huxley’s pioneering account of his mescaline trips, The Doors of Perception.) But Blake’s highest epiphanies were also the purest, with no psychedelic special effects required.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour

That’s steep but simple. Just as ocean is present in every wave, the infinity of existence is present in every object that exists, and eternity in every moment of time. This is not some hippie spiritual fantasy but a confirmable hypothesis, and Blake has assigned us the lab work to confirm it. You have to look. Put a grain of sand, or a wildflower, or a crumpled gum wrapper, or anything else in the palm of your hand. Or just look at your hand. (Blake had at least one actual student in these matters, his wife Catherine, who learned to see as he did.)

Look and keep looking for an hour, or eternity, whichever comes first. Eternity comes not at the end of a zillion zillion years. It comes — or, rather, comes to be noticed — in a moment, any moment when time melts away. That’s happened to you before, whenever you got so lost in dancing with your headphones on, or pulling the weeds, or practicing your jump shot, or gazing at a star, that time evaporated. It happens whenever you get so lost in en-joying that you’re in joy and out of time, when you’re so present that past and future are delightfully absent, off on a well-earned vacation.

Anything we experience in this eternity discloses infinity.

The timeless, weightless whoooooshhh that you and your lover (or you and your cat) feel when you relax and melt into each other’s eyes, when the edges between “I” and “you” go blurry, is a glimpse of release from the matrix of time and space.

That limitlessness is what we all seek, consciously or not.

The Dharma Bum’s Guide to Western Literature: Finding Nirvana in the Classics

This excerpt is published, with permission, from The Dharma Bum’s Guide to Western Literature: Finding Nirvana in the Classics. Read more about William Blake and other writers who have had an undeniable influence on our popular culture and our quest for enlightenment in this book.

Attend an event (online or in person) to celebrate and learn more. Dharma Bum Book Release Events

Dean Sluyter

Dean Sluyter (DeanWords.com) teaches meditation in Santa Monica and leads workshops throughout the United States and beyond. His latest book is Fear Less: Living Beyond Fear, Anxiety, Anger, and Addiction.

www.deanwords.com

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Making the Most of Your Life in Turbulent Times: Lessons from The Cherry Bushido

Mia Tomikawa — Sun, 13 Mar 2022 16:34:26 +0000

3 Helpful Maxims to Live by from the film The Cherry Bushido

With the global spread of the coronavirus pandemic, our life has forever changed. Inundated by the flood of information from media reports and social media posts, we find ourselves constantly living in fear that we may fall ill, lose our job, not be able to see our loved ones, or in the worst-case scenario, lose our own life. To help us overcome these anxious times, the film, The Cherry Bushido, presents us with 3 maxims for maintaining a solid, constructive, and positive attitude in this ever-changing world.

1. Live each day as if it were your last.

This is probably one of the most essential and powerful maxims introduced in the film, The Cherry Bushido. To live by this maxim, ask yourself the following questions when you wake each morning: “How should I live today if my life were to end tonight? What is it that I need to do? What is it that I will regret not having done?” In other words, create your own bucket list and write down all the things you would like to achieve before you die. Then as you live your day, keep asking yourself, “Am I making the right choices? Am I being true to myself? Am I really living the life I am supposed to live?”

If you knew you were going to die at the end of the day, you would probably finish your most important work, meet the people you really want to meet, and tell your family and friends how much you love them.

But many of us are deluded into thinking our life will last forever, and we put things off till the last minute or look away from truths that make us feel uncomfortable. We never know when our life will end. But if we live every day in a way that leaves us with no regrets, we will live a full and spiritually worthy life, no matter how long our physical form may last.

In the film, The Cherry Bushido, Satoshi Takayama puts this very nicely.

“As we have eternal life, what’s important is not whether we live or die, but what we accomplish in life.”

2. The way you think of yourself determines your future.

How often do we come to the realization that our thoughts can really change our life, future, world… in fact, everything?

If you think about it, almost everything that human beings have created sprang from a simple idea. So before getting yourself trapped in a box called “despair,” why not think of an idea that can change your life and your world for the better?

We human beings are essentially spiritual beings. We dwell in the physical body for a limited time, but after we accumulate experiences, knowledge, and wisdom here, we return to the spirit world. There, it is what we think that becomes who we are. What are the thoughts that are occupying your mind right now? Is it a selfish desire, frustration, discontent? Or is it generosity, selflessness, or understanding?

If you honestly and earnestly examine your thoughts, you will be able to find your true self and the future that your thoughts will lead you to.

Our everyday thoughts determine the course of our life, but in critical moments in life, it is our strong determination and belief that can open a new path. In the film The Cherry Bushido, when Japan is faced with threats of annihilation from its neighbor country, Shizuka offers a young patriot, Ryotaro, these inspiriting words: “Your courage can change your destiny. Your strong belief can open up a new path.” Heartened by Shizuka’s words, Ryotaro finds the courage to do his part to save their country.

Remember, too, that it is your intention that counts. If you truly believe that your cause is right and true, that it will bring happiness to the greatest number of people, and that it will change the world for the better, then all you need is to act with courage and wholehearted sincerity. Your thoughts will move the hearts of others, who will then want to help you accomplish your goals.

3. “To find courage, prepare for death. Only then, the path will open before you.”

In his renowned U.S. presidential inauguration speech, Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” To conquer fear, all we need to do is to face it squarely and fiercely.

What many of us fear the most is probably death. Even if we believe in the afterlife, it is difficult to overcome the fear of losing our life, friends, family, house, work—everything that comes with living. But it is when we want to protect ourselves that our fear grows. So, when you feel fear kicking in, trying to stop you from doing “the right thing,” ask yourself what it is that you’re trying to protect.

Just like Shizuka in the film, we are all here for a purpose, and everything that happens around us happens for a reason. What is presented to us is actually asking us to make a choice. Are you going to give in to fear that does not in fact really exist, or are you going to rise above your fear to open a new path?

Most of the time, you already know what the right decision is. You just need to take the courage to put it into action.

Finding Hope

As of February 1, 2022, more than 5.6 million deaths from COVID 19 have been reported worldwide, a devastating number that suggests a global state of emergency. As we struggle to overcome this crisis, it is my hope that the three maxims introduced in this article will help you find the courage and resolve to live your fullest life during these turbulent and uncertain times.

The Cherry Bushido will be released in limited theaters in North America this March.

The Cherry Bushido Coming to Playhouse 7 – Laemmle Pasadena March 25th

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clltvQuVKDo&t=2s

Mia Tomikawa

Mia Tomikawa is a producer on “The Cherry Bushido,” a film from Japan about a young Kendo (Japanese swordsmanship) devotee and group of friends who unite to protect Japan from the threat of extinction by its neighboring country. She is also a consultant on The Divine Protector: Master Salt Begins.

Born and raised in Tokyo, Japan, Mia Tomikawa moved to the United States in her late teens and graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a BA in Communications Studies. She has a decade of experience in TV production in the US, overseeing all phases of video and film production, including casting, scheduling, and booking locations, as well as translation services.

In 2007, Ms. Tomikawa became Editor-in-Chief of IRH Press, a publishing arm of Happy Science, where she worked on the translation and publication of more than 30 titles. In 2018, she joined Happy Science’s media division to produce the award-winning film, The Real Exorcist. Happy Science is a global spiritual and religious movement founded by Ryuho Okawa. Its goal is to bring greater happiness and harmony to all people by integrating different religions and cultures.

mastersaltmovie.com%20

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Love of Mantra Shines through in Snatam Kaur’s Akaal

Marina Muhlfriedel — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 19:00:04 +0000

Snatam Kaur debuts “Akaal” —an exquisite first single from her new album Nirankaar

Celebrated devotional singer Snatam Kaur’s latest release, “Akaal,” comes out March 4 and is the first single from her long-awaited new album, Nirankaar. The track is a heart-expanding rendition of the sacred Sikh mantra sung with all the radiant light Snatam, a Grammy-nominated vocalist, touring musician, teacher, and author, is renowned for. Listening to Snatam’s “Akaal” is a profoundly uplifting experience. Her love of the mantra shines through her luminous voice and the compelling build of the music. Presales of Nirankaar also begin on March 4, with the album scheduled for release in May. A video of “Akaal” also debuts on March 4.

The Meaning of Akaal

The word Akaal means “Beyond or without death” and is usually chanted to support loved ones who have left their bodies as they connect with the Infinite. It is similarly chanted for those left behind, helping them tune into the deathlessness of the soul’s vibration.

Speaking with Snatam Kaur about Akaal

We recently had an opportunity to speak with Snatam Kaur from her home in rural New Hampshire to learn about her latest recordings, an upcoming tour, and her deep appreciation for the Akaal mantra.

“This mantra has been so important and so beautiful to me personally,” said Snatam. “We’re releasing this track about connecting beyond death with the energy of the soul nature first because it plays an important role in our capacity to really connect with God, connect with our lives, and to be present for all of the challenges we face in this day and age.

“Akaal is a mantra that comes from the Sikh tradition, but the word Akaal is pervasive throughout Sikh scripture,” she said. I’ve come to understand that Akaal is not only for the time of death or for a loved one to chant, but for each of us to truly connect with that nature and deathlessness of the soul. Each of us is able to access that point beyond death.

“This connection with the soul is incredibly important. If we exist solely within the chatter of the thoughts and forget to be present to our loved ones, our lives, and the nature of the soul, life can be quite lonely. The moment I return to this nature of the soul within my own practice, there’s so much love and peace. There’s much more capacity to be present with my loved ones. That space of loneliness, of that mind chatter, is just melted and dissolved.

Snatam Kaur Chanting Akaal

“I’ve been chanting Akaal my whole life and didn’t really tune into the intellectual meaning of it until quite late,” said Snatam. “When people chant the open ahh sound in Akaal, I think they open their heart space, which has a really powerful effect. You don’t need to intellectually understand any of this to experience it, and sometimes we’d probably be better off just going to the feeling we have when chanting as opposed to anything else.”

Participate in Chanting Akaal

Released by Be Why Music, “Akaal” is one of eight tracks on Nirankaar and is a collaboration with producer Ram Dass on piano and vocals, Grecco Buratto on guitar and vocals, and Sukhmani on percussion and vocals. In addition to singing, Snatam also plays harmonium on the track. On March 11, an extended and streamlined remix of “Akaal” will be released as the first track from Snatam’s new Mantra and Meditation Series. The series is specifically for practitioners to chant with and experience the sublime power of mantra for themselves. On March 16, Snatam will provide an “Akaal” workshop through Kirtan and Kundalini, her online school of sacred music and yoga. The workshop will be rebroadcasted on Snatam Kaur’s YouTube channel.

In addition to the new album, Snatam and her band will commence their Into the Light Tour on May 15, with summer concert and workshop dates across Europe, the UK, and Israel. Watch the video of “Akaal”: Pre-order the album Nirankaar.

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Michael Imperioli: This is the Way of the Bodhisattva

Amy V Dewhurst — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 18:08:55 +0000

Michael Imperioli. Jim Spellman, Getty Images

It’s another precarious pandemic morning. Michael Imperioli materializes on the Zoom screen. He leads the group in prayer, purifying breaths and a sitting meditation. He reads aloud long passages by the Tibetan Buddhist Lama, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Within one of them it states, “For such a commitment is not at all about saving oneself, rather you have something to give sentient beings, you have evolved yourself spiritually enough so you can give what you have gained to others. That’s the purpose of the Bodhisattva vow, you yourself become a teacher, while remaining a student, you are going to be the guide for this tour, and you yourself are going to be a tourist.”

In a later conversation, Imperioli says similar but in his own words, “It’s hilarious that most of these people got to know me as this psychotic, murderous, drug addict, and now they want to sit and meditate with me…I mean, listen, fame is such a bizarre thing. If you can at least turn people on to something meaningful, something that may somehow be beneficial, that’s good.”

The causes and conditions that led Michael to the meditation cushion, began all the way back in the Italian working-class neighborhood of Mt. Vernon, NY. As a kid he saw epics like the Ten Commandments and King of Kings. At about 6 or 7 years old, he was writing, directing, and acting in his own plays, casting cousins in their backyard barbeque debuts. He was the first in his large Catholic family to go to college, except he didn’t… “The night before I was supposed to leave, they were going to drive me upstate, my bags are packed, my mom was giving me some money to start a checking account when I got up there, and I just said, ‘I don’t want to go. I really want to go to acting school.” Imperioli remembers, “It was very hard, and abstract for them, but they understood.”

Tendrel

Michael dreamt of attending the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute, like actors before him that he admired, but in a pre-internet era that was elusive. The family agreed he would go to college “in the city” while following his call. So the teen took a tour of Fordham at Lincoln Center, and NYU in Greenwich Village. Instead of taking a cab some 40 blocks to Grand Central he decided to walk back. He meandered down 15th Street where he saw Strasberg’s studio. Within those walls he met lifelong friends and creative collaborators like John Ventimiglia, Sharon Angela and Tom Gilroy. The 17-year-old became enraptured in the punk rebellion of 1980’s East Village. He went to raucous clubs off Canal Street, listened to Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Suicide, Television and early REM. He watched films by John Cassavetes and read books by Jack Kerouac. He hung around St Marks’ bookstore where he picked up a copy of the Buddhist scripture, The Diamond Sutra.

On Thursday afternoons actors would gather outside The Drama Bookshop to get a free flash of Backstage Newspaper so they could plan their service-job schedules around that week’s auditions. Michael repulses, “And you’d go to those horrendous auditions for sh*tty plays that didn’t pay any money. And your whole Saturday was just standing on line with literally hundreds of people for something they were putting up in some shi*thole that used to be a movie theater that they paid like a dollar to the city to buy.” For about six years the actor sustained the struggle, working as a cook, bartender, waiter, and busboy, voraciously studying, and refining his craft. He reflects, “In hindsight, those things are good I guess, because they build character and make you feel like you’ve earned something. And certainly, if you can go through those things unsuccessfully and not get the job and still persevere, and be really deluded about your own talent, to think that you’re going to succeed because the odds are so astronomically against success.”

Imperioli booked off-Broadway plays, and arthouse flicks. Mainstream audiences caught their first glimpse of him in John G. Avildsen’s film Lean On Me, about East Side High in Patterson. Yet it was in Martin Scorsese’s 1990 classic Goodfellas that Michael claimed his space in the mafia movie canon. The fresh-faced artist plays a small but pivotal role as Spider, a club attendant who gets callously killed by one of the leads. Some 30 years later he reflects, “Those scenes are really kind of where the story turns, where it becomes like, ‘Oh, wow, this is really sick.’” Michael’s performance left an impression on audiences and industry execs alike. He did the New York actor beat, with roles in Law and Order, Jungle Fever, Malcolm X, The Basketball Diaries and more. Casting directors like Sheila Jaffe and Georgianne Walken called him in to read for anything that he was remotely right for. Of this time Imperioli recalls, “In my 20s basically, all I did was pursue acting. Really, everything else took a backseat to it: relationships, friendships, family, everything. I was very, very, very, very driven towards that. I really wanted to be not just an actor but be successful.”

Karma

Like many New Yorkers, Michael didn’t have a driver’s license, which didn’t stop him from saying he did, to secure a part in an upcoming HBO pilot. His first day on set, he met co-star James Gandolfini. He reminisces through laughter, “I was driving him, and I didn’t know how to drive, and they made me back up, doing dialogue, talking to him, yelling, I did it like ten times, finally I smashed into a tree, the airbags go off, it’s a brand new Lexus, the cars all messed up, and I don’t know what’s going to happen if I’m gonna get fired. He’s sitting next to me I barely know this guy, and I look over and he just starts cracking up hysterically and I’m like, ‘Alright –this is gonna be ok.’ And you know from there, I’ve acted with Jim more than I’ve acted with any other actor, probably more than I will act with any other actor.”

That pilot of course, was The Sopranos. Creator David Chase’s brainchild that The New Yorker magazine lauded as, “Television’s greatest achievement”. It ran 6, 6 ½ or 7 seasons depending on who you ask, advancing the medium not only by giving rise to the beloved antiheroes of today, but by introducing gabagool to American audiences. The alchemy of the ensemble cast was once-in-a-thousand-lifetimes kind of stuff, like a Springsteen-style fable in which the hometown underdogs win the World Series.

Michael breathed being into “Christopha” Moltisanti, an up-and-coming soldier of The Sopranos crime, family, who would go to hell for his boss. While his heroin-addicted character dreamt of being a Hollywood screenwriter (“You f*%cking D-Girl…!”), Imperioli actually wrote 5 episodes. Those range from the subtle Italian humor of referring to the underworld as an Irish bar, to horrific scenes that still haunt commuters twice daily. The record-breaking series collectively acquired almost every industry accolade and honor. For his embodiment of Christopher Moltisanti, Michael Imperioli received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. In the live telecast speech he celebrated, “Being on The Sopranos is like the greatest thing in the world, for an actor. If this was the only thing I’d done, I’d be ok with that. Probably. To my collaborators on the show, you’re my family and my friends and I love every minute being with you guys. You’re the greatest and I love you all …”

Michael Imperioli and James Gandolfini at the Primetime Emmy Awards, @realmichaelimperioli Instagram

That palpable love, friendship and artistic expression answered a lot of questions for early-Imperioli. The one who followed his heart, had it stomped on for years before attaining the Earthly achievements he worked so hard for. But this gave ground to new questions, different kinds, for which there was no road map. He explains, “I’m married, started having kids, got on The Sopranos, which was a wonderful job, and I started making some money, and getting known to the public and to the industry and peers. I had a good family life and friends, and creatively fulfilled. And yet, there was still something — I was still kind of miserable at one point and had a lot of bad habits. And started looking into very different diverse spiritual paths. I didn’t really know what I wanted. I wanted some kind of spirituality but I also wanted the magic.”

His first stop on the spiritual-shopping tour was the works of Carlos Castaneda, an iconoclast who made space for etheric-thinking in the late 1960s. Michael reflects, “I was fascinated by the fact that a guy in our modern times fell into this ancient tradition of mysticism that had been kept from most of the world, a lineage that was very mysterious and romantic for sure, but there was something about the training, and this guy giving himself over to a spiritual path in a way, challenging his own perception of the world, his perception of himself, his ego. I went through all his books, and it led me towards some other spiritual paths”. Those included Christian Science, the Russian mysticism of Gurdjieff and Ouspenskii, Hinduism, Theosophy, Occultism, and more. The seeker says, “I studied with a shaman from Panama, that was really my last stop before I found Buddhism, and I believe she had a lot to do with setting me on my path.”

Dharma

Michael and his wife Victoria followed the clues down an alley off Canal Street, he retells, “It was only a few blocks from where we lived. And when we went in, my wife and I realized it was an afterhours club in the 80s that we used to go to before we had met. It was like the most decadent, sex, drugs, and rock and roll place. And now it’s a Dharma center.” It was “Jewel Heart” a space dedicated to Gelek Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist lama. Michael makes fun of himself, “ I kind of thought, ‘Well, now I’ll become Buddhist and everything will be ok. I didn’t really realize that there was work involved.”

Gelek Rinpoche gave Imperioli instruction for preliminary practices. He remembers, “I’m like 20 minutes a day, are you out of your mind?! There’s no way I’m going to be able to do this. There’s no way I’m going to be able to sit and meditate regularly. It’s not going to happen.” He didn’t yet know the old joke, “If you don’t have 20 minutes to meditate, you need 40.”. Or….that he was preparing to meet his teacher.

Garchen Institute Stupa, courtesy of Garchen Institute

Tibetan Buddhism

One of the tenets of Buddhism is the belief in reincarnation – that consciousness will re-enter the cycle of samsara (birth – life – death – rebirth) until it elevates out. In this tradition it’s quite common for lamas, monks, and other holy people to give clues to their loved ones about how to find them in their next lifetime. And for loved ones to look for their departed in the smiles of local youth. Such was the case when a young boy of 7, was recognized as his earlier incarnations in a Tibetan village in 1944. He was immediately entered into the monastery to receive the teachings and transmissions of His lineage in an unbroken succession. This being became known as His Eminence Garchen Triptrul Rinpoche. When He was 19 years old, He entered the requisite three-year spiritual retreat. However half-way through, His solace was broken. Communist China had invaded Tibet. They dropped bombs, shot meditating monks, sterilized women, and attempted to destroy all divinity in the country.

Buddhists take a vow of non-violence. However, there are causes and conditions in which the devoted are compelled to protect their three jewels: The Buddha, The Dharma (teachings) and The Sangha (community).

With this interest, the “Tensung Mak” was formed, an “Army for Protection of the Doctrine”. They fought for two years, likely enabling icons like His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama of Tibet, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Gelek Rinpoche and others to escape to India. The Tensung Mak finally surrendered when a forest they were hiding in, was lit on fire. Garchen Rinpoche, and others of the army, were interned at a prison. They were tortured and starved leading many to suicide, “the suffering was inconceivable” a survivor later states.

Garchen Rinpoche kept His mind on The Buddhadharma, and when the occasional breadcrumbs came, He thought, “I should give my food away. If I’m going to practice generosity, I should practice it now.” On His deathbed, He was filled with so much anger, He spit in a guard’s face. They tied Garchen Rinpoche’s frail and failing body onto a coffin and carried Him into the infirmary. There, the same guard implored, “I am not angry, but I have a request. You are young and very sharp. Eat food.” The young Rinpoche resisted, “If I’m going to eat, you have to give me as much as I can eat. Then I’ll really eat. Otherwise I won’t eat at all.” The guards gave Him (and only Him), all the food He needed, and within a month, His malnutrition was healed. An older holy man, named Khenpo Munsel was transferred into the prison where Garchen Rinpoche was held. He mentored the young man in the deepest teachings of the dharma. Rinpcohe spent the next 20 years practicing these in secret and meditating in the middle of the night.

When Garchen Rinpoche was released in 1979, He saw His beloved homeland in tatters. Despite governmental threats, He spent the next 15 years traversing the countryside to comfort His impoverished and anguished people. He dried their tears, listened to their prayers, and restored the lost hope of many. In 1993 Garchen Rinpoche visited His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama of Tibet in India. His Holiness praised Garchen’s devotion, resilience and compassion, bestowing the revered and sacred Bodhisattva vows upon Him.

His Eminence Garchen Triptrul Rinpoche, courtesy of Garchen Institute

Taking Refuge

Back in TriBeCa in the 2000’s Michael and Victoria Imperioli had immersed themselves in the practice of Buddhism and opened their own dharma center. It’s there that His Eminence Garchen Triptrul Rinpoche entered their lives this lifetime. “He has the vibration of real flowing compassion, and it flows constant and unwavering.” Imperioli emotes. In July 2011, His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama of Tibet was in Washington, DC leading a large-scale Kalachakra (empowerment ceremony) for World Peace.

In a nearby hotel room, The Imperiolis took refuge and received vows, from Garchen Rinpoche, making Him their root lama (main teacher). Michael was given the refuge name, Konchog Zopa Sonam. Konchog is a family name (passed down through the lineage), Sonam means, “auspicious’ and “Zopa”, well, Zopa is the Tibetan word for Patience. Something the actor well-known for seamlessly delivering speedy dialogue never gave much mind to. He recalls, “When I took refuge and He gave me the name He said, ‘The key to your practice is patience, because when you lose your patience you lose your love.’’ At first this wisdom didn’t quite land, but the immenseness of the observation has expanded within the practitioner ever since.

Victoria Imperioli, Garchen Rinpoche, Michael Imperioli and White Tara, courtesy of Michael Imperioli

Over the last 15+ years, Konchog Zopa Sonam has allowed his Bodhicitta (mind of awareness) to ripen. His edges seemed to have softened, his view widened. The driven young artist has actualized into one with knowingness. Groundedness. Majesty. Despite his initial defiance, he relies on his daily Shamatha sitting practice, and as permissible much longer meditation retreats. “Becoming Buddhist is a path to really wake up from delusion” he assures. The seeker is committed to his practice, his teacher, his Buddhanature, and most distinguished these days, being of benefit to himself and others.

Michael Imperioli, His Holiness the XVII Karmapa Thaye Dorje and Victoria Imperioli, courtesy of Michael Imperioli

For The Benefit

In late 2019, something curious happened. Michael recounts, “I was really resistant to social media, and then I went on Instagram to help promote a TV show I was on. Then I realized, ‘Well, if I’m going to do it, I’m going to just turn people on to stuff that I like, art, music, movies, Buddhism.’ I started posting things about Buddha, and people started asking me how to meditate, and I would write back and give people meditation instructions. It was happening a lot, to the point where I was like, ‘Maybe I should make a video or something’. So, I asked my teacher, Garchen Rinpoche, I said, ‘A lot of these people that I’m communicating with want to learn how to meditate.’ And He said, “You don’t have to ask for my permission. If you want to benefit other people, go ahead and do it.’ I tried to do an Instagram Live session. It was a disaster. But through that, I met someone, and we started producing this Zoom webinar.”

The Zooms began as a simple seated mindfulness meditation. No talk of lamas or lineages, prayers or patience. Then there was a global pandemic, a social movement, an election, an insurrection, division, despair. The growing list of participants started asking Michael profound questions. They inquired about anxiety and depression, grief, dharma, karma, causes and conditions, sickness, suffering, old age and death. So he asked his teacher how to handle.

Garchen Rinpoche replied, “Just keep the focus on working with the mind. Because Buddha is not the name of a man, it’s the name of mind” With the calm candor, of a seasoned teacher, Michael relays this during an online meditation, “When you become aware of the fact you’re thinking, either go back to the breath, focus on where the breath is moving in and out of your nostrils right above your lip, or we use the visualization technique of the clear limitless unstained clear, blue, sky. The sky being the mind, the clouds representing the thoughts which arise from the sky and dissolve back into it. The third technique, which is a little harder, and usually takes a little more experience but you’ve been doing this a year now, is just by the fact of becoming aware of the thought, using mind to look at mind, to look at the fact that the mind is thinking, just let it be. And almost sink into that clarity of mind that recognizes it’s a thought…”

Michael Imperioli with Drupon Rinchen Dorje on retreat at Garchen Institute, courtesy of Michael Imperioli.

Bodhisattva

It’s now early 2022 – Michael’s Instagram account has become something of an online art-gallery where the masses come to learn about unsung cultural contributors; a curation that has been revered in magazines like Vice and GQ. His book, Woke Up This Morning with co-writer Steve Schirripa hit the New York Times bestseller list, and their Talking Sopranos podcast won a Webby. His punk band Zopa (sound familiar…?) released their debut album, and it’s just been announced Michael will co-star in the second season of Mike White’s HBO hit The White Lotus. Amidst all the excitement and activity, the father of three is complimented on his commitment to the digital Sangha that has developed; the group of students who religiously sign-on to sit with him. Michael deflects, “Yeah well, I’m happy to be there if people want to step onto this path. I’m not really – I guess I am kind of teaching, but I’m not a teacher. I’m more like a fellow student that has been around for a while and am kind of helping the other students out.”

“That’s the purpose of the Bodhisattva vow, you yourself become a teacher, while remaining a student, you are going to be the guide for this tour, and you yourself are going to be a tourist.”

This is the Way of the Bodhisattva.

Garchen Rinpoche and Michael Imperioli, courtesy of Michael Imperioli

Zopa On Tour

Michael’s Band Zopa is on tour in California this week;
2/8 Zopa @ The Chapel – San Francisco – click here for tix + info.
2/9 Zopa @ Wayfarer – Costa Mesa/OC – click here tix + info.
2/10 Zopa @ Zebulon – Los Angeles – click here for tix + info.

To Learn More about Michael and Victoria Imperioli’s Zoom Meditations, check out his Instagram
@TheRealMichaelImperioli

To Learn More about Garchen Rinpoche go to: Garchen.net

To Check Out Amy’s Work Go To; Sense + Color, You Can Reach Her At IG: Amy_V_Dewhurst + AmyVDewhurst@SenseAndColor.co #PutYourGoodWhereItWillDoTheMost

Follow Tim Ryan on Twitter.

The post Michael Imperioli: This is the Way of the Bodhisattva appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

You Are More Than You Think You Are: An Interview with Kimberly Snyder

Felicia M. Tomasko — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 22:24:29 +0000

Empowerment through Words and Action: A Conversation with Kimberly Snyder

Kimberly Snyder is a prolific best-selling author, an advocate for health and wellness, a mother, and a person who authentically lives her truth. Her book, You Are More Than You Think You Are, gives us all the messages we need right now.

Kimberly, this is a very vulnerable book in which you are a lot of your story. What inspired you to write this book?

I’ve always been guided to share what has helped me the most. The idea for the book came down like lightning- when I was 34 weeks pregnant with my second son. I feel that the teachings in You Are More Than You Think You Are, which are centered around living life from your True Self, getting past the emotional blocks and negative beliefs of the ego, and finding peace and joy from within, are what people need the most right now.

I went through thousands of pages of ancient texts and commentary to distill down the core teachings, along with supportive science and personal stories. I went to that vulnerable place to illustrate how useful and practical these teachings are for modern life- they aren’t supposed to be just read about in dusty old books!

What were some of the challenges you faced while writing?

In many ways, this book was completely different from the previous five that I have written. It really flowed- I will say channeled through me (and I don’t use that word lightly). I had a clear intention to serve, by making these teachings more accessible to others, and I always got more energy when I connected to my purpose.

I started writing when my younger son was 60 days old. My older son was not in preschool because of the pandemic, so it was enormously challenging to have two small children in my care, as well as continuing to run my company, Solluna, and my Feel Good podcast, and write a book on top of all that. As I look back, I’m not sure how I wrote the book, but I do know that writing happened during nap times, late into the night, and weekends…

You mention your teacher Paramahansa Yogananda often in the pages. How did you find his teachings? What are some of the ways his teachings continue to inspire you?

I believe we have many teachers, and only one guru. A guru is someone who shows you the way from darkness to light. They have to know the light themselves first though, in order to truly be a guru.

I was backpacking for what ended up being three years around the world, and when I was in India for the first time, for three months, I ended up finding one of Yogananda’s booklets in book store in Rishikesh. The moment I started reading, I felt a fire sensation rush up my spine, and I knew I had come upon great truth. Yogananda has been my guru from that point on, and I have practiced his teachings and practices from that day forward. You can see his influence in all my books, with the first one published now exactly 10 years ago.

Yogananda emphasizes meditation. How would you recommend some meditation practices for beginners?

Find a meditation method inspired from truth, from one who knows the way, and stick with that. There are so many modern forms of meditation, which can feel relaxing, but are not the way to union, which is the real goal of meditation and yoga. Union with God, union with the True Self.

Meditation, as outlined by a great Master, will help you concentrate your energy in your spine and brain, your central nervous system, away from the peripheral nervous system, where our energy is always being flowed out and into the external world, the world of delusion.

I practice Kriya Yoga, which is taught by Yogananda, and of which you can get info from on at srf-yogananda.org. The free Practical Enlightenment Meditations (which you can find on our site or the Solluna app) I put out every week are inspired by all of Yogananda’s teachings.

What are some ways that you have found to continue to commit to a meditation practice and continue to be inspired by meditation?

If we put some extra focus into developing a new habit- say it’s 40 days, which in some cultures signifies a cycle of great change, then it becomes easier to integrate into your life.

I know the difference in the days when I meditate–how calm and focused I feel–and the days I don’t, which is when I feel more reactive and chaotic. It is by discerning the difference in my own day to day experience that allows me to stay consistent with my own meditations!

One of your chapters is called, “You are a Powerhouse”. How do you continue to stay connected to your personal power?

I focus on serving others. When we focus on the little self, the ego, the “me” then we easily get depleted. Keep your focus on expanding beyond yourself in serving, and your true power starts to grow.

Your conversation in the book about being a creator is meaningful. How do you continue to identify as a creator these days?

We are all of Source, so we all have the creator power within us. We are co-creating all the time. Yogananda talked about the “underlying energy matrix of all things”, meaning that we need to work with our energy, and work to transform our lives from the inside out. I focus on attuning in my intuition, the voice of the soul, and creating from that deep inner connection.

In the book, you frequently offer some journaling prompts for readers. How is journaling part of your personal practice?

Yogananda said that introspection is essential in creating forward progress. Journaling is a powerful way to get your ideas down onto paper and be able to review, and deepen introspection and create more self-awareness. This allows us to discern patterns in our lives, of where we are over-identifying with the ego and when we are allowing the True Self to come through.

What do you hope to inspire in others when reading your book?

My goal is for everyone that reads it to understand that we all have this incredible resource inside of us, known as the True Self. It is the stable, calm, intelligent and wise part of you. It is an often dormant part of our personality, because we over-identify with primal fear and identify. Yet it is there, and the more we connect to it, through our meditations, practices and reading the teachings, the more that peace, joy, bliss, confidence and abundance flows through all of our lives. What we are all seeking is truly within.

Felicia M. Tomasko

www.blissnetwork.com

The post You Are More Than You Think You Are: An Interview with Kimberly Snyder appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Congressman Tim Ryan: Spiritual Warrior

Amy V Dewhurst — Mon, 31 Jan 2022 00:48:07 +0000

Elected into office in 2002, Congressman Tim Ryan has been exemplifying the qualities of a Spiritual Warrior for the past 20 years. The outspoken meditator who is for working families and choice, counts farmers and vegans among his closest friends. He’s brought emotional tools to the toughest vets, and inspired even his most conservative colleagues to try just one downward dog. Hailing from the 13th district of Ohio, a Georgetown University study recently listed the lawyer in the top 35 most bipartisan reps in the house. You may have seen him during the primaries on the Democratic presidential candidate debate stage explaining to the nation that we’re more alike than some may think.

I recently had the opportunity to do an extended on-camera with interview Congressman Tim Ryan. Here are 5 excerpts from that exchange.

1. On getting out the yoga vote…

“I tease my yoga friends all the time,
‘Oh you want to be one with the universe and sit on your mat and your cushion
but then you don’t want into politics.
I hate to break it to you, but that’s part of the universe.”

2. On how to approach the big issues…

“It’s really about getting to the root cause of what the problems are.
If you’re talking about education or mental health,
you really gotta focus in on trauma, and diet, nutrition and food.
You want to talk about climate,
the root cause really is what we’ve done to our soil and our agricultural practices.
So for me to push trauma-informed care, social and emotional learning,
these different techniques for our vets who are coming back so traumatized,
or regenerative agriculture for how we heal the planet,
it’s all about getting to the root cause of the problems
and having innovative solutions on how to really deal with it.”

3. On bravely bringing mindfulness and wellness resources to the Hill…

“Oh, I just said F*ck it, you know, (he laughs).

It was just, it needs to be done….there’s so much stress and anxiety and conflict,
and the staffers have a lot of pressure and stress too.
I wanted to just begin to open it up… and then that’s one way to affect policy.
If people are using this for their own personal wellbeing,
then when me or my staff says,
‘Hey, along those lines, we’re trying to get more money for social and emotional learning’
or some other program, there’s already a general awareness, like, ‘Wow, that really works.’

4. On making holistic healthcare, trauma-informed therapy and mindfulness programs available to veterans…

“I tell ya, I’m from Youngstown, Ohio,
I’ve seen some pretty burly Vietnam vets go through some of these programs
and just absolutely rave about it.
They wish they would have found it 30 or 40 years ago.
They got divorced, alienated from their kids,
and these programs are helping them heal themselves
and also start to heal those relationships and to me,
that’s what it’s all about and again; getting back to the healing.
Heal our vets, heal our kids, heal each other, heal the planet…
That’s kinda the underlying theme of the whole thing.

5. On recent Covid-related changes to work/life balance…

“Who knows, maybe this is an opportunity for us to really recognize
that slowing down, being with our families, having dinners together
that are home cooked, maybe this is the shift we need.
My mom used to say, ‘the Lord works in mysterious ways’.”

Learn More about Congressman Tim Ryan

Learn more about Congressman Tim Ryan.

Follow Tim Ryan on IG

To Check Out Amy’s Work Go To; Sense + Color, You Can Reach Her At IG: Amy_V_Dewhurst + AmyVDewhurst@SenseAndColor.co #PutYourGoodWhereItWillDoTheMost