Molly Goforth 4/6/20 Molly Goforth 4/6/20

From Lip-Synching “Om” to Leading Chants: One Yogi’s Sound Therapy Journey

Music and I have always enjoyed a pretty fraught relationship. I have long been something of a screech owl blundering amongst a watch of nightingales, forever surrounded by the musically gifted but unable to join in their chorus without causing amusement or, more often, wincing. It’s been my dubious fortune, as someone who literally cannot sing in key, to be a kind of magnet for people with perfect pitch (although I am, at least, consistent: my college roommate—a violist— used to stare at me in a kind of appalled awe as I sang along with the radio. “It’s uncanny,” she’d say, “you are literally always exactly a quarter step down.”) I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people express appreciation when I sing harmony on “Happy Birthday”—I’ve learned to stop telling them that I’m trying to sing the melody.

But speaking of perfect pitch, my personal euphonic albatross: do you know what percentage of the world’s population has perfect pitch? Less than eleven percent. Here is a partial list of the people in my life who have (or had) perfect pitch:

·      My husband
·      My best friend
·      My college roommate
·      My late father
·      My uncle
·      My paternal grandfather
·      My paternal grandmother
·      A seemingly endless parade of my students
·      You get the picture

Music has a bit of a complicated history in my family: my father’s father, the son of a bandleader, was a ragtime piano prodigy who was forced to tour the Orpheum Circuit with his father from the age of six. At fourteen years old he quit the band, left home, and eventually became a surgeon and, later, a psychiatrist. He married a woman with a stunning soprano voice in the style of Jeanette MacDonald, and together they raised four children absolutely devoted to music. My uncle is one of the very few people in the United States who has made a living playing professional tenor saxophone over the past forty years.

Many people my age grew up with fathers obsessed with jazz, and I would stake my late father in a jazz trivia contest against any one of them—his knowledge was beyond encyclopedic, beyond obsessive—jazz was, I think, his literal best friend. NPR’s “The Art of Jazz” played on multiple radios throughout the house every single weekend of my childhood. My father would often interrupt me or one my sisters from our Shrinky-Dinks or Sweet Valley High books to point at the stereo demand, “Who’s that on trombone, girls?” It was never someone easy to recognize, like Tommy Dorsey or J.J. Johnson, it was always a hard one. “You mean to say you don’t know Miff Malone when you hear him?!” Sorry, Dad.

There was also musical talent on my mother’s side. My maternal grandfather, who died when my mother was twenty, was a classic Irish tenor—although I never met him, I have a false memory of his beautiful rendition of Danny Boy, from hearing it lovingly referenced in so many family stories.

It probably doesn’t help that I spent three years of piano lessons practicing on an out-of-tune piano before my teacher—a local Methodist pastor’s wife whose large family definitely had use for every spare penny—told my mother that she couldn’t, in good conscience, continue to take her money. I joined Seattle Girls’ Choir in the fifth grade and, over the course of three years, came to tower over my fellow choristers as every girl in my training choir class was promoted to the Intermediate Choir except for me. Eventually, the choir director echoed my piano teacher in gently suggesting to my mother that I be redirected in my interests, perhaps towards watercolors, or volleyball, or ikebana, or literally anything other than music.

All of which is to say, I am not, at this point in my life, confident about my musical abilities. While I enjoy many kinds of music deeply, and have always found music and dancing to be a direct channel to spiritual connection, I avoid singing in front of others, and freeze up instantly when a musical instrument is put in front of me. So you can imagine my reaction upon discovering, during the first day of my Sound Therapy training at Prema Yoga Institute, that by the end of the weekend I was expected to chant while accompanying myself on the harmonium. Outwardly, I nodded enthusiastically. Inwardly, I panicked.

Ironically, I am not afraid to use my voice—I taught vocal technique for actors for years at various acting schools and studios in New York City, including the Musical Theatre studio at NYU, where I was, I think, the only non-singer in the building. The technique I taught, developed by Kristin Linklater, teaches actors to undo the maladaptive muscular habits that prevent them releasing their sound fully and expressively while speaking. The technique is often referred to a “freeing the natural voice,” and—especially in the beginning—“ugly” sound is not only allowed but actually encouraged.

But I had never encountered “ugly” sound in yoga. At that point, the only sound I was really familiar with in the yoga world was kirtan: a division of bhakti yoga often involving melodic call-and-response chanting, generally led by a yogi playing a harmonium. I had attended large kirtan sessions where my imperfect voice could be masked by blending into the wall of sound, and found them to be ecstatic experiences. But the idea of leading a kirtan myself—of being responsible for the sound element of a yoga class—was beyond daunting: it seemed actually impossible. How could I expect a class to echo my chanting when it would almost certainly be off-key?

Happily, Jessica Caplan’s sensitive, inclusive teaching gradually made me feel more confident in my ability to lead a class in chanting over the course of the weekend. She also offered a variety of non-vocal ways to include sound in my yoga experience, whether as a teacher or as part of my home practice. I came away with a practical understanding of what had been, before, a nebulous idea of the concept of sound healing. I learned about the bija mantras’ relationship the chakras, and how to use them effectively in sequencing a chakra-centered class or private session. I learned about toning and humming, and how the body responds to vibration and frequency. (A useful maxim from the manual: “Sound is organized vibration. Thus, organized sound can organize matter.”) I was introduced to a variety of simple but powerful musical and percussive instruments (such as singing bowls, hand drums, chimes, and rattles) that I could accumulate and practice with in order to provide, for example, a soothing sound element during savasana, or an invigorating percussive element to a chi dance. I also learned about the history of Indian sacred music.

Most transformative were the two immersive sound baths I experienced in the training, one a standalone experience and one incorporated into one of Dana Slamp’s incomparable restorative yoga classes. I also had the opportunity to create one myself, in conjunction with two classmates. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything as simultaneously grounding and transporting as a sound bath conducted by Jessica Caplan. The experience is hard to describe, and I would be lying if I said I left the class feeling as if I could instantly replicate what Jessica had created—she is, after all, a professional sound therapist. But I did leave with confidence in the imperative of my curiosity to explore sound. I have since started acquiring instruments to be able to create sound baths for my own students and clients, and have begun incorporating healing sound into my own yoga classes, and especially into my teaching of yoga nidra. I can’t tell you how exciting it was to learn practical ways to begin including sound into my own teaching right away.

Another major takeaway for me was the incorporation of chanting and mantra in to my own meditation practice. We learned several mantras and were each encouraged to select one that resonated with us and practice it for a week. I was deeply moved by the Maha Mrityunjaya (“The Great Chant of Healing”) and continue to use it in my personal practice on a daily basis. Perhaps unsurprisingly, consistently chanting in my daily meditation practice has made me more confident in leading chants, and now I am more likely to begin or end a yoga class with Loka Samastah or Om Navah Shivaya, rather than my usual three Oms. I use an app version of the droning chord created by a harmonium or shruti box (a sort of elementary version of a harmonium that I plan to add to my collection of instruments), so the students with better ears than mine have an accurate pitch to follow. Surprisingly, though (to me, anyway), chanting nightly backed with an accurate drone has actually improved my relative pitch.

In PYI’s Sound Therapy training, I learned that sound itself can be therapeutic, not just what we conventionally think of as “music” or “singing”. This was a major revelation for someone who has always thought of herself as musically challenged. It is not an overstatement to say that the course opened new world of expression and devotion was opened to me through this course, both as a yoga teacher and as a practitioner.

Prema Yoga Institute’s Sound Yoga Therapy Training runs from April 17th to April 19th. More information can be found here.

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Molly Goforth is a yoga and meditation teacher and a student at Prema Yoga Institute. She specializes in accessibility and trauma-informed yoga teaching and practice.

Hannah Slocum 4/1/20 Hannah Slocum 4/1/20

5 Yin Poses for Calm in Uncertain Times

Therapeutic yoga seeks to bring us into balance -- not only within our bodies but with the world around us. Through pranayama, asana and meditation, we find ways to balance our current internal and external states with what is needed to nourish us physically, mentally and emotionally.

So when we find ourselves in times of extreme uncertainty -- which seems to be the collective global experience these days -- therapeutic yoga is a critical tool to help with the anxiety, depression, and sedentary states that may result. One therapeutic modality to consider trying is Yin. In Yin yoga, the focus is on holding poses for long periods of time (three to five minutes) to access the connective tissue that holds our form together. By cultivating stillness in the body and mind, we are better able to counterbalance the chaos and uncertainty of the world around us.

Yin yoga can be highly beneficial to calm and balance the nervous system. Why?

● By holding poses for an extended period, we can actually lengthen and manipulate the fascia and connective tissue, helping keep it supple and healthy, even as we age.

● In Yin yoga, we strive to find a balance between effort and ease by stretching to about a level six out of 10 -- if level one is just lying in bed, no effort at all, and 10 is the deepest stretch you’ve ever felt, you want to be around the middle of that spectrum.

● Finally, Yin asks us to practice with patience and respect for our bodies and minds, and to maintain a heightened state of awareness throughout the practice.

Here are five Yin poses to try to calm the anxious and unsettled mind.

1) Caterpillar -- This is most closely related to what you may know as paschimottanasana, or a seated forward fold in a vinyasa class. Folding inward can help focus the mind and calm the nervous system.

Begin seated with your legs extended, and bring one or two bolsters on top of your thighs. Lift tall through the spine and fold over your legs, letting your chest rest on the bolsters (adjust how much support depending on where your level six is). While your vinyasa teacher might have instructed you to keep your spine long, it’s okay in this Yin pose to let the spine round, feeling a stretch across the low back. If your hamstrings are tight, you can widen your legs and bend your knees to create more space. Hold for four minutes.

2) Sleeping swan -- You likely know this as pigeon pose. Not only does this also serve as a forward fold, helping to instill a sense of security, but it also opens the hips, which helps release tension held in the pelvis.

Beginning on all fours, bring your left foot forward by your left hand. Walk the left foot across to the right hand, slide the right knee back until both hips reach the mat. If your left hip remains lifted, bring a blanket or bolster underneath it for support. Gently release your chest onto a bolster, releasing the upper body completely.

If this feels more intense than a level six, you can slide your left ankle back toward the left hip, creating a gentler stretch for the outer left hip.

Once comfortable, this is a great opportunity to come into meditation. Notice the temperature of your breath as it enters the nostrils, and then as it leaves the nostrils. Has the temperature changed? How about the color -- does the breath look the same on the inhale and the exhale? Continue to breathe and focus on the look or feel of the breath for four minutes on each side.

3) Viparita karani -- In English, this pose is known as “legs up the wall” which is about as simple an explanation as you can get. You’ll need an empty wall for this pose. To begin, bring one hip right to the wall, and swing your legs up it, lying your torso back on the ground to form a 90 degree angle. Bring a blanket underneath your skull to give it a bit of padding, and it may feel nice to bring another blanket or block to your belly to increase the feeling of groundedness. You can bring your arms to a T, above your head, to your sides, or hands can rest somewhere on your body. Hold this pose for five minutes.

This pose is especially beneficial if you’ve been on your feet all day or been traveling, as it helps reverse blood flow from the feet and bring it back to the vital organs, while gently stretching the backs of the legs.

4) Snail -- Begin lying on your back, with your back and shoulders on a folded up blanket, while the head neck are off of it. Lift your hps and support them with your hands. Let the feet come behind the head, taking caution to maintain plenty of space between the cervical spine and the mat. Your feet can touch the floor behind your head, although they do not need to, and can remain dangling in space. Round the spine.

Snail pose serves to release pressure on the spine, and cradle the heart, calming the nervous system in the heart space. Hold this pose for three minutes, and roll gently down to lie on the mat and let the spine neutralize.

5) Reclining twist -- This is a simple supine spinal twist. By nature, spinal twists can help bring equilibrium to the nervous system and release tension in the spine, while also stimulating the internal organs.

To enter, bring the knees to the left side, while twisting the upper body toward the right. Your gaze can be toward the ceiling or over the right shoulder. If you need to back off the twist a bit, a bolster under your knees and/or a blanket underneath your right shoulder can help give some extra support. Bring your left arm anywhere that feels comfortable. You can also move the knees toward or away from your head to adjust the sensation. Hold for three minutes, pause in savasana, and then repeat on the next side.

The next time you find yourself watching the news or scrolling through Twitter, only to find your heart begin to race and your mind begin to spiral, consider taking a few moments to practice a couple of these postures to help find calm in these uncertain times.

References:

Paulie Zink, often referred to as the founder of Yin yoga

Videos on Yin yoga asanas, by Bernie Clark

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Hannah Slocum Darcy is a yoga teacher and a student at Prema Yoga Institute. She specializes in accessibility and adaptive practice for many life stages and scenarios.

Molly Goforth 3/25/20 Molly Goforth 3/25/20

Yoga in Quarantine: Tips for Cultivating a Home Practice

“Yogas chitta vritti nirodah,” the second of Pantajali’s Yoga Sutras, is likely the verse most recognizable to yogis of any level of experience. A seminal tenet of yoga philosophy, it literally translates to “Yoga is the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind.” A more modern, colloquial interpretation might be, “Yoga quiets the mind chatter,” and I bet I speak for all of us when I say that at this moment, I really need to spend some time each day quieting the chatter in my mind. We are living in a historical moment unprecedented in our lifetimes, and it is all too easy, shut up in our homes and consuming the news, to allow atmospheric anxiety and personal worry to escalate into the full abandon of panic. Over the past week, in my non-yoga life as a university instructor, I probably wrote the phrase “Don’t freak out” over and over again in upwards of sixty emails. And yet, last night when a server crashed, I freaked out, my students totally freaked out, and my husband, at loose ends with his workplace closed, stayed up all night fretting and then drank a beer at 1:00 pm today and lay down for what he referred to as a “stress nap.” Right now, just when we all need yoga in our lives more than ever, our studios are closed and the governor is telling us to stay in our homes.

The governor is right: we do need to practice radical social distancing as much as we possibly can in order to gain control of this crisis. But we don’t have to give up our yoga practices just because we’re holed up at home. With that in mind, here are five tips for creating and maintaining a home practice.

1. Create a dedicated container for your practice. It’s wonderful to be able to have a designated space—even a room!—for your home asana practice, but most New Yorkers don’t have that luxury. However, anywhere you have space to roll out your mat can be a sacred space if you make it so. Create a bit of ritual around your practice: light a candle, compose a dedicated playlist on Spotify, do something to establish an intentional boundary around your physical practice, even if you’re in the living room one day and the bedroom the next. Devoting a time of day to your practice can also be a way of creating sacred space.

2. Take it easy. If you are used to practicing in class with a teacher observing, be especially careful when working at home. Don’t cut corners: take care to warm up fully, and make sure the room is at the temperature you’re accustomed to when practicing. If you can’t get your apartment as warm as the studio, add layers, especially around your joints.

Don’t test your limits—there’s no teacher to stop you from hyper-extending or “hanging out” in your joints. So be mindful of your hips, knees, spine (particularly your neck) and shoulders. If you’re used to being cued in and out of poses, transition slowly and mindfully, and be especially mindful of alignment. If you feel any pain or discomfort, stop. A home practice during an epidemic is neither the time nor the place to push boundaries in your asana practice.

3. Try practicing online. If you’re missing class and instruction, there are plenty of options for you to practice at home with others, both in real time and asynchronously. Prema Yoga Institute is offering live classes every day via Facebook, on a donation basis. In addition, online yoga platforms offer a tremendous variety of options for a home practice. PYI’s own Dana Slamp teaches via Yoga Anytime, and there’s a fifteen day free trial for their subscription service.

4. Remember that yoga is more than asana. Just as important as maintaining a physical practice is keeping yoga alive in your mind and heart. If you don’t have an altar in your house, now is a good time to set one up. An altar doesn’t need to be religious—it can simply be a space dedicated to cultivating mindfulness. Mine sits on top of a tiny cabinet in the corner of my bedroom and holds a salt lamp, a candle, a box with my mala, a few precious stones, and copies of The Pocket Pema Chodron and Tosha Silver’s Change Me Prayers. I sit in sukhasana every night before bed to read, breathe, and chant.

5. Just practice. As my teacher says, the best yoga practice is the one you do. If you’re homeschooling the kids, working online all day, taking care of loved ones, or just generally climbing the walls and can only devote ten minutes a day to your practice, then practice for ten minutes. But fire up that tapas and commit to an ongoing practice. As the extremely prolific novelist Anthony Trollope once said, “A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules.”

During this period of intense mental stress and danger to our physical health, a steady at-home yoga practice is not only possible, it may well be a major component in keeping us mentally and physically well. Yogic practices are proven to down-regulate the nervous system and boost immunity, and yoga in general keeps us in touch with our bodies, our breathing (!) and our bodhichitta (soft-heartedness). A home yoga practice not only helps us to keep functioning, it helps us to marshal our resources to support others. So here’s a new mantra to carry into the coming weeks: keep inside, keep well, and keep practicing.

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Molly Goforth is a yoga and meditation teacher and a student at Prema Yoga Institute. She specializes in accessibility and trauma-informed yoga teaching and practice.