I just experienced a kind of an India day.
We just returned from a going away party for one of the finest yoga teachers in the area, and I spent the morning chanting OM with some friends. It was a very uplifting, relaxing, rejuvenating day.
This afternoon, as I said was a going away party, for Michael. A few minutes after we arrived I remarked to Carol that the people in the room did not fit the statistical norm for the US. The percentage of overweight people in the US in 2014 was an astonishing 70.7%. The population in the room would yield about 4% that may fall in the overweight category and even that is a stretch. Seems to me there's something to a regular yoga practice.
A bit over two years ago I wrote about chanting OM on a rainy day and since it was that long ago I feel justified in including it here:
OM, chanted as three syllables [Ah-oh-mm] that flow into each other through a single breath, is a way to calm one's thoughts, to relax, to facilitate meditation. It is a private time, a time when the sonorous repetitive drone brings with it a defocusing, a soothing, of the mind and of the body.
When the chant is performed in a group, for an hour or more, something else happens.
My good friend, Dahlia, counselor, mediator, musician, and beautiful soul, leads a chant four times a year around the equinox and solstice - the times of transition when people tend to recognize their connection to the universe, if only for those brief periods. I have participated in most of them, and each time I come away with the a sense of peace, of altered consciousness, of awareness of ME.
The thing about a group chant is the melding of voices, of people sitting, eyes closed, voices open, in a common simple intonation. Om, in its polysylabic rendition, is an unintended incantation. As the chant progresses it changes from a simple repetition to a sea of sound. As Dahlia begins the chant, her pure gold voice pulling us in, we initially follow, picking up her rhythms, but she changes, doesn't maintain a metronomic cadence, and soon we are in our own rhythms, each different by a beat or two. The result is an almost continuous sound, sometimes with just a few voices somewhat tentative to be alone, sometimes in a cacophony of discordant sounds, sometimes even in a harmonious crescendo that lifts each voice into the harmony of OM.
An hour passes so quickly that I can't believe we're done. In the chant, I have found distance from my all-to-present mortality to some other feeling - peace I think. The acceptance, the okayness, of this rung in the ladder of my existence.
It is as much of a treasure today as it was then. On October 16th. Dahlia lost her mother, Hazel, a smart gentle soul who had reached 100 in July of this year. The chant on her return from West Virginia had a special feeling for me, having known Hazel briefly before she moved.
What I intended this musing to be was a contented sigh celebrating a relaxing, rainy day. I hope I didn't deviate too far from it.
We just returned from a going away party for one of the finest yoga teachers in the area, and I spent the morning chanting OM with some friends. It was a very uplifting, relaxing, rejuvenating day.
This afternoon, as I said was a going away party, for Michael. A few minutes after we arrived I remarked to Carol that the people in the room did not fit the statistical norm for the US. The percentage of overweight people in the US in 2014 was an astonishing 70.7%. The population in the room would yield about 4% that may fall in the overweight category and even that is a stretch. Seems to me there's something to a regular yoga practice.
A bit over two years ago I wrote about chanting OM on a rainy day and since it was that long ago I feel justified in including it here:
OM, chanted as three syllables [Ah-oh-mm] that flow into each other through a single breath, is a way to calm one's thoughts, to relax, to facilitate meditation. It is a private time, a time when the sonorous repetitive drone brings with it a defocusing, a soothing, of the mind and of the body.
When the chant is performed in a group, for an hour or more, something else happens.
My good friend, Dahlia, counselor, mediator, musician, and beautiful soul, leads a chant four times a year around the equinox and solstice - the times of transition when people tend to recognize their connection to the universe, if only for those brief periods. I have participated in most of them, and each time I come away with the a sense of peace, of altered consciousness, of awareness of ME.
The thing about a group chant is the melding of voices, of people sitting, eyes closed, voices open, in a common simple intonation. Om, in its polysylabic rendition, is an unintended incantation. As the chant progresses it changes from a simple repetition to a sea of sound. As Dahlia begins the chant, her pure gold voice pulling us in, we initially follow, picking up her rhythms, but she changes, doesn't maintain a metronomic cadence, and soon we are in our own rhythms, each different by a beat or two. The result is an almost continuous sound, sometimes with just a few voices somewhat tentative to be alone, sometimes in a cacophony of discordant sounds, sometimes even in a harmonious crescendo that lifts each voice into the harmony of OM.
An hour passes so quickly that I can't believe we're done. In the chant, I have found distance from my all-to-present mortality to some other feeling - peace I think. The acceptance, the okayness, of this rung in the ladder of my existence.
It is as much of a treasure today as it was then. On October 16th. Dahlia lost her mother, Hazel, a smart gentle soul who had reached 100 in July of this year. The chant on her return from West Virginia had a special feeling for me, having known Hazel briefly before she moved.
What I intended this musing to be was a contented sigh celebrating a relaxing, rainy day. I hope I didn't deviate too far from it.
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Comments are always from "anonymous". Often I can identify the author by the content of the comment, but that much cogitation makes my 80 year-old brain tired. Please help out an old man and identify yourself within the text of the comment. Thanks for the comments whether or not you ID yourself. Tom