How Yoga Taught Me to Sing Again

I lost my voice chasing the spotlight. Yoga gave it back to me.

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How Yoga Taught Me to Sing Again

Yoga cured my writer’s block.

Gone are the days of finite creative juices.

How many times can I pour my holy devotion onto a page before the message gets old?

Before the well runs dry?

I’ll let you know if it ever does.

For now, my every artistic act is an offering crafted for God.

No more asking, Why am I writing this? Who is this for?

I know exactly who I’m addressing. It’s all prayer.

But long before I was a writer or yogi, I was a musician.

My parents met in their high school marching band.

They had to drag me into my first piano lesson as I kicked and screamed in protest.

I was 8 years old. I hated it.

But at 10, I floated over to the throne of a drum kit and fell in love.

By 16, I was the drummer of a rock band.

Together, we missed much of high school, touring the world instead.

Pure euphoria and oxytocin would rise up my spine nightly as we graced massive stages.

But the lifestyle left me nocturnal, and mornings signified comedowns of a torturous caliber.

The kit was my life. The rest was limbo.

I smoked away the space between gigs.

In the studio, I smoked shallow songs into existence.

During intermittent spells of sobriety, my fishing lines in the sea of music seldom caught game.

I’d get frustrated. What’s it all for?

It was all to get back on stage.

I had no regard for anything else.

Creativity stopped being fun.

My addiction masked itself well.

That’s when yoga found me.

Mundane monotony became beautiful.

Breath became a drug.

God became real.

The sun welcomed me home to the hug of its warm rays.

I even put the pipe down for good.

I gushed about my sadhana to anybody who’d listen.

I became obsessed, feeling deeply called to disperse the light I’d found, tirelessly utilizing word of mouth as my vessel to pass on the dharma lessons that changed my life.

Consequently, I came to find out that the relationships I’d carried over from life before yoga weren’t built to nourish my new passion.

I was misunderstood and dismissed, even scoffed at, by friends I’d long considered allies.

Above all, there was no place in my band’s music for my devotional sentiments to find expression.

To cope, I turned to the tabula rasa of blank white paper.

I wrote pages and pages of love letters to the cosmos within me.

I drew looming, life-size, pastel portraits of meditating sadhus.

I set out to employ art as a bridge that could lead me to like-minded humans, but instead, I stumbled into a dialogue with the supreme soul that hasn’t ceased since.

That blooming relationship made my goals shift: I set out to become God’s favorite instrument.

Let me be your channel. Play me like a marionette. Your wish is my command.

To this day, I haven’t tired of being the wagging finger on God’s grand hand.

But something’s still missing.

I’ve been terrified of making music.

Why does the sonic medium intimidate me so much more than the verbal or visual?

God has allowed me to vault music’s towering barrier of entry, endowed me with technical proficiency.

Yet, I feel so much safer exploring mediums that force me into the role of a novice.

With no cerebral haze of talent or training hanging above me, I’m free to reach up into the heavens unencumbered and glean creative energy from its true source: whimsy, innocence, and curiosity.

Above the sea of music, my sky is overcast.

Sprawled out on my back in a rocking rowboat, I look up at these white pillows of mist: obstructions formed as theory lessons, technique drills, and industry scars.

They seem impenetrable, severing me from my musical inner child.

Luckily, as opaque as a cloud may appear, any arm long enough can effortlessly perforate its wispy swirls and reach pristine blue heavens.

Its boundary is a mere illusion, but it takes a delusionally brave hand to even wonder about the possibility of piercing its veil.

This leap in consciousness may require an audacious urge to challenge the impossible — outrage be damned — but it needs only an instant in time.

In one moment, all previously-held limiting beliefs of the explorer are shattered.

Simultaneously, all spectators break their own spell of hypnosis.

Ultimately, all who witness the miracle share the story far and wide, to an awestruck audience, until their words carry a remedial power equivalent to the physical act of touching the sky.

In yoga, we call these magical words mantra.

Mantras are not just spoken; they’re sung in melodies and phonemes specifically tuned to divine cymatic resonance.

The most potent mantras simply evoke endlessly powerful Hindu deities: Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Krishna, Rama, Sita, Radha, Lakshmi, Parvati, Saraswati, Ganesha, Hanuman.

As the names of these gods enter the larynx of a singer, divinity itself reverberates down the spine, soaking the whole body in unconditional love.

Yogis have made a ritual of gathering to repeat these holy names for hours on end, getting exuberantly intoxicated on their own oxytocin.

We call this kirtan.

When I experienced kirtan for the first time, I found my path heavenward.

The call and response between band and audience — wherein every crowd member enthusiastically echoes back the leaders’ melodic runs — reminded me of the symbiotic exchange necessary for a memorable concert.

The accompanying sounds of harmonium, mridanga, and kartals — all timbres I’d never heard before — reminded me that instruments don’t need electronic amplification to resonate.

The inviting atmosphere of the event space — kirtans usually take place in tidy, consecrated yoga shalas or Hindu temples — reminded me that live music can exist outside the Western monolith of dark clubs with sticky floors and expensive bars.

The absence of applause at each improvised composition’s conclusion — the room instead falls into silent meditation when performances end — reminded me how rare it is for music to demand such unbridled presence and sensitivity.

Above all, the simplicity of the music itself — mostly confined to rudimentary pentatonic scales and common time signatures — reminded me that the soul of a performance has nothing to do with mechanical proficiency.

That last reminder stirred a gust of wind so intense that it banished all clouds above me, revealing a pristine blue horizon and a pearly hot sun.

Hanging in the clear air was the source of musical creativity I’d been yearning for: my immortal self, my inner deity, a complete absence of crushing knowledge.

In bhakti, the yoga of devotion, of pure oxytocin, I’ve remembered how to forget.

I’ve been taught by its vibrations how to rewrite old programming, silence the wannabe virtuoso devil on my shoulder, and appease the guileless wide-eyed cherub within me.

If the feeling came in a pill, we’d all take it.

I’ll certainly be enjoying my daily dose.

Now that kirtan has cleared my musical conduit, I’ll let it pour from me freely just as words and images have.

Every note I squeak will be dedicated to the bhaktas that came before me.

They showed us all what it means to touch the sky.

May our every creation inch in their direction, tell their story, and make them proud.

May we all resume our rightful roles as humble instruments in this cosmic symphony.