I regularly ask my community about where they are feeling challenged or blocked. I have been amazed at how many times they hold their throats and express a longing for more freedom in this chakra to sing, speak, and express - in front of a group as well as intimately. I often hear, “I was told not to sing... that I couldn’t sing.” The critic had been internalized, and it was a vicious beast.
Over and over, friends ask, “Can you teach me how to sing... like that?” In essence, to sing fearlessly, in joyful devotion and wild abandon. But it wasn’t always like that for me...
I survived a youth shaped with intensive classical musical training. My voice and music were regularly scrutinized. Sometimes I endured being rated by panels at formal adjudications. Music practices and rehearsals felt like military drills. The approach of perfectionism was stifling. I am grateful for the skill I gained and even for the challenge of it all, but my soul was starving for a wilder and more soulful expression.
I had abandoned my music for a while. Though I loved music, it had started to feel like heavy chains. Then some years ago, I fell in love with devotional and ceremonial music of different traditions.
I am ever-deepening in my own healing transformation of liberating my voice and music through the path of bhakti, tantra yoga, the yoga of speech, and traditional shamanic healing modalities. At a point in my healing process, passionate devotion took over so much that there was no more vacant space for fear.
I felt myself breaking through icy layers of self-doubt. My inner-critic was dressed up in a clown outfit and banished to the far corners of the universe. I felt as if my voice had new “wings” as I explored new octaves, harmonies, and delightful new textural and primal sounds. I was in love again... and having FUN!
Apparently, I had tapped into something that others recognized as medicine. And I am answering the call by offering Serenading the Divine: Sacred Music, Mantra, and the Shamanic Voice. I hope you enjoy! The next Serenading the Divine experience is August 30th, 2013.
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Mid-yoga retreat, against the back-drop of this tropical paradise, I watched as one yogini opened her fresh jar of raw chocolate sauce...
It was a kind she'd never tried before. The dark, creamy texture beckoned for immediate exploration.
She opened the lid to the jar, unsure of how to politely proceed to the pool of chocolate heaven waiting inside. "How do I eat this?" she asked innocently. "Well... You dip your finger in, then... spread it on your shoulder and..." I playfully suggested, we giggled. She did dip her finger right in to taste it, and cooed with delight over the luscious sensory experience. She turned to the yogini next to her, and offered her some. This 3rd yogini smiled, clearly tempted, and said something I will never forget... "Oh it looks sooo good, but I'm afraid..." she hesitated before continuing, "...that I will like it too much."
Once she had her hands on that pot of bliss, she feared she might go wild with desire and not want to put it down.
This led me to wonder, how often to we turn away from "too much" pleasure? An experience of pleasure can be a profound moment to practice presence. Pleasure opens up the gateway to tremendous energy in the body, or shakti. This energy can be channeled into vivid states of awareness, love, creativity, and manifestation through the technologies of tantra yoga.
Pleasure also has the potential to incite grasping, painful attachment, and a primal fear of being lost in the tidal wave of sensation and energy. We may resist fully surrendering to the experience, feeling that the safe, grounding shore of ordinary consciousness is floating too far away.
Without knowing practical ways to fully experience, digest, and finally release the pleasure, this source of delight can become painful - even before we experience it. Some may begin the process of nostalgia or clinging even before the first taste.
Holding fear and stranded without practices to ground and guide you through pleasure, you may indirectly block yourself from experiences of deeper pleasure, or quite directly - in the case of the chocolate-fearing yogini. Of course I advocate indulgences which are healthy in moderation!
And yet, it is important to honor our emotional and physiological thresholds with these sources of pleasure. There is a time and a place for ascetic retreat, restraint, renewal, cleansing.
Be it pleasure from a sensory experience, relationship connection, or any other source... Enjoy these: 3 Possibilities for Surfing the Wave of Pleasure
• Allow the pleasure to be a portal into mindfulness Notice your breath, thoughts, sensations, energy, desire. Notice every nuance possible about the experience. "Make love" to the experience with your attention.
• Take your time. Slow down. • BREATHE. Slow and deepen your breathe. Savor the experience with your breath.
Breathe in, receive the experience fully. Breathe out, release the experience fully. And that's just the tip of the ice-berg... I hope to see you in person at our teachings to share more wonderful, complex technologies and personal support. In the end, the yogini finally tasted the chocolate. Eve tasted the apple. And the exploration of consciousness began. Dive in! Love, Bast dakinitemple.org
