Deep meditative practice through embodied experience of music
The pulse is within you—stable, yet moving, like a wave. It is something deep inside that you can rest on and be carried by. Its flowing movement has a deep structure that emerges and reveals itself to your focused mind, which can hold onto it as a secure matrix that supports you.
Within this rhythmic matrix, gestures appear – rhythm cells – like words. Tone and resonance deepen your experience of these gestures as they unfold within the expressive flow of melody, whilst a profound sense of tonal centre provides solid ground and clear orientation. As each melody occurs with a particular harmonic place, we experience subtle tension and resolution that feels like exploring and coming home. Different places correspond to different feeling energies that we experience in particular places in the body—energy centres or chakras.
In its deep simplicity, the music carries rich meaning and feeling. Allowing yourself to follow the unfolding story of the music provides a direct, clear experience of the music's message. The sense unfolds on its own, you just follow it, allow it to connect you to your deepest consciousness or life force.
My journey
It was music that ignited my interest in yoga and somatic awareness. The connection to my deepest experience of music as something rather magical was impossible to ignore. All my attempts to view music as something logical were met with a sense of something mysterious going on. Pure intention, the feeling of flow and stretch—this comes from an inner place, somehwere deep in the body and soul, not the head. And the way that this inner attention and intention affects the music and its power to communicate is powerful yet impossible to explain materially.
As a small child, I loved how intense focus was all I needed to experience something truly magical in even the simplest of music. I played extremely simple shapes and patterns yet felt their immense scope and depth. Later, as I studied music seriously, I discovered the importance of focus and letting go of the need to achieve measurable, material results—allowing the music to evolve and expand on its own. In this way, I discovered the feeling many musicians speak of: becoming more like a channel for something beyond the mind to emerge. This way of making music dissolves the ego.
As a musician, this way of doing music has become the most important part of my practice, both personally and professionally. It is a way of experiencing music that feels like coming home. It allows me to reside in the truth of why I do it. It helps me unpick some of the knotty emotional and somatic issues that I can sometimes struggle with. Some of these issues stem from a childhood full of classical piano competitions and examinations. Tone&Groove is a musical practice that gives me a release from all that pressure.
I'm excited to share the joy of music experienced in this way. I love the fact that anyone can benefit from the deep messages that the essence of rhythm and tone communicate, and use it to enter an inner state that is spacious, simple, grounded, equanimous, peaceful, and full of compassion.
Would you like to create music like this yourself?
This meditation music is spacious and simple and full of profound feeling. It has a timeless quality and requires no cultural reference point. So whatever your background or experience, you can learn to improvise this kind music yourself. All you need is clear focus on a simple model and a childlike sense of wonder and delight.
I offer sheet music of the pieces that I create and share. Or you could even study and practise my the first 6 steps of my 10-step music course, to learn to improvise and create music in this way. My teaching is designed to provide a solid, comprehensive grounding in musical language as a foundation for creating in genre of music. But Tone&Groove is a specific musical practice – one that you can come home to whenever you need, to experience deep reassurrance and transformation.