Deep meditative practice through embodied experience of music
The pulse is within you—stable, yet moving, like a wave. It is something deep within that you can rest in 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 our experience of these gestures as they unfold with 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. And the way that this affects the music and its power to communicate is impossible to explain materially.
As a small child, I loved how simple focus was all I needed to experience something truly magical in music. I played the simplest shapes and patterns and felt their immense scope and depth. Later, as I studied music seriously, I discovered the importance of letting go of the need to achieve results—allowing the music to evolve and expand on its own. In this way, I discovered feeling more like a channel for something beyond my mind to emerge. This way of making music dissolves the ego.
As a professional musician, this approach to music has become the most important part of my practice. This way of experiencing music feels like coming home to the truth of why I do it. It helps me unpick some of the somatic issues that I can sometimes struggle with, which stem from a childhood full of classical piano competitions and examinations. This work gives me a release from all that pressure.
Now I want 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 to enter an inner state that is spacious, simple, grounding 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.
By practising the 6 steps of my 10-step music course, you will be able to improvise in this way. This also provides a solid grounding in musical language that can pave the way towards practising any 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.