Music Matters

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Music is the ultimate quick-fix destuckification tool.

BY MAGAZINE COLUMNIST EMMANUELLE LAMBERT

I love reading. One could say I am an avid reader. As we say in French, I eat books.

I know: what’s it got to do with music? Well, bear with me. I have just “eaten” what I truly believe is the ultimate book on time management, or rather the book that kills tears the concept of time management into pieces: Time Warrior, by Steve Chandler (yes, highly recommended).

In one short chapter, Steve Chandler writes one of the most profound things I have ever read about music, and I am not being ironic here. I’ll let you judge for yourselves:

I like to sing between coaching sessions or writing stints to harmonize myself with the vibratory nature of the universe and to return myself to joyful sanity. Laughing, Singing and Dancing are always three reliable paths home to our true nature. LSD for short. You can read about spirit all you want, but music lets you experience it directly.
- Steve Chandler

Wow.

Music is a shape shifting gift

Wait, there’s more:

“When I’m inside the music, carried by the song, time is gone, and there is no fear of death. And, losing the fear of death, we experience the death of fear.”

Double wow.

I was speechless after reading this. Which is a feat in and of itself.

So that is why, ultimately, we are so attached to music. I use that term, “attachment”, on purpose. I have been in the yoga world for a few years and although I would hardly consider myself an authority (guru forbid!), I kinda know it is a vade retro satanas word in the yoga jargon. Precisely.

That said, music might be considered a popular, sometimes minor, form of art. However, it is ultimately one of the highest spiritual tool that is available to us. And Steve Chandler is spot on when he compares music, among other forms, to a drug.

We sing in the shower and forget for a while we have to go to work. We sing in the car and forget for a while we are stuck in traffic (and you might be looking ridiculous but you don’t care). We listen to music in public transport and forget for a while about the stinky drunkard guy sitting in the opposite seat (any resemblance blablabla…).

Spiritual medicine, man

Music is the ultimate quick-fix destuckification tool. When you are feeling overwhelmed and don’t how how to complete the tasks that are on your unending to-do list, take a few minutes to pick up your favorite song and dance and sing. By doing this, you are realigning yourself to, well, your Self, and the Universe, or whatever you might want to call what you feel is right for you and your spirituality.

I know, this sounds like some woowoo hippie BS, but think, remember: when you stopped singing and dancing, have you ever felt like a weight had been lifted off your shoulders, and completely in tune with your environment, like a big fat sigh of relief and surrender coming from your guts? You know, the big fat “HHHHAAAAAAAAAA YES, now I am feeling better”.

Exactly, that’s what I am talking about.

That’s what Steve Chandler is talking about in these sentences: aligning ourselves with “our true nature” and “the vibratory nature of the universe”.

The song that is your song is spanda-licious

“Vibratory”: now that’s the key. The vibrations, the internal rhythm of the body, the spanda. This is why we are talking about “alignment” because under all the layers of the onion that we all are, we have our own tune to which, in an ideal world, we would all sing our life out loud.

When we play our music, when we dance like no one is watching, this is when we dive deep in ourselves and touch the very heart of what we are. The process is not conscious, we don’t realize what we do because it’s such an intuition, still this is what happens.

In the end, we are not “attached” to music, we are “attached” to its effects, even though we are not conscious about them and the way it works deeply, to our very core. It is difficult to describe why you love that singer or why that band is in your personal top ten. You can find all kinds of facts to explain: “she has a great voice” or “he’s too cute” (that’s if you are fifteen. Mind you, it works too when you are thirty).

Eventually, it all comes down to how the music makes you feel. How the music makes your Self truly shine.

Find Emmanuelle here on The Magazine every month in Music Matters. But don’t lose touch with her great style of living real – read her smart, hip and honest blog Plans on a Comet.

© 2011, The Magazine of Yoga, LLC.