The Practice--Make Way for Super Music
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| photo by Patricia Herlevi |
Super
Music verses Junk Music (Excerpt)
Like many other Americans, I
spent my childhood eating junk food and listening to pop music. Both the junk food and commercial music
provided quick fixes and temporary comfort followed by agitation and
hyperactivity later. While food
allergies and sensitivities increase in our society, I developed sensitivities
to heavily programmed music without a strong melody or natural rhythms (in sync
with the natural heartbeat). I escaped
into the worlds of jazz, classical, folkloric, and indigenous music. However, some pop music, such as the Beatles
with strong melodies and interwoven harmonies provides its own type of healing.
In my twenties, I gravitated
towards alternative rock.
It’s as if I needed
to evolve spiritually, physically, and intellectually before I could appreciate
music genres from other cultures and traditions. Fortunately, when I was in my late thirties,
the WOMAD Festival presented by Peter Gabriel came to Redmond, Washington and
left me open to more healing music possibilities. WOMAD accomplished this mission by preserving
music traditions, building a community among global musicians and new
audiences, and presenting music events in natural settings.
At the same time when I first
attended WOMAD USA, I had also started eating whole foods and eliminating all
junk food from my diet, a process that would progress through a decade. I found this transition challenging since
like others, I experienced an addiction to certain sounds and foods. A comparison between whole foods and holistic
music seemed obvious to me at the time.
As I ate whole grains and vegetables, I started researching the effects
of various types of music on my body. I
created a de-facto music lab in my small Seattle apartment and I started an
elimination process of electronic and most rock music.
Vibration
+ Intention = Music
One of my favorite food and
cooking books at the time was Paul Pitchford’s Healing with Whole Foods, in which the author spoke about “vibrational
cooking” while referring to Macrobiotics and Chinese medicine in regard to
diet. Pitchford devoted a section of the
book to the types of healing that each food (fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts,
seeds) could provide. And in each
section, the foods were listed by temperature (cold, cooling, warm, and
warming). Later, when I created a
workshop for balancing Ayurvedic doshas with music, temperature surfaced again,
but this time with different ragas I brought to the workshop.
I focused on ragas because
this music connects to a specific season, time of day, or mood. Each dosha represents qualities such as air,
space, fire, water, and earth and certain qualities balance each dosha. For instance, a Vata dosha (air and space),
grows tense and overly sensitive when out of balance. In the realm of a food diet, warm and heavier
foods balance this dosha; slow, soft, and warm music balances this dosha
too. Finding the right raga for each
dosha proved challenging, so I also brought in western music (classical and
jazz) to help balance doshas. Using the
Vata dosha as an example again, a slow cello piece by J.S. Bach would also
balance this dosha, especially during the Vata hours of 2:00 a.m. and 6:00
a.m.; 2:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.
Kapha people benefit from the
opposite scenario and balance their dosha by listening to music that begins
softly and slowly then picks up speed and intensity. Since Kapha hours fall between 6:00 and 10:00
a.m. (and 6:00 p.m. and 10 p.m.), Kapha people need music that will roll them out
of bed, rather than allowing them to hit the snooze button.
Pitta’s with their tendency
towards fiery tempers balance their dosha with soft, cooling and
intellectually-stimulating music. I know
one woman with this dosha who prefers listening to harp music upon waking each
morning. Harp music varies in
complexity. The Pitta hours of the day
are 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and 10 p.m. to 2:00 a.m....
Copyright Patricia Herlevi, 2014
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