Äänijooga (sound yoga) began as the idea of creating a broader method involving bodily, spiritual, and artistic practices. Since listening exercises (such as sound-walks or Pauline Oliveros' Deep Listening methods) and all forms of yoga focus on increasing awareness, attentiveness, and connection to ourselves and our surroundings, it seemed only natural to want to create a new hybrid of these two wonderful practices. It is our hope that all participants can experience a new way of listening or moving, a broadening of their relationships with their body or surroundings, or even just a pleasurable and peaceful time.
All äänijooga sessions are designed to suit the spaces they occur in, and every gathering is appropriate for all levels of yogis and listeners.
All äänijooga sessions are designed to suit the spaces they occur in, and every gathering is appropriate for all levels of yogis and listeners.
The 6th century philosopher Boethius summed up the entire spirit of äänijooga into three beautiful terms: musica universalis, musica humana, and musica instrumentalis. If we think about music not as a tune, a beat, or a colour, but rather a broad kind of resonance, it's not difficult to imagine the possibilities our bodies, our world, and our sounds can create if we just listen intently enough.
Musica universalis may not be literally audible to us little humans, but is the spaces, relationships, and motions of the giant cosmos around us. In a much smaller way, musica humana is the music of the inner workings of our body: the electric pulses of our muscles, the buzzing of our nervous system, the rhythm of our guts, the voice inside our mind. Finding harmony and communion between our bodies/minds and the world around us sums up the most important and useful purposes of why practices like yoga have been a part of lives and cultures for millennia. Yoga teaches us to listen both inwardly and outwardly.
The musica instrumentalis of äänijooga is a deeper kind of listening too. Building sonic environments with both software and hardware, and using the space as an acoustic tool and the asanas as a pulse, both the yoga and the sounds feed into each other. This creates a kind of experience that has new potential...potential to be surprising, refreshing, thoughtful, helpful, fun, or even transcendental.
Musica universalis may not be literally audible to us little humans, but is the spaces, relationships, and motions of the giant cosmos around us. In a much smaller way, musica humana is the music of the inner workings of our body: the electric pulses of our muscles, the buzzing of our nervous system, the rhythm of our guts, the voice inside our mind. Finding harmony and communion between our bodies/minds and the world around us sums up the most important and useful purposes of why practices like yoga have been a part of lives and cultures for millennia. Yoga teaches us to listen both inwardly and outwardly.
The musica instrumentalis of äänijooga is a deeper kind of listening too. Building sonic environments with both software and hardware, and using the space as an acoustic tool and the asanas as a pulse, both the yoga and the sounds feed into each other. This creates a kind of experience that has new potential...potential to be surprising, refreshing, thoughtful, helpful, fun, or even transcendental.
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Ava Grayson is a sound artist and classically-trained composer whose belief in the joy and benefit of music and sound encompasses everything from experimental noise to playing banjo to listening to the wind in the trees on a regular basis. Having led many soundwalks and frequently practiced methods such as sonic meditation, she believes that learning to listen is one of many paths to self-understanding, vitality, and even to the divine.
Ava works as Lecturer in Sound Art at the University of the Arts Helsinki. She holds an MA from Aalto University in Sound in New Media (Helsinki, FI), and a Bachelor of Music in Composition from the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, CA). Having a love of slow practices like walking meditation and gentler yoga genres, her works focus on the more visceral elements of sound and space, and always contain an awareness of the body present in the listening space. Äänijooga is her Master's thesis project, as well as a personal pursuit to bring something communal, charitable, joyful, and life-affirming to others. |
Heta Kaisto is a producer and a researcher who looks for new ways of collaborating that might benefit a single person and a whole community for new experiences and ways to think. Her aim is to find such spaces for äänijooga that the sound, movement, and space would resonate together and make each äänijooga session a unique experience. Her biggest loves are music, words, and the rocky beaches of the north.
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Reeta Partanen is a yoga teacher with many years of study behind her: "I have practised yoga now for 13 years with many different teachers. My own yoga path has taken me from Astanga practice to Vinyasa Flow, Air Yoga to Hot Yoga classes. This combination of many traditions can also be seen in my classes, where I like to combine these different elements. Personally, the most important thing in yoga (and in life) is to listen and learn how to do things with your own body and soul, in your own way.
The combination of breath, mind and body are always present in daily life, and if it is possible for me to guide people how to get in touch with this trinity during asana practice, I feel that I have succeeded--even if the only asana done has been savasana lying on your back on the floor. In äänijooga I wish to give participants tools to find their own natural movement, and also elements to feel both energizing and relaxing sensations during longer Yin-yoga asanas and slow flow sequences. In search of wholesome and mindful practice less is definitely more! |
