This past Saturday, we gathered on Zoom for our first Singing As Medicine training. Rather than beginning with songs or melodies, we began with something much simpler—and, in many ways, much more profound: a single sustained tone.

For many people, voice training means learning scales, improving technique, or developing confidence in singing. In the Yoga of Sound tradition, however, the voice is also a doorway into awareness. Before we concern ourselves with expression, we learn to listen. Before we seek beauty, we seek presence.

This is why the practice begins with one note.

Returning to the Foundations

One of the interesting discoveries I've made over more than three decades of teaching is that even advanced students often benefit from returning to the fundamentals. As we learn more sophisticated methods, it becomes easy to lose touch with the simple practices that quietly support everything else.

Working with a single tone develops much more than vocal ability. It invites us to ...

There is a way of singing that is not performance.

I often call it “Singing For God.”
This reflects its origins in Carnatic music, where composers sang in the temples of India—the very places we visited on pilgrimage.

At the same time, I understand that the word “God” can create distance for some.

So there is another way of entering this same process—
one that focuses on the inner experience that arises through musical knowledge and technique.

This is what I mean by Singing As Meditation. 

It is not about becoming a better singer.
It is about becoming transparent enough
for something deeper to move through the voice.

It is a way of entering.

A way of allowing sound to shape consciousness
rather than using sound to convey something outward.

What Happens When Singing Becomes Meditation

When singing is combined with spiritual practice,
something begins to shift.

You are no longer “producing” sound.
You are participating in it.

And in that participation:

• Breath begins to orga
...

Singing as Meditation is one of the new tracks in our Yogic Mystery School annual theme, which is Fit Body Mindful Soul. Singing has benefits that are physiological, psychological, and spiritual.

Apart from the obvious spiritual benefits of singing Hindu devotional music, which results in elevated states of consciousness, our practice is exploring the connection between musical sound and our overall health, encompassing both physical and psychological aspects. I believe there’s a significant correlation between the two.

The significant impact of music on health and psychology is not only documented in thousands of years of the Yoga of Sound's development, but also from the contemporary work of Oliver Sacks and the earlier contributions of Don Campbell and Alfred E. Tomatis.

The following insights were shared impromptu when students started to arrive for the session and shared what they were planning to do during the session. You are welcome to listen to actual exchanges in the video...

Indian music is essentially vertical in nature, meaning that it is internal and reflective of a drawing inward. Like the Eastern culture and religion, it is introverted. Eastern religions emphasize the importance of introspection and self-discovery, encouraging individuals to explore the inner reality and mystery of their being. Eastern music facilitates this process.

The power and beauty of this vertical music lie in melody, which is the relationship of successive notes. Melody is a means of connecting the human with the Divine. It operates through the psychic levels of an intermediate world that is difficult to define, as it transcends the boundaries of everyday existence and consciousness. It is a world of the unconscious, of dreams and deep moods, images and sounds, of the inner senses—those mystical dimensions of the human psyche that are either overdeveloped or underdeveloped in most of us.  

Indian music, and all contemplative music, strives to balance these dimensions as it u...

There are three dimensions of music worth discovering, and although the three are related, we may value one above the other. In our Yogic Mystery School, we are discovering all three of them at this time, even though we emphasize one during our current process. These three dimensions are aesthetic, therapeutic, and mystical, and each offers specific benefits.

In our process, the method is primarily directed toward the aesthetic, because, in order to create beauty with our voices, we've got to learn theoretical and technical components that have been simplified into three parts: chromatic calibration, developing ragas, and rhythm that involves timing.

We are three groups working as one whole. On the one hand, some are tone-deaf and have no sense of music theory or technique, while on the other, there are skilled musicians who are well-trained technically and theoretically. In between are the developing musicians who have various levels of theory and technique, some more than others. All t...