Enchantment

On Wednesday evening I left work and headed into the snow-covered Berkshire hills to experience a Kirtan at Kripalu Yoga in Lenox. It was my first time at the center and I found it a hive of activity — men and (mostly) women filled the dining room and hallways, the café, gift shop, and lounge areas. How many more were behind the closed doors of private offices and yoga studios I can only imagine. I wandered quietly, awkwardly carrying my winter coat in my arms, removing my tall boots and stowing them in a cubby while I waited for the sancuary doors to open. Inside I could hear a familiar voice warming up.

It's hard to express how thankful I am to have found this practice the same week I lost my mom. I attended my first Kirtan the Sunday after her services and the Thanksgiving holiday, hoping it would help center me before returning to the daily grind the next morning. As long time readers of this blog know, my 40 minute commute to and from the office can be a difficult time for me. In winter's darkness I've often found myself with a dangerous combination of too much time alone to think, and too many sad songs on my iPod. During the three year span from my mom's diagnosis to her death I filled many miles with grief, and dreaded a return to that routine of despondency. That first Sunday I bought a copy of Dave's newly released cd and played it for my commute in the morning and again at night, chanting along as I drove. Dark thoughts rose, but fell quickly away. There were no tears (at least not while driving). I listened to it all week and purchased more Kirtan music from iTunes: Ram Dass, Krishna Dass, Govinda. My commute's been radically transformed from sorrowful to soulful.

When I think about the music I've loved the most through the years, my immediate passion for chanting makes perfect sense. The Cocteau Twins, known for their nonlyrical yet emotionally gripping vocalizations; Lisa Gerrard, who like Elizabeth Fraser often sings in a language of her own invention that she's been working on since she was 12 years old; Indian dance music. When I made a brief foray into working on my own music I felt drawn to layering repetative, chant-like vocals over Middle Eastern rhythms. All of it certainly seems to have paved the way for feeling very comfortable with Kirtan.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor at Kripalu I could still hear my thoughts in the silence between chants, but they were much quieter than they were last spring when I attempted to still my mind after yoga, and they seemed to lack any negative emotional force. A child in the back of the room would babble and break the stillness (a distraction that would normally aggravate me to no end) and I was able to note it and quickly let it go. For a few seconds my thoughts seemed to stop entirely and I experienced the edges of a very unfamiliar inner stillness, at once both grounding and heady. And oddly, in the middle of one chant, I felt a sense of unexplainable happiness spreading. It wasn't overwhelming bliss, but it was a noticeable warmth. It was a start.




For further reading, check out this short piece from The Times on the growing popularity of Kirtan in the West.