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Yoga and Music: A Harmonious Match

Yoga and Music: A Harmonious Match

Depending on who you ask, you’ll receive varied answers to whether playing music during yoga helps you get into the flow easier or distracts you. Some people love music that enhances the yoga experience. When teachers offer appropriately energizing songs to boost the students’ mood and complement active asanas or play relaxing, calming music to aid in quieting the mind, the overall class can be just that much more impactful. Of course, there’s an art to creating flow in yoga both in instruction and playlists.

Here a few benefits of music and yoga together:

Music Helps You Disengage the Mind and Find your Flow

According to Patanjali, in the first chapter of the Yoga Sutras, yoga is defined as Citta Vritti Nirodha or learning to direct the attention of our thoughts. The entire text focuses upon how through the yogic path we can learn to calm the mind’s fluctuations and focus our attention where we choose as opposed to being controlled by the external. 

Naturally, our minds are active and learning to find stillness or control our thoughts is a lifelong discipline. The focus on the breath in yoga is a primary tool in quieting the mind. Adding in a well-designed playlist to uplift or calm your mood aids you in releasing the chatter can elevate you to finding your moving meditation faster. 

Music Improves Your Mood

Ever noticed how when you listen to one of your favorite songs your mood lifts immediately? Or how hearing an old song brings you back to the moment you heard it the first time? Music impacts on the physical, mental, and emotional level, just like yoga. If you’re in a vigorous yoga class and one of your favorite songs come on, it can act like an injection of energy and boost you through class. It can even make you feel like you aren’t working so hard. In a quieter Yin class, pacifying sounds of nature or classical music assists you in tapping into your parasympathetic nervous system to lower your blood pressure and soothing your soul. 

Music Aids in Meditation

With your mind free of external distractions and your mood elevated from your yoga practice, you’ve arrived in the perfect space to find stillness. Many people actually find it more difficult to let go in stark silence than in a practice enhanced by sound. Traditionally, meditation is performed in silence or through repetitive mantras. Mantras utilize the power of sound to deepen the meditative state. Similarly, music can help the mind release the repetitive distracting thoughts and settle into the present moment. And who doesn’t need a little help to stay in the here and now?

Whether you are a yogi that regularly flows to the beat or you practice in silence, we encourage you to give this week’s classes a try! We’ve got some special classes, linking world renowned music, with yoga, so step into the flow!

Copasetic Flow with Ali Dunacan w/ music by Sahale

Get into the Flow with Keith Allen w/ music by Sahale

Superflow 2.0 with Ben Davis w/ music by AnjunaDeep

Flow & Let Go with Kylie Larson w/ music by AnjunaDeep


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