Musing Over Music
For as long as I have practicing yoga (seven years now) I have enjoyed taking classes that play fun, different energy related music . For me, it really gets me in a flowing groove with my poses and gets me out of my own head.
Recently since I have become a yoga teacher, I have found that finding and choreographing good playlists is not an easy task and can take a lot of time if you are picky and want a good theme or to flow the music with the class flow. Actually it can take more time than I have on my hands to spend on music, especially as much as I teach and work. Of course a good playlist can be used over and over, especially if you teach at different studios, but after a while I get bored with them as a teacher and I would think that my consistent students get bored with them too, hearing the same songs over and over even if the practice is different every time.
So when I want a new playlist, what do I do, where do I go to begin? I first, keep track of songs I read about other yoga teachers using in their playlists through Yoga Journal magazine or I will read about songs on blogs like Kimberly Wilson’s or The Hungry Yogini, even video links through Facebook sometimes helps. ITunes is always awesome, but when you search Yoga music you get mostly relaxing, massage types of music and not a lot of variety. Then the question arises, what types of music, what artists and boy that can get expensive at $1.29. Other teachers will also give me good ideas, but in all honestly most teachers that teach at the same studios would rather not hand over their entire playlists to be used by multiple teachers in the studio as for some teachers the music flow they create is a huge part of the success of their class.
This past weekend, I was joanzing for a new playlist and I tried once again to Google – yoga playlists, yoga music, yoga flow music, etc. then. I stumbled along this blogpost. In short, it was written by a yoga teacher who played music in his classes and then decided to stop playing any music as he decided that the music was pulling students away from the actual yoga of it all. He said as soon as he stopped playing music his class attendance dropped off a lot. I really agree with a lot of what he said, even though I still like to listen to and play yoga music during practices.
It is also true that when I practice, the classes that play the best music are the more popular classes with higher numbers.
I know there are some of you out there who would rather soft music play in the background while you practice, and there are some that say play music but play the non lyrical music, and there are some that say don’t play music at all, but based on my experiences it seems to most of us we want a jammin’ musical playlist to flow while we practice.
What are your thoughts, preferences and please, please, by all means give me some of your favorite songs to add to my playlist (you can view mine here although it is not as updated as I would like it to be)!
