Let’s start with the newsy part first this time! I’m starting two new yoga sessions – Traditional Hatha Yoga and Chair Yoga – at Chelsea’s Meredith Centre this week. You can register in person before/after the first class. Drop-ins are also welcome!
Sat. Oct. 26, 4:00-5:00pm: Kirtan at Vraie Nature Yoga – Free, and open to all! This is followed by a Sound Bath (with gongs, singing bowls and other healing sounds), offered by our friends Cory and Val from 5:00-5:30pm – also free and open to the community.
Coming up… more details to follow…
Sat. Nov. 30, 4:00-5:00pm: Kirtan at Vraie Nature Yoga
Sat. Dec. 21, 4:00-5:30pm: Winter Solstice Kirtan at Mill Road Community Space
Wed. Jan. 8, 7:30-8:45pm: Introduction to Yogic Meditation (4-week session) begins at the Meredith Centre – The September session went so well, I’m eager to offer a second one!
Those of you who’ve been following my blog for some time may have noticed that brevity is not my forte. Now, imagine the challenge before me, when asked to write a mere 300-350 words for TONE magazine this month! Here is what I came up with:
Introducing Kirtan with SOULHUM
This is a story about a group of friends, meeting every month to sing yoga mantras and to catch up on life. This kind of gathering is called kirtan. Finding a kirtan community is a bit like finding a new family.
I found my kirtan family in 2015, during yoga teacher training at Wishingtree Yoga in Kanata. Every month since then, we’ve met to sing mantras and to play along with our instruments. Usually, one person leads a song, singing one phrase at a time, and the others echo the same words and melody back. It’s a beautiful give-and-take, a weaving together, a co-creation. The mantras themselves are songs to the Divine, a channel through which we explore our relationship to the Divine and our own Divine nature.
In 2018, we decided to bring monthly kirtan to Chelsea, QC, where I live; that December, we offered our first kirtan at Vraie Nature Yoga. As all this unfolded, I found my passion for kirtan growing. I wanted to introduce more people to this beautiful form of yoga practice. And so, SOULHUM came to be.
Allow me to introduce our kirtan band, SOULHUM: Scot on cajón/percussion; Cherisse and Liv (my kids) on vocals and percussion; and me, Zofia, on vocals and harmonium. My husband is behind the scenes, offering support, encouragement and inspiration. Our approach is to keep it simple. Yogic mantras are in Sanskrit, but we choose mantras that are shorter and easier to learn. We want you to become familiar with the mantras, to feel them, even to hear them in your mind after you leave! Kirtan can be an experience for the whole family – a time for all ages to connect through music and mantra, and to feel restored and uplifted by this simple, yet powerful practice.
Our next kirtan at Vraie Nature Yoga (3 ch. Versant Sud, Chelsea) is on Saturday, October 26, 4-5 pm. Free, and open to all. For future kirtan dates, find me on Facebook or at sageleafyoga.ca/kirtan.
