Importance of Yoga in

Music Education

By

Dr. Manjiree Gokhale

What is Education

• Education is originated from the Latin word ‘Eduatum’, where ‘E’ means from inside and ‘Duco’ means to lead, to bring forth.

• Education is the process or act to explore and awaken the hidden, innate potentials of a man, and to bring out and develop them suitably.

What is Music

• Music means organized sounds

• Music is harmonious sound created by the playing of instruments or use of vocals as a whole or individually

• Music is a direct expression of human emotions designed to manipulate and transform the emotions of the listener and performer

• Music is heard and felt

Music Education

Means - Exploring and Awakening the hidden potentials related to the ability of hearing, perceiving, storing, memorizing and expressing music

Exploration of Creative Abilities

Yoga and its relation with Music Education

• Yoga is a process of harmonizing the Individual Music with the Cosmic Music

• Yoga is the melody and harmony of the unseen inner self and music the melody and harmony of the seen outer self

Traditional Music Education

Included many Yoga Practices

With changing times, the inclusion of Yogic practices in the training of a musician faded away.

Today’s New and Severe Problems

• Speed

• Speedy Technological Changes

• Commercialization

• Heavy musical exchanges of musics of the world

• Extremely difficult for a musician to balance the speeds of learning, teaching and performing

Need for a change - Solution

• In Prevailing Traditional Teaching Methods

• ‘Yoga’ is a solution to all these problems together

• Yoga works on the body, emotions and mind and other musical abilities holistically

MusicYoga

Yoga removes musicians problemsYoga enhances musical abilities

Yoga unfolds Latent Creative and Musical Potentials

Experimental Workshops

• A series of six ‘one month’ workshops

• Total Participants: 73

Parameters

• Listening tests • Breath holding tests

Daily Schedule of the Workshops

Minutes Details 20 Omkar, Prayer, Sankalpa, Kapalabhati, Trataka 20 Naad Dharana 10 Explanation of concerned topic 10 Mudra 15 Pranayam 15 Yoga-Nidra and Sankalpa

Total: 1hr 30 minutes

Listening Tests

• Pitch

• Volume

• Tempo

• Timbre

• Calculated in Marks

• Total maximum marks =140

Breath Holding Test details

Participants were told to take a deep breath and then hold it, by closing the nose. The time span was then noted in seconds till the participant would leave the grip on the nose for breathing

Classification

All the observations were classified by two types:

• According to the timings of the Workshops: Morning, Afternoon and Evening.

• According to the musical background of the participants: Musical and Non-Musical.

Sample Observations and Results

• 48 out of 73 participants scored a noticeable % difference of more than 5 % in the listening tests

• That means 65.75% of participants developed a noticeable hearing capacity difference.

•Participants already in the field of Music benefited more than those who were not related to music between 5% to 10% difference and difference above 20%.

•Between 10% to 20% of difference level the non musical participants benefited.

•Overall 14 out of 22 i.e. 63.64% of music related participants developed a noticeable difference in hearing capacity.

•Overall 34 out of 51 i.e. 66.67% of participants not related to music developed a noticeable difference in hearing capacity.

•51 out of 63 i.e. 80.95% of participants’ breath holding capacity noticeably increased.

Conclusion

Traditional Methods + Yoga

=Excellent Music Education

Thank You

All my Music and Yoga teachers, participants and colleagues

Music is the ‘Yoga’, of merging ‘Science’ and ‘Art’

And Yoga is the Music of the ‘Whole’ in a ‘Part’

Train yourself with ‘Yoga’, add insight to your ‘Song’

‘Aahat’ will soon strike the inner ‘Anahat’ ‘Gong’

GOD BLESS YOU ALL

Hari Om Tat Sat