“Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.”
– Elon Musk –
The Swara Imagined concept, this idea of originally crafted music that has been synchronised in time to yoga sequences and poses, had been playing on my mind for a couple of years now. And when I reflect on the start of the journey to its eventual realization (www.swara.yoga went live on 10.10.20), I now know what true persistence is, and how easily one can be distracted from their vision. But persistence, persistence is everything.
The idea for Swara Imagined initially came to my mind while living in Toronto, Canada. I spent a few years as a Researcher in this beautiful city and in my free time was active in the worlds of music (https://paintersofthejunglesky.com) and yoga. Checking out the various styles of yoga the city had to offer, I started to see a discrepancy between my expectation on what I thought a “Yoga with music” class should look like in my imagination – a beautiful choreography between yoga and music – and what it typically tended to be: a Spotify playlist of popular or sometimes slightly esoteric music played to a class. Both of which rarely had any connection to each other. I made great friends in Toronto’s music and yoga worlds and started working on first ideas for yoga-music choreography. And then – boom – I got a job offer in my home country of Germany and moved away from friends, collaborators, colleagues.
So here I was, new job, new city, no collaborators… Finding the right partners to work with was an important consideration – I wanted to make sure they believed in the concept I had initially laid out, as I knew this would show in their work on the Swara Imagined videos, website and musical performances. It did not take long before I found the right people in Munich who understood and believed in the Swara Imagined idea. You can read a bit about the collaborators I work with here https://swara.yoga/team-partners/
Creating music for yoga is very different to creating music that you hope will be heard by the masses. There are a million things to consider when writing music to a yoga sequence – from synchronizing the beat and melodies with movement and breath, to making sure that even without the yoga, it is still a valid piece of music that is appreciated. There will be many more posts to follow about the art of creating popular music to yoga sequences and vice versa!
The first video I created was ‘Inside Song’ which is now available at https://swara.yoga/inside-song/ What an experience and learning curve this was! I’m so proud of the outcome, and I know anyone who purchases it will have a great yoga/music experience, but it was a long process. From finding the right yoga instructors to feature in the video, to the fine tuning of the soundtrack and editing with the filmmaker I worked with: http://www.magallfilms.de, to finding the right music production studio: https://www.silver-stage.de. The whole experience was invaluable and one I will never forget. We had nothing but a pandemic in our way, but it could not stop us!
Overall, I’m thrilled with the outcome – www.swara.yoga is everything I hoped it would be in the beginning. But I’m not finished yet. There are more videos in the pipeline which will be released and available on a regular monthly basis. And there is the much anticipated German version of the website that should be coming sooner rather than later. My vision is to open Swara Imagined Yoga up to more countries and more people. Stay tuned, and stay tuned in.
Uli
