The guided instructions for the yoga sequences in the program “Cloud Nine” are sung by a professional singer. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first yoga video EVER, in which yoga is instructed not in the form of spoken words, but rather in the form of chanting! In this article, we would like to share with you the background of how this idea came about and how we implemented it.
For our first two yoga music programs, “Inside Song” and “Carried by Breeze,” we recorded the yoga instructions professionally in a recording studio following the video recording. During the recording of the instructions for our first yoga music program “Inside Song”, course leader Uli intuitively experimented with recording the instructions rhythmically and melodically, matching the music. Many songs in “Inside Song” and in “Carried by Breeze” already contain vocals that have very little or nothing to do with the yoga exercises on the mat. The end result was that the vocals in the songs competed with Uli’s melodically recorded instructions. It quickly became “too much of a good thing,” as they say! So in the first videos, Uli went back to speaking the instructions in a classical way. Nevertheless, at that moment an idea was born: why not sing the instructions??? This eureka moment did not let us go. A search on the internet to see if a similar concept of yoga with chanted instructions already existed yielded no results. This only made it more tempting to create something completely new and pioneer a completely unexplored space!
As often, however, the devil was in the details. Implementation turned out to be more difficult than anticipated. One challenge was to get the instructions across clearly and understandably on the one hand, but on the other hand still create beautiful music, which is easy to listen to. In the end, during the creative process, we found a great compromise between clear, easy-to-understand instructions and lyrical texts.
The mission of Swara Imagined is to explore the creative space at the interface between music and yoga, to try new things, to take a risk sometimes. We are very happy with the final result “Cloud Nine” and believe that the sung instructions will create an even more joyful, complete yoga experience to the appropriate music. We love to hear from you how you experience the practice to the sung instructions – feel free to share your experiences with us!
