Moving to the Music

We all know that there are 101 ways of practising (and teaching) yoga.  Now more than ever yoga is kind of a free-for-all, with something for everyone, from naked yoga in Hawaii to yoga with your dog.  And somewhere in between, there is yoga with music.

Different styles embrace different techniques, and music is no exeption.  An absolute no-no in Iyengar classes, music is becoming a must for the Vinyasa Flow style.  And then, of course, there's the ever-so-exiting new trend of practicing yoga to live music, which you can find more and more (at least, in America) from small classrooms to huge yoga festivals.

Last week the rocking Misanthropic Yogini posted about the challenges as a teacher of making yoga playlists for her classes, here.  A great discussion followed, and the overall synopsis seemed to be fairly neutral: few people expressed strong opinions either way.  The consensus seemed to be that good yoga is good yoga, no matter what the soundtrack.

I use music in my vinyasa classes and while my own practice is mostly without music I do use it to drown out the occasional distracting ambient noise and enjoy it.  For teaching I have about 10 playlists organized by tempo and duration (e.g. "mellow 1.2 hours") that I use in my classes, and every now and then I resuffle them.

Recently though I have been craving new music and sadly have been fairly disappointed by the compilations I've bought. :(  My last 5 albums have been pretty much busts - albums that I'm struggling to find even 1 or 2 songs that I can use in my classes!  This has got me down to no end...

So, if you practice vinyasa and love moving to the music... Any recommendations?