This week has been unsettling for many of us – I said a few times that it felt like March 2020, and we’re at on the edge of a precipice, not really sure what’s going to happen next.
For me, regular yoga practice gives me a routine or a pattern to manage periods of stress. Coming to the mat is familiar, and gives me an anchor no matter what’s happened that day.
You could actually say that music does the same thing: as much as we might hate practicing, the repetition of playing the same few measures of a piece on my viola is centering, maybe even a little meditative.
I wrote a flow that uses a lot of floor work and stability, focused on rooting and alignment to help feel more grounded in spite of the rapid changes and uncertainty of the last few days. Somehow, I ended up picking a bunch of music with pronounced, heavy, or slightly pulling back bass lines to try to add some weight without too much drive.
“No Roots” is maybe the opposite of what I was going for lyrically, but it’s such a great song, so I threw it at the start of the playlist, so maybe we could grow some roots by the end. And the last song (“Zero”/Lamb) is one of my favorites with its rhythmic cello accompaniment – let me know what you think!
Laura Kuechenmeister 