This is a collection of two double
audio CDs.  Yoga Chant is largely by Shiva Rea, and features two
programs.  On the first CD is an "Engergizing Sadhana" lasting 67
minutes.  This has a fairly standard yoga flow, with sun salutations, standing
poses, backbends and relaxation.  The flow requires a fair amount of
flexibility, and some of the backbends are especially demanding, also requiring
a great deal of upper body strength.  I rather prefer the flows in Shiva Rea’s
Yoga Sanctuary audio CD.  There is an accompanying booklet, which illustrates
some but not all of the poses in the flow; furthermore, some of the sequences
of poses in the booklet are different from those on the CD, which can be
confusing.

The second CD of the set is titled
"Meditative Sadhana."  It lasts 63 minutes, and is much slower.  The
first twenty-five minutes is a fairly simple set of flows followed by fifteen
minutes of lunar yoga.  These are not illustrated in the booklet, and Rea’s
instructions are not always very clear.  Often, trying to follow it, I wasn’t
clear which side she was referring to, or quite what position she was
describing.  When a program is meant to be relaxing, it can be
counterproductive to leave the listener unsure if she or he is following the
instructions as they are designed.  The accompanying background music was also
not quite right: some of the mellow funk sound seemed to be more appropriate to
some kind of erotic exercise, for example.  Other parts of the music reminded
me of bad new age/jazz music from the 1980s.  On the whole I found Yoga
Chant disappointing. 

The other part of the package in The
Heart of Yoga is the double CD Yoga Trance Dance.  The first CD has
8 tracks and lasts 69 minutes.  The yoga here is much looser than on most other
Shiva Rea DVDs and CDs: one is not asked to follow her lead as she does it, but
rather to be more independent.  It starts with a meditative track, and then
gets the body moving more.  The second gets the spine to undulate.  I found
some of her instructions puzzling: for example, when she says, "contract
your back into the self like a baby fern curling into its creative power,"
my whole flow gets interrupted because I have to stop and work out if that
makes any sense at all.  I’m still not sure it does.  At another point she says 
"toss the hips back and then shift forward."  That leaves it very
unclear how far to go forward, and whether you back should be stationary or
moving with your hips.  There are some photographs in the accompanying CD
booklet, but they are not very instructive since they do not show the
movement.  Of course, one can improvise and do what feels good, but if the CD
does not give clear instructions, then it isn’t clear what point there is in
playing it in the first place. 

The CD moves onto the trance dance
phase.  This may take some people further from their areas of comfort.  It is
one thing to dance to your favorite songs but it is another to dance along to a
yoga CD.  You can at least be fairly sure that you’ll do some laughing, when
Rea says "letting your knees get funky," or when your nearest and
dearest catch you doing this.  Some people will be more accustomed to rotating
their pelvises than others, and while Rea suggests sensual movements, some of
us will be lucky to get any fluid movements at all.  So when Rea explains that
the next stage is "ecstatic dance," I wonder whether I’m the only one
who is not in ecstasy when doing this.  I picture my colleagues from work doing
this, and I suspect that not that many would really find it a great release. 
Which leaves me wondering who this CD is for, and beginning to suspect it is
not for me. 

I’m all in favor of a good time,
but this combination of yoga and dance strikes me as a little bogus.  In the
booklet, in the Introduction, there is a quotation from, of all people,
Friedrich Nietzsche.  "And we considered every day lost on which we have
not danced at least once."  Now, he may have said that, but I’ve not read
any accounts of Nietzsche’s dancing, and the rather formal dancing of the
Victorian era seems a long way from the dance nirvana that Rea seems to
celebrate.  On the CD, in the section on Prana Yoga, Rea quotes a poem by TS
Eliot, providing another bizarre cultural reference that does not sit well with
a yoga worldview.  Of course, both Nietzsche and Eliot might have been much
happier men if they had done more sun salutations and hip openers, but it is
hard to imagine that they would have sustained their bleak intellectual visions
if they had found the peace and self-acceptance that is part of the practice of
yoga and meditation.  In quoting them, it seems Rea in undermining the
assumption that trance dance has any integrity as a yoga practice. 

This raises the question, what is
the aim of trance dance?  What is chanting meant to achieve?  There’s very
little indication here, apart from Rea’s occasional suggestive phrases.  One
can imagine that dancing and chanting help one get less away from one’s intellectual
self-consciousness and more in tune with one’s body and being as a natural
entity.  However, Rea does not really help her listeners much on this point. 
So you would be better off just finding a book or CD on meditation and dance
yoga that provides a straightforward explanation.  Then with that knowledge,
you could then find some music that suits you as an accompaniment to
meditation, chanting, or dance. 

In fact, in my opinion, the best
aspect of this Trance Dance CD is not Rea’s words but the music by
Geoffrey Gordon and Ben Leinbach.  The second CD of the package contains 69
minutes of it, and it is quite pleasing, at least for those who are open to the
genre.  The production quality is high, and the sounds are unusual and
distinctive.  It is often danceable and yet ethereal.  Personally, I find it a
little hokey at points, with inclusion of noises of the forest, panting noises,
and mystic-sounding song titles, but it is pleasant enough. 

So I reluctantly conclude that this
is one of the weaker Shiva Rea products available through Sounds True.  Yet it
might be a popular one: many town centers and malls now have stores selling
incense, crystals, and new age paraphernalia.  This audio CD package is the
kind of product I see at these stores.  I occasionally walk in and browse
around, but I don’t stay long because I can’t see anything that I’d actually
want.  I leave feeling like I’ve just been in some Disneyworld version of yoga
and meditation practices.

Links:

·       
Review
of Yoga Sanctuary CD

·       
Sounds True

·       
Shiva Rea website

© 2006 Christian Perring. All
rights reserved.

Christian Perring, Ph.D., is Chair
of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College, Long Island, and editor of Metapsychology
Online Review.  His main research is on philosophical issues in
medicine, psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: AudioBooks, General