susanrichardsonyoga

“Before you speak ask yourself: Is it kind, is it necessary, it is true, does it improve upon the silence?…”

This page is an opportunity for me to explore the broader context of yoga and how it relates to life itself, for yoga is life! Yoga is relationship- our relationship to ourselves, to others, and to nature; it is our inherent interconnectedness to the whole universe which we can never be separate from. This page also allows me to share my passion for yoga and music, and the interface between them. For me, music is a spiritual experience- the goal not being the perfect performance, but to be absolutely present, in the moment, surrendering to the music. As Krishnamurti says, “Find out what it is to live totally now. Now is life is- not there or behind”. And yoga has been the most wonderful support to know my body, my breath and awareness and to ride that wave of the present moment…

…so wonderful to do it with Rachmaninoff…

Pondering # 1   BACH and YOGA         -November 2010

I was pondering the other day how standing poses are like Bach. That is Johann Sebastian Bach, the grandfather of western classical music as we know it. So, how is yoga like Bach? There is an interview with Helene Grimaud, wonderful concert pianist and true yogini, which has deeply inspired me. In the interview she speaks of the clarity and purity of Bach’s music.  Helene says:

“His music is the bible…there is no other way than the truth. This feeling is so strong of something that is so totally authentic, and honest and direct and goes absolutely to the core, the very essence of the human soul…”

(with helene at her concert here at koerner hall)

I feel that when practicing yoga, one connects in the same way with a clear, direct harmony of being. In his music Bach found perfect expression of nature without romantic pondering and emotions, and similarly the practice of asana is an expression of your clear, balanced. aligned state of being- being in the moment with everything just as it is, or as Toni Packer would say- pure being with nothing added…. emotional knots released, postural habits melting away, mental preoccupations no longer consuming one’s awareness.

“Bach should be the daily bread… he should be part of one’s daily life. I think at the end the only way to pay respect to Bachs’ genius is to confront his music. This is the only way that it comes to life again. It is like a sacred text; it lives anew with each interpretation.”

What is so amazing about playing Bachs’ music is the style of writing in which he composes. He is the master of counterpoint- the weaving of different melodies which are played simultaneously. Imagine a choir of four voices each singing a clear melody, and together creating a rich harmonic texture through the interplay of the voices. A “fugue” does this same thing and yet the pianist plays all the voices herself and, with sensitivity and care, has the intention to bring out all the different entries of the main melody, or subject.

What is so great is the effect on the mind and the body…the expansive awareness of listening simultaneously to the different voices, the clear upright posture that the music encourages (except for Glenn Gould!), the purity of the energy of the music itself. And, just as one must confront the music, in yoga and in life we confront and listen to all that is here in each moment. Michael Stone said in a recent teaching that we practice to “sit with the turbulence…to recognize our insanity”.  Practice then is not an escape or an abstract philosophy but something lived, tested, interpreted afresh each and every day.

At the moment I am working on a four voice fugue by Bach in f minor. I like to think of the similarity between listening to the four different voices of the fugue, to practicing standing poses and listening to the sensations in my left foot, right foot, left hand and right hand. If one then allows those sensations to become a voice, a dialogue of communication through your being, this is so much like the experience of a fugue- hearing each voice individually and also simultaneously experiencing the totality of the piece….letting all those voices intertwine…and then letting that music just be music… the harmony of life itself.

Helene says: “For sure one can say that Bach is the most universal of all composers. In the sense of in the etymological root of the word that it is unique and yet pours in all directions.” Is this not just how we are? unique and yet pouring in all directions….not at all separate from the flow of life itself? Just as in playing Bach that we tap into this honest, harmonious expression of nature, can our asana help us to find the union between right and left, above and below, inside and outside, self and other to find our authentic personal link to the universe?

To see Helene’s interview of her thoughts about Bach, go to this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6Mfszm9QRc

Here is an excerpt from the two voice fugue from Bach’s Partita No 2 in C Minor:

If you would like to watch a mind blowing performance of Helene playing Bach, go to this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BOB1NY38AA

Pondering #2      BEETHOVEN and BUDDHISM     -January 2011

How could Beethoven and Buddha have anything in common? I hadn’t thought about it until one day  I was reading  a book, “Buddhism Without Beliefs”.  As the author Stephen Bachelor discusses the Four Noble Truths, he explains how important it is to approach Buddha’s discovery of the truth experientially. Rather than the Noble Truths being dogmatic statements- Life is Suffering, The Cause of Suffering is Grasping…ect, he suggests that the Noble truths need to be approached through living them…. understanding anguish, letting go of its origins, realizing its cessation and cultivating the path. In his thoughtful and eloquent exploration of  anguish, he makes reference to the late Beethoven sonatas.

Stephen says:

“Great works of art in all cultures succeed in capturing within the constraints of their form both the pathos of anguish and a vision of it’s resolution. Take for example the languorous sentences of Proust or the haiku of Basho,  or the late quartets and sonatas of Beethoven…Such works achieve their resolution not through consoling or romantic images whereby anguish is transcended. They accept anguish without being overwhelmed by it. They reveal anguish as that which gives beauty it’s dignity and depth.”

I have been working on one of Beethoven’s late sonatas, number 31 out of the 32 that he wrote, known as Opus 110. As I work on it, I question this fundamental issue- do we transcend anguish or do we allow anguish to be there without it deluding us, without caving into it’s slippery, suffocating arms.

Here is the wonderful and thoughtful first movement of Beethoven’s Sonata in A flat Major Op 110…

Beethoven was no stranger to anguish. He began to go deaf in his mid twenties and the torment of it brought him to the verge of suicide. He wrote a letter to his brothers speaking of his despair:

“But what a humiliation for me when someone standing next to me heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone standing next to me heard a shepherd singing and again I heard nothing. Such incidents drove me almost to despair; a little more of that and I would have ended my life. It was only my art that held me back. Oh, it seemed to me impossible to leave the world until I had forth all that I felt was within me.”

I find it unbelievable that Beethoven was able to compose the most innovative and sublime music while completely deaf. He possessed an unfailing spirit in the face of difficulty, and had an incredible triumph of will. He had the vision and idealism of a true artist who was continually breaking into new territory, transforming every genre that he touched. He expanded the sonata, the symphony, and the string quartet and in Beethoven’s later years his music became more abstract and meditative stepping beyond anything heard at the time.

here is the second movement, the bold scherzo & playful trio:

Did he realize that his music expressed this quality of accepting and being with anguish? When playing the Opus 110 sonata, there are sections that are so honest, so lingering, poignantly expressing this feeling of sorrow. And yet, I think Stephen is right in that we don’t feel overwhelmed. This is experienced most clearly in the slow section, named “Arioso Dolente”. Beethoven has named the movement “dolente” meaning sorrowful, and I feel there are few pieces that can truly capture the the depths of what he expresses.

It is worth noting that Beethoven wrote this within the last five years of his life, and was completely deaf, and had been for probably around 10 years! In Maynard Solomon’s book, he says something so interesting…that rather than being a curse, Beethoven’s deafness may have contributed to his creativity. He writes:

“There may be a sense in which deafness played a positive role in his creativity, for we know that deafness did not impair and indeed may have even heightened his abilities as a composer…perhaps by permitting a total concentration upon composition within a world of increasing auditory seclusion. In his deaf world, Beethoven could experiment with new forms of experience, free from the intrusive sounds of the external environment; free from the rigidities of the material world; free, like the dreamer, to combine and recombine the stuff of reality, in accordance with his desires, into previously undreamed-of forms and structures.”

here is the third movement, the meditative adagio and the sorrowful arioso dolente:

After the “Arioso Dolente”, Beethoven writes a fugue, one of the innovative aspects of his compositional style. I almost feel Beethoven expresses the “Five Stages of Grief” according to the Kubler-Ross model…cycling through an expression in the first movement of the beauty of life, then turmoil and anger in the scherzo and trio, desolation in the arioso dolente…and then the fugue. It is like the fugue is a turning point towards acceptance…it is complicated, it begins the journey back to life.

here is the fugue:

And yet, after the first fugue, Beethoven returns to a variation of the pensive slow Arioso Dolente! Again, is his creative way this breaks from the traditional forms of the time, and  has a powerful effect . It allows for another moment of grieving, reflection, of patience…and an enduring quality. From here the sonata gradually climbs out into even more light.

here is the return of the arioso:

In the final section of the piece, Beethoven brilliantly inverts the fugue, like a mad improvisation and then ends the piece in the most beautiful, exaltant and dramatic way. Different pianists and writers have commented eloquently about this part of the sonata:

Matthews writes that it is not fanciful to see the final movement’s second fugue as a “gathering of confidence after illness or despair”, a theme which can be discerned in other late works by Beethoven.

Rosen states that this movement is the first time in the history of music where the academic devices of counterpoint and fugue are integral to a composition’s drama, and observes that Beethoven in this work does not “simply represent the return to life, but persuades us physically of the process.”

The last observation is key- there is a physical, all encompassing experience of the return to life. Stephen Bachelor points out:

“In yearning for anguish to be assuaged…we reinforce what creates anguish in the first place: the craving for life to be other than it is…Dharma practice starts not with belief in a transcendent reality, but through embracing the anguish experienced in an uncertain world.”

There is the feeling here in this last section of the sun shining through the clouds…the music totally celebrating LIFE AS IT IS. Whether Beethoven himself embraced duhkha, we don’t know, but he certainly had the intention to… In his book, Maynard Solomon refers extensively to Beethoven’s acquiescence to deafness. Rather than caving into despair and committing suicide, Beethoven resolves to continue living. In the “Heiligenstadt Testament”, Beethoven writes, “Patience, they say, is what I must choose now for my guide, and I have done so.“

here is the final culmination of the sonata:

The yoga of it all is to be with what is; that conflict comes when we try to get rid of the undesirable parts of ourselves- the feistiness, the ugliness, the anguish. Just let it be there. Yoga isn’t about the ideal- the future projection- yoga is this moment now. Yoga is what is, and being with what is. If it is anguish, then being with the anguish….if it is the resolution of anguish, then being in that luminosity, that moment of release. And the key is, that when we are able to relax and to be with what is, our experience of whatever is happening shifts, as we are no longer caught up in our reactivity to things…it’s our emotional reactivity that creates the suffering.

This piece is continually teaching me. I, too, have had to find an unfailing spirit and triumph of will to learn the 20 pages of it, and as I attempt to memorize and perform it I find I am constantly finding more compassion and patience with myself. This video is not perfect!  Life is not perfect!!

This piece fell into my life when my mother had a stroke and was put into hospital bed 110-1, and I knew it was a sign. It had also been one of my late piano teachers favorite sonatas, which sadly I will never be able to share with her. And how fitting that both these woman, my mother, Nancy, and Marian Grudeff are two of the most inspirational people I know, that whatever anguish they have experienced in their lives has, too, given them beauty, dignity and depth.

Pondering # 3       TRIBUTE TO OUR GREAT TEACHERS     – Nov 4 2010

I don’t have much time to write or be eloquent…but i just want to acknowledge the best teacher I have ever had- Marian Grudeff.  Since her passing exactly 4 years ago today, I have missed her so much and she will always be in my heart inspiring every note I play. This is for you Marian…

the piece isn’t complete…will post the whole movement when i have a chance. btw, it’s beethoven’s op 110 sonata.

Pondering # 4        SUSAN GRIESDALE’S “PIANO POEMS”

For all piano students, teachers, and yogis who love music- here are some wonderful pieces by Canadian composer, Susan Griesdale. I studied piano with Susan for years and was honored when she asked me to record this collection.

These pieces are so thoughtful and within the reach of students at the grade 5-8 level…or anyone who enjoys them! They fit beautifully in the hands and resonate close to the heart…As Susan has quoted at the beginning of the collection:

“Music is the literature of the heart; it commenced where speech ends.”                    -Alphonse de Lamartine