Music for meditation

Gardener

Do any of you choose to meditate to music? Do you have favorite mediation music? Do you like it to be active and challenging, or something that fades into the background?

My favorite for active meditation is Chant: Spirit in Sound, Compiled by Robert Gass, a 2 CD set that has all the words in the booklet so I can chant along with them. (Dan hates it, I save it for when he's on business trips.)

Today Dan did tarot readings at our favorite New Age book and crystal store, and I spent the day sampling their CD collection, building up my listening list for the labor hours.

I rejected Reiki Whale Songs and Ganesh Chants on the grounds that I didn't want anything too mellow or too happy, but when I left Dan in charge of the labor music, he was compiling only Bruce Springstein and Warren Zevon. I thought I needed something a little different...

I got:

Rhythms of the Chakras by Glen Velez (the second chakra track is called Fruits of Labor, how could I resist?)

One Track Heart by Krishna Das, and

The 108 Sacred Names of Mother Divine by Craig Pruess and Ananda

Anybody have these? Anybody like these? Any recommendations?

Imagemaker

The music I use depends on whether I want to bliss out or tune in with total attentive awareness--love the chant CDs of all kinds, especially those by Wah! (yes, that's her name).

For labor, I'd pick a range of something different--relaxing music, music with a strong beat, and music to sing along with for distraction. Depends on what stage you're in.

And maybe music to pant to . . .

Sophie

I love to meditate to kora music from Senegal or Mali - my favourite being the griot Lamine Konté's rythm, percussion & voice CD (it was not made as a meditation CD, but it works for me); I have a drums & pipes tape I sometimes use, by Geo Taylor-Cameron; and much of the classical repertoire contains music I find relaxing & beautiful enough to meditate to without sending me to sleep - particularly among the Impressionists (Debussy, Ravel, Fauré, etc). A particular favourite is Debussy's Prelude A l'Après-Midi d'un Faune, which is delightful, whimsical, entrancing, & doesn't barge into my mind. Also Debussy's Reflets (that's piano music and sounds very liquid and soothing). Guitar music - some of the baroque repertoire - is very good too.

Basically anything with regular rythm and a sound that doesn't intrude but carries.

But fairly often I meditate without music.

Sophie-David

Musical Triads

Hi Gardener

I don't really feel qualified to advise on music for labour

- it was 22 years ago for us and the hospital we were in didn't encourage a couple to bring their own music. However, the question of meditational music in general is an interesting one. As often seems to be the case these days, the right brain seems to have simply guided me in choosing and until now I hadn't analysed it.

There appears to be three main approaches I use, depending on whether the meditation will be in the feminine receptive, the masculine assertive or the holistic third. Thanks to my underlying Capricorn approach to life my choices are well documented from my meditational cycle on the Major Arcana last year. But I know that I make basically the same choices in less organized contexts.

In the feminine group I have Chopin, Enya, Loreena McKennitt, Ravel, and some Tchaikovsky (Violin Concerto in D Major). In the masculine group there are Handel, Holst, Mussorgorsky, Sibelius, Vivaldi, and some other Tchaikovsky (including, believe it or not, the 1812 Overture

). Lastly, the unitive group contains Dvorak, the Christian Celtic fusion band Iona, and the two CD Canto Gregoriano by the Canto de monjes del Monasterio Benedictino de Santo Domingo de Silos (a snappy name for a band, eh?). I now have two CDs of Tibetan Buddhist chant and although I haven't used them for meditation yet, I suspect they will join Dvorak and company in the unitive group.

Although not for meditation per se, but for emotional balancing, there seems to be three specific tools. When I want to raise feminine energy I watch the beautiful opera DVDs of Rusalka by Dvorak (as sung by Renée Fleming - none other comes close), Sophie's very first musical selection, an absolute drenching in poignant emotion as the story follows the ascent of the Beloved into the consciousness of the Prince. For raw masculine energy my favourite is an anthology of the angst driven alternate rock band, Creed (Toto can be useful too, if a bit less edgy). And for lowering emotions, when the ocean has completely flooded the land, any Bach is a wonderful curative, but particularly his Six Sonatas and Partitas for Violin Alone.

Thank you for a stimulating question!

Cheers - David

Webwitch

I'm afraid that I find music very distracting ... so I tend not to use it for meditation.

I do use music when doing things like Reiki, however.

Cheers,
Webwitch

Moonbow

Hi Laura

You didn't like Reiki music! I don't have any whale music, but I have Reiki music by Ajad and it's the one that I come back to time and again after trying others.

I have flute music by Tim Wheater, Indian music, Native American Indian music, Solitudes sleep enducing music, and various others. The one that I come back to time and again is Ajad's Reiki 5 though. It's very repetitive with Tibetan bells sounded at regular intervals. I wake up to this, meditate to it and Reiki people to it.

You may have to buy a few until you get the right one, it's definately an individual taste and one day something will strike you as being just perfect.

Hurry up though!

Edited to add... I agree with Webwitch about it being distracting for meditation - other than this favourite one of mine by Ajad.

Gardener

Moonbow, no, the Whale Song Reiki was lovely, it was just far too soothing and happy for my idea of labor music. Actually, I was trying to be a little humorous there. How can anyone know what would be the right kind of music for someone's first labor? Talk about unique! As Imagemaker recommends, a little of everything for all the changing moods. We're bringing Dan's mega-library of music, stored on his new iPod. You can find the boastful details over in chat on the Music thread YOU started, Moonbow*. I figure that'll be good for when I'm feeling positive about events. For more stressful times, I wanted something that was New Agey, and at the same time, stimulating. Not too quiet, not too loud. As you say, it's hard to know what will strike you...

I will happily try out your favorite reiki music for baby-soothing!

I love all the music that people have been sharing on this thread. Thank you all! I've been thinking about the classical selections preferred by Sophie-David. I love classical for times when I'm working, especially writing essays or reading legal cases. It revs up my left brain. This afternoon, I've been wallowing in Sibelius' Symphony No. 2. I'm not sure I could meditate to classical, although I think I will try out some of your "unitive" picks. What fun! (Renee Fleming is fabuloso, but recently I've been a slave to Lorainne Hunt Lieberson. Funny, though, I think I'm getting something out of the distinctions you make - Lorainne is more of a treat for my masculine side, I suspect, just as Renee speaks to the feminine. Maybe I could explore this idea of "feminine" classical, for more meditative activities. Don't know if you object to my underlying assumption that I'm stimulating left-brain with more masculine music for more intellectual pursuits, whereas meditation I would place over in right-brain. These seem like over-hasty generalizations, especially since I paint to classical music, espeically Rachmaninoff and Dvorak. Hm. Further thought required.)

Helvetica has such eclectic tastes, I suspect it will difficult to track down copies of her favorite World Music picks. But hey, I love a challenge. I also enjoy baroque guitar, one of the few pieces I still play on my harp is a classical spanish guitar sonata transcribed for harp. Love it, love it.

I understand Webwitch's point about music being distracting for silent meditation. But chanting along with a chant CD is a great meditation, don't you agree? Or is it meditation lite, for the beginner? I am very much a beginner when it comes to meditation. And by that I don't mean the whole Zen "beginner's mind" thing, I mean the lack of concentration!

Gardener

PS Imagemaker, do you chant along with Wah!? And do you like her music for blissing out or tuning in. More details, please - inquiring minds want to know!!

Imagemaker

I do sing/chant along with Wah! I attended a chant session/performance of hers at Kripalu. She starts slowly, then drums and other instuments kick in, we rev up to high orgiastic pace, then eventually slow down.

On the CDs, unfortunately, there's only a quickie version of that

-- but her tunes are catchy and stick in my head.

There are alternative aims of meditation: blissing out in a dreamy way, full alert whole-mind concentration, and insight meditation are all different mind-states. With practice, any sound/noise/distraction/sensation can be used for concentration. To transcend the mind and achieve bliss, I need silence.

Labor is completely different (was for me) in the sense that you're right there, either alertly concentrating on sensations or in shutting out sensations. (It's good, if you can, to call them sensations, or moving energy.)

Fierce concentration on breath and counting was what got me through last dilation, transition and pushing, and that success formed the basis of all my meditation work since.

I suspect that by the time you get to the end (and have a BABY), you won't hear or care about music. Body focus will fill your whole mental/physical/psychological environment.

And it will be mindbogglingly profound!

Moonbow

Well, in that case.....

get Dan to download some Incubus... onto his little poddy thing.

Aqueous Transmission in particular, it's on the Morning View album.

you won't regret it!