VoF 005: Laraaji

A window into the spiritual life of one of ambient music’s most transcendent creators.

When I speak to Laraaji, it is a still gray Sunday morning in November. Over Zoom, he informs me that his Harlem apartment is being renovated – every so often I can hear drilling and knocking thud behind him – and yet his spirits seem high. He smiles and sips water, undisturbed, somewhat cheerful. “What I'm really working on right now is living through an electrical upgrade of my apartment so things are quite topsy turvy,” he tells me, expanding: “I’m feeling like I'm living in a room of my neighbors and I feel connected to the sense of migration, immigration, what migrants are going through around the planet. You know, where you don't know where your toothbrush is one day or where your pair of shoes are going. But in the sense of migration, my spiritual hunch is that more and more of us on the planet are going to find ourselves in a sense…migrating.”

Without so much as referring to COVID-19 outright, Laraaji alludes to the pandemic several times throughout our hour long conversation, dubbing it “the funny farm.” And while his current migration to a makeshift office may be tied to an overdue renovation of his building’s faulty wiring, his overarching idea of a spiritual migration – a forced abandonment of what once was familiar – feels all too relatable. Certain corners of the media have deemed this sentiment as “the vibe shift” – or the phenomenon of the zeitgeist changing quicker than you can keep up, in the process creating a feeling of listlessness while drifting through impermanence. Yet this spiritual migration might be better thought of as an awareness of a terminal unrest and the collective burden of grief; the way a house feels different after a traumatic incident occurs – imperceptible to the eye and yet wholly felt. As the natural world recedes and recoils, as people lose their homes and their bodies, as time marches on most unceremoniously before there is even time to mourn the dead, this felt migration seems to beg us to change how we are currently indexing and experiencing our limited time; to change our daily practices and to shift our ontological perspective.

Speaking with Laraaji that early November morning, it’s immediately clear how rich and layered his own spiritual perspective is and how deeply interconnected that perspective is with his artistic craft. Born Edward Larry Gordon in Philadelphia in 1943, Laraaji entered music at an extremely early age – with most reports claiming him to have begun learning the violin at the tender age of four. And while music is Laraaji’s medium – a fluid and fluent love language – it is his unique comprehension and reflection of his spiritual beliefs that makes his artistry so singular. In Laraaji’s nearly mythological telling of the story, the former standup comedian was “discovered” during a chance 1978 encounter with ambient icon Brian Eno – wherein the British “non-musician” stumbled upon Laraaji busking, eyes-closed, in Washington Square Park, and quickly went on to produce his groundbreaking release Ambient 3: Day of Radiance as part of Eno’s Ambient series. This exposure led Laraaji to breakthrough as a cultural figure, into the vibrant downtown New York scene that bore countless art movements and even more lore and, simultaneously, onto a global stage as part of the emergent alternative and New Age movement of the 70s and early 80s whose members varied widely from the religious to the psychedelic, the futurist to the transhumanist. 

Whether looking toward his heavenly zitherscapes or his later Laughter Meditation Workshops, it becomes clear that Laraaji’s approach to music is inherently spiritual and in turn, his spirituality is inherently musical. That Sunday morning, over lemon water and coffee, I talked with the metaphysical seeker and multi-instrumentalist about his earliest visions and favorite texts, how he first got his orange robes, and the profound impact of a life centered in meditation. 

Here is Laraaji, in his own words:

Deep Trance Meditation

“Today, on awakening I did some yoga stretches, breathing, checked the time, and touched in with the transcendental field – could be a thought, could be a breath, could be silence. This is called an abstract presence, the field: remembering that which is larger than New York City, larger than the Earth. In other words, not to be just in Harlem, not to be just in New York City, not to be just on the earth, but to feel the presence of an ongoing eternal cosmic field. Due to a life of meditation, it's easy to drop into that zone if I'm not there – by just a thought or a breath.

For a period in the 70s and 80s, I would practice deep trance meditation, sitting for long hours – from midnight to five in the morning – in an easy chair. I would enter that zone by deep breathing – seven rounds of inhalation and exhalation – to relax the nervous system. I would also practice mentally stripping off all titles, classifications, and names that are being used or have ever been used. In other words, I would come to a place where ‘I am’ is my only identity. I am not a New Yorker, I am not a musician, I am not an Earth Being. In other words, I would strip away every title that is attached to ‘I am.’ Sometimes it would take five or ten minutes. And then I would sit with what's left: this timeless, eternal field. I must state that during that time, I was practicing and studying Mind Science on metaphysics, which is about affirmations: positive affirmations and denials. I was also exploring Tai chi and dancing a lot – I did a lot of barefoot dancing, so the play zone was there. I did a lot of improvisation with music and other musicians. Doing music is a spiritual path because things come up inside the memory – the emotional memory – that just don't come up when music is not there.

T'ai chi ch'üan

Another spiritual practice that contributes a lot to my flow is experimenting with T'ai chi ch'üan. It's something like the maximum or the ultimate. But in my exploration of T'ai chi ch'üan, the focal points are keeping the breath moving and doing circular movements, and bringing your awareness as much as possible down into the dantian, below the belly button, the navel. And being that I had practiced acting techniques quite a bit in my comedic and acting career, I took it as an acting challenge – how to temporarily not operate my body from here but operate it from down below the belly button, which was kind of comical but also revolutionary. What I discovered is that the rest ‘of this’ goes soft, the brain stops functioning as a ‘linear information-gathering tool.’ The body above becomes like a dummy. And I practice being here and initiating commands to the body to move. And what happens is that I start getting the sense of the qi field – which is everywhere you can be present – but it becomes thicker in my imagination. And as I'm doing this, I'm developing this expanded ability to just target and identify the qi field and to move with it. And I took this exercise and used it before performances and recording to get my body out of the head energy and into this rapport with the field and so the performance is actually a dance or a conscious movement within the field. From T'ai chi ch'üan to meditation and sitting in a chair, taking titles off, relaxing the breath. 

The Unstruck Sound

In 1974, in the midst of my very deep, persistent meditation, I attracted an internal sound hearing experience. The best way I can describe it is that all of a sudden, I was aware of this infinite brass orchestra weaving this timeless, glorious, emotional, melodic, harmonic pad. And simultaneously to being aware of the music, I was aware of an inside eternalness and awareness inside a unified field; that everything was now a oneness – the nowness, the oneness, and the oneness of nowness. So listening to this music or receiving it as music activated this memory of the field: eternalness, the oneness. And listening to the music, my analytical side thought, ‘How is this happening?’ Nobody in the house was playing music at this hour of the day and they wouldn't be playing this kind of music. I couldn't write it down. After ten minutes, I was left with this feeling of ‘Wow, whatever that was, that's what I'd like to do on this side of the bio-veil. I'd like my music to trigger a memory of eternalness, of a unified field.’ 

A few days after that mystical hearing experience, I went to Lincoln Center Music Library to research and look for anything that could point to the experience that I had had. I came across the Hindu tradition – the yoga tradition – of something called Nadam, which is recognized as the inner sound current. Yogis respect this sound as the sound and vibration of the field and that it is nonlinear. It's called the ‘unstruck sound’ or the inaudible sound, that which we don't hear with our physical ears. All of this resonated with me. Later on, a teacher told me that we don't hear it with the ears but we sense it through the cerebral cortex as a vibration and that depending on what we are doing in our life at the time, it'll translate to us in a way that we can receive it. In my case, it translated as a brass orchestra. During further research, I discovered that Nadam is recognized through ten different experiences: either in the buzzing of bees, crickets, seashells, sea surf, conch shells, a choir of stringed instruments, or a choir of brass instruments, which is what I heard. Yogis use this sound to focus or to free the mind of outer distractions: to distract the mind from running linear thought and running your linear personality, and to allow your mind to grasp the universalness of the now. Yogis use this as a meditation object because it's always present and it's everywhere. In some cases, I think it's being misunderstood and being called a medical emergency for some people, like tinnitus, because the sound is so present that it competes with our focus. For some people, it comes so loud that they can't ignore it and it can become a nuisance if they don't have an understanding of how to accept it as a gift, as a guide, as a tool, as a kind of music that can serve the seeker in a way that outer music cannot. Outer music can point to the inner sound by distracting the mind long enough.

In the Tibetan tradition, there's something called the clanging of the cymbals. Loud, raucous sounds meant to wake the monks up or to distract them from their wandering mind and bring to them back to the center. This sound is perceived by being very still. After learning how to recognize it, I can hear it sometimes even in the midst of traffic, a ringing sound. And sometimes it feels like a most sensual, blissful brain massage and I welcome it. That focused me on wanting to emulate that experience. After doing my research, about a month or so after that, I kind of put out a nonverbal Mind Science affirmation, of ‘Wow, what can I do with that experience? I mean, it's there in the ethers. What can I do here?’

The Clearing

At one point during my early meditations, I noticed the difficulty of sitting still and I thought, ‘This is never going to work for me.’ On the scientific challenge of one meditation book, Richard Hittleman's book Guide to Yoga Meditation, I decided to learn how to sit in a chair quietly and stare at some point, maybe a dot on the wall, relax the breath and sit still for 21 minutes without fidgeting or thinking. That was the most comical challenge because I'm saying, ‘I'm going to sit here and I'm not going to think,’ and there I am thinking, ‘Well, I'm gonna stop doing that, I'm gonna stop thinking about thinking,’ and then there, I know I am thinking again. Somewhere – maybe after five minutes – things start to happen. The mind starts to say, ‘hey, what's going on here?’ And the mind starts to give way and I get to a place where the mind is not running linear thought and it is the most sweet place. I call it the clearing and the emptiness. When the mind is not running linear thought, it's in the best place to recognize meditation, eternal meditation, stillness. And I knew I was onto something because I grew up in the Baptist Christian faith, so I was familiar with a lot of Bible teachings and Jesus teachings which, as a young boy, I didn't quite understand. But in a state of deep, quiet mind meditation, it all came rushing into me as if making sense – ‘The kingdom is close at hand,’ ‘I and the father are one,’ ‘Be still and know’ – all of these mystical sayings became clear. 

A Life Centered In Meditation

This was all so impactful on my music and my outlook that I made the commitment to make meditation the center of my life. The sort of life that's centered in meditation unfolds much differently than a life that is not centered in meditation. I've noticed in my response to news, world situations, my own things going on in my own environment – a different spin, a different response to the idea of death and dying, a different response to birth dates. They're fun but I know like the unstruck sound that I have no ending or beginning. And I was not in a bubble during that time, I was attending meditation gatherings around the city of New York. There were people with whom I could talk or chit chat on this subject matter and it was quite natural. There were certain circles I would attempt to engage with who didn’t respond to it; I was so excited about the progress of my meditation I would talk like I'm talking with you and yet it didn't seem to really make a difference to them. I was talking about something that was interesting but it wasn't really touching them. I found that through music I could touch even these people definitively because I had touched people beyond the thinking mind – not talking linearly or intellectually about it but coaxing the listener into an immersive state where they were suddenly aware of themselves, feeling timeless, feeling bliss, feeling connectedness to the all.

Meditation prepares one to tune into and to hear subtle guidance. It takes that subtle guidance seriously as an asset instead of brushing it off. It prepares me as an improvisational artist to trust the flow, to dive in and flow. At some point, the guidance isn't about ‘do this.’ Sometimes the guidance is simultaneous with me being in the flow, being in the cascade, being in the river, going towards a guidance that isn't outside. It's the guidance that's here. It is almost like a tandem parachute jump, where we're in it together. And meditation allowed me to trust this tandem guidance and also to hear new ideas. Meditation prepared me to hear and to recognize that I'm being fed new ideas, creative ideas. Some call it your hunch or your intuition – to hear and to respond to the intuitive side of self.

Julia Cameron wrote a series of books called Morning Pages, which was a meditation exercise for artists or anyone where in the morning, you take a pencil and pad and you just write without thinking, writing faster than you can think which you can probably understand is difficult for some people, because they want to think, ‘Well, I want this to make sense. I want to see what I'm writing.’ But write faster than you can think, don't be concerned about grammatical errors – one, two, or three pages – and then read back what happens. What I learned – which is something that corresponds to meditation – is that there is a higher intelligence in you, in me, that's continuously sending out a broadcast of information and guidance. It's on another frequency than our world mentality. Meditation prepared me to be in the flow of a higher guidance, a higher influence, a higher information flow – a loving one, too. I mean, I could be sitting, say, depressed and downtrodden, in a dimly lit room somewhere and then I remember, ‘Hey, let me go into my meditative zone and connect with this voice.’ Sometimes I'll do the writing and the writing would say something like, ‘get up, go out and walk in Central Park,’ or ‘do something fun today.’ It's like, this motherly loving voice didn't come in with this technical information, like ‘You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God.’ It's more like, ‘You've got a lot of gifts and talents. Let's get up and use them. Take one of your dreams up off the shelf.’ Or, ‘You're not spending enough time diving into meditation and improvisation. Stop trying to think about it.’ Meditation prepared me to hear, to follow and to be available, to be willing and available for guidance that is always here and that the world of mine distracts me from. My meditation keeps me distracted from my distractions so that I can remain in the presence of the main attraction.

Past Nowness In Music

Years ago, I found myself in a pawn shop in Queens, New York where I was living at the time, married with a child. In the pawn shop, I was pawning my guitar for money because my musical lifestyle wasn't generating enough income, so I said ‘I'll let go of the guitar. I'm playing electric piano with a jazz rock band, so I don't need the guitar for now.’ In the pawn shop, while I'm going in, I'm noticing this autoharp in the window – some call it the zither. And I say, ‘Oh, there's that instrument I used to see in the bluegrass ensembles when I did stand-up comedy in the village years ago.’ And I thought it was an interesting-looking instrument. But anyhow, I went into the pawn shop and told the clerk, ‘You know, here's my Yamaha Steel String Guitar with a Fiberglass Martin's Case.’ I expected them to give me $150 for it. He looked it over and says, ‘I can give you $25 for it.’ I say, ‘Oh, this is not going to work.’ And just at that moment, a very clear signal translated into a voice, a very deep loving voice, like a cosmic grandparental guidance – warm, passionate, with a sense of an intimate connection with me – and it was emanating from inside me or inside of my head, but I was aware of it and I was scientifically curious. That was a very clear indication. The voice said, ‘Don't take money. Swap it for the autoharp in the window.’ And I thought, ‘How is this happening?’ I want to see where this is going to go because that voice was so loving and so intimately present, like a great grand cosmic parent. So I made a deal with the clerk to swap the guitar for the autoharp and $5.

I left there, went home, and decided to explore my favorite open tunings on the guitar with the zither. The zither has 36 strings; the guitar has 6. So I had to be creative in how I tuned the instrument. I came up with a 36 string sound that was plush, harmonic, and fun. I didn't realize what I was onto until I thought, ‘It would be great if I could amplify this.’ So I went to Manny's music store in Manhattan. (Manny's is no longer there.) I went into this store with my autoharp and said, ‘I'd be interested in amplifying this, if you have any kind of pickups I could use on it.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, we have an autoharp pickup.’ And so I got it out of the box and put it on the zither. And as I strummed it through an amp, a salesperson on the other side of the store exclaimed, ‘Oh, I'm in heaven!’ And I didn't make the connection, what was going on yet here with this instrument, but later on, I realized that this instrument was going to be my way of not making the music I heard but referencing that music that would inform the kind of music I would perform– a more trance pad continual, a walking sound that seems to fill up space without particularly focusing on melodic content but more as a vibrational field, which some people later tended to call New Age or ambient.

Eventually, we moved to Park Slope. Once I really developed a vocabulary with the instrument, ideas would come while walking through a hardware store or art craft store and I would say, ‘What if I tried that thing on this instrument.’ A lot of ‘what ifs’ helped me to evolve. Playing on the sidewalks of Park Slope, Brooklyn, and Manhattan in lotus position on the carpet, I would slip into this trance of timeless awareness of a unified field, which is very present – more present than what we think of as the next minute, or the next hour, as like an invisible field. Sometimes I'm reminded to just project it as a color and that color lends an emotional spend to it. Then I would rapport with the field: massage it, play with it, move in it, and represent my rapport with it through the music. The listener would be listening to the music and it would draw the listener out of their sense of being a limited linear human into feeling like they were an expansive, spacious, timeless field. I would witness that kind of response when I played outside of the Central Park Zoo, or by the Museum of Natural History, or in Washington Square Park, or various other places. I would watch people in New York slow down or stop from their busy New York agenda and trance out with the music. People from different parts of the world – New York has lots of tourists – would comment on how the music made them feel. Sometimes they would say that it sounded like a reflection of their own spiritual beliefs, or that it reflected their memory of an instrument from their culture. But in essence, I was starting to get it – that the sound that was happening through this zither and my meditative approach to performance was allowing me to do what I didn't know that I was going to be able to do – to share that experience. I thought I had to copy or record that experience in order to validly share it, but I was impacted by it emotionally in my nervous system, my consciousness. It was in this shift in consciousness that I was able to then represent it through music. And so the music that began happening, I called it ‘vertical music’ – the music that represents the wholeness of the universe and every moment. The music that I was recording and playing at the time, if I gave you a recording, you'd be free enough to start that recording anywhere in the middle, because every place within the music represents the wholeness and not so much in a beginning or an ending; the unstruck music. 

I've been in the presence of Tibetan monks, who seem to be a strong voice for the reality of reincarnation. Take for instance, the Dalai Lama. When the child is born, monks will somehow get wind that this child is born somewhere and they'll go to that child with several objects and place the objects in front of them and when the child points to an object and wants to play with that object, the monks will know if this is the Dalai Lama because their past life association with an object will reveal them. I noticed this in the case of my first musical instrument, the violin. I had never touched a violin, or so I thought, but in the school system of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, there was a time when students in the fifth grade would receive a visit from the school's music supervisors. On this particular day, these two music instructors came around with a trumpet, a clarinet, and a violin and they demonstrated these musical instruments to entice students to want to play one of them. When I saw the violin, I just responded, ‘That's an instrument I'm supposed to continue with.’ And it was just spontaneous, sort of like that new child with the monks. And maybe the stringed instrument was the thing I was supposed to continue with. And the stringed instrument evolved into the piano and the guitar and, eventually, the zither. 

Another thing: because the nature of my music is meditative, it lends itself to spiritual conferences and meditation institutions around the country and across the world. So I have been invited, as a paid performing artist, to be in many meetings and conferences around the world where I would be in the presence of psychics, healers, and clairvoyants who would take me aside and say, ‘You've got guides who are working with you,’ or ‘In your past life, you were rebellious against the system and you were outcast because you wouldn't go along with the flow.’ So many of these readings seem to say, ‘Oh, that's why I'm doing this.’ I believe in reincarnation. I believe that my life, what I'm doing now, is a continuation of something that I started. When we say ‘past life,’ again, I'm being reminded that the now is the only place so the past is really here – so in past nowness. I've been told that it's for our own good that we don't remember everything of our past. I don't believe and never believed that I came here to live a life and then perish. That didn't seem to me like the kind of gift I was given. I think, ‘Now that I feel Eternity, Eternity is now.’ There are some teachings that talk about physical immortality but I'm not quite sure that I want to believe that, or if it really applies to keeping this body. My sense, my greater sense, is that the physical universe is continuously unfolding and that the physical universe is my real body. And that as I dissolve this body, I may go into the physical universal field, which will then supply whatever I need for the next body. I'm tending to think that if I am evolving in this way, that I'll come to a place where I won't be needing a dense body, but more of a luminous weightless tone body, which allows me to be in the present time more efficiently.

The Whole World As An Ashram

Ananda is a sweet spot of a spiritual community up in Monroe, New York. Around the late 1970s, my freestyle music had me invited to various spiritual oriented events like Omega which was at that time up near the Sufi community of Abode of the Message, as well as other places. There, I would run into different spiritual teachers. One of them was Shri Brahmananda Saraswati, who founded Ananda Ashram with a group of meditative friends. They call themselves The Yoga Society of New York. I was intimidated of being around teachers in general. I learned from them but I didn't want to be too close. But there was one teacher, Shri Brahmananda Saraswati, which was his later name, who was very impressive. He wore this orange clothing and hat and he carried this baton. He ran his ashram, Ananda Ashram. Eventually, I was invited to go up to Ananda Ashram and provide music around 1979. There, I got to know the teacher closer, who suggested that I wear more orange clothes because I had been initiated – he was referring to that sound hearing experience, that was an initiation. He said, ‘You have been initiated and it's trying to surface.’ He picked this up through my music. In 1985, after five years of going to the ashram, doing music, exploring yoga, and chanting, he says, ‘You know, you've been half Sannyasa. Now it's time to go full strength, full speed ahead. Here's a set of orange clothes.’ He gave me an honorary ceremony acknowledging that I was in that tradition, Sannyasa, which is someone who is on the fast track.

And so I thought that was pretty extreme but good. I thought that it was an Eastern practice tradition and that I was setting myself up to be ridiculed, but I accepted the orange clothes and I haven't looked back since.

With his approach to meditation and being around him, I found that my questions became less and less. The more I practiced meditation, the less and less questions I had. His one word that tied it all together for me was ‘trance.’ ‘Go into trance.’ ‘But I am not your guru. Your guru is inside of you. Go in and connect with your guru.’

When I visited and came across other spiritual leaders – like Sri Swami Satchidananda, Krishnamurti, Baba Ram Dass, and Rajneesh – I noticed that there were people there who were very focused and hearing the message beyond the words, and then there were those who needed a father figure or needed to be in that kind of climate to help balance, maybe, a traumatic life that they've had. Some were there to really pursue the teachings and yet others were there because the energy was so safe and nurturing. Ananda Ashram served as both. It's first a society – so there's a social element there – people come there to have a beautiful weekend, and they might decide to go to a yoga class or do a meditation, but it wasn't mandatory for visitors. So the climate there was one where you had your sincere, dedicated seekers and then you had those whose life is more into the ‘peace zone,’ they're into service, they're into unconditional love, but they feel they still have family life to pursue and world objectives to complete.

I haven't been to Ananda Ashram for about two years now, but I've always felt like the planet itself was my spiritual community so I share that resonance and understanding everywhere I go and perform. The whole field, that's what an ashram spiritual community does –  it prepares me to extend this sense of spiritual community that the whole planet is really my spiritual community.

On the path, you do notice that there are certain spiritual teachers and texts that you don't click with, but the ones that felt easiest and seemed to be able to communicate to me include:

Baba Ram Das and the book Be Here Now; it's a classic. Krishnamurti's Think on These Things was another one. Rajneesh's books; they all were relevant reading for me, as well as his lectures. Hazrat Inayat Khan wrote a book The Music of Life: The Inner Nature and Effects of Sound, which was like a new music Bible for me; it's a very thick book that I read, and it liberated me from the Western idea of music so that I could be more available for new music. Also, the Mind Science writers like Ernest Holmes (The Science of Mind) and Thomas Troward. Thomas Troward’s books are written more like scientific pictures, but I was ready for that. The mind was quiet enough; I could read the material. Another book was Richard Hittleman's Guide to Yoga Meditation. What happened during those times of reading, I could feel something dissolving inside of me that I didn't really recognize.

The meditation and the teachers that I was exposed to demonstrated how to breathe a more open space, to breathe a more fluid freedom, and how to breathe the self that isn't bound up in the physical body. So that the color of the skin, the bone structure, and sexual gender is not my basic identity. I learned the pure ‘I am.’ Those books and, of course, earlier, it was the Bible. I read the Bible maybe three times; there are some parts of the Bible that I felt like I had to skip over because it's like a loop. But the Bible, I think, refined my spiritual radar, my sensibilities or street smarts.

Another writing was The Emerald Tablet; that was a good friend along the way. Also, I Am That might be the easiest one to digest because you can open it anywhere and you might find answers and questions that resonate with where you are.

Laughter Meditation

Laughter is very important in my life; it always has been. It's a language, a nonverbal language in my community and family life. The language of laughter allows one to experience the lack of separation, the lack of division. Laughter is the shortest distance between two people. Growing up in the public schools of New Jersey and onward into college, I always found an opportunity to involve myself in some comedic programs where there was a talent show or writing comedy was involved. In my early New York years, in the 1960s and 70s, I involved myself with stand-up comedy in New York but as the comedy started to overlap with my spiritual investigations, especially the Mind Science that says ‘where your focus goes, your energy goes,’ I started to think that the comedy material I was doing was not spiritually balanced or healthy. So there's this one book, The Orange Book: The Meditation Techniques Of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Someone gifted me this book and on one page of many meditations, there was the suggestion of Laughter Meditation and I thought, ‘I've been doing meditation pretty seriously. I've been doing laughter hilariously. I didn't know that the two words could belong together: Laughter Meditation.’ His instructions were: upon awakening in the morning, before opening your eyes, do some stretches then laugh for 15 minutes in bed, and do this for seven days. I said, ‘This sounds interesting. I'm going to try it.’ Very early, I realized, ‘Gee, I don't remember ever lying down laughing.’ More of my body got into the experience. Sometimes it took five minutes to really find my authentic laughter and I was usually impressed to discover I could self ignite or connect to my authentic laughter. I started to notice my body language, my facial expression, my breath patterns while laughing – the laughing became more conscious and mindful. I noticed the effect on my singing and speaking voice too. So that exercise of laughing for 15 minutes, I decided to share it with my music and sound healing workshops and conferences. And in no time at all, the laughter section took on a life of its own and became its own workshop because people kept feeding me information, data, and scientific knowledge around laughter's healing power and eventually it developed into a two hour workshop.

In our workshops, we open up with chanting: traditional and non traditional chanting. Then I get into explaining the benefits of laughter, that laughter does open and expand the endothelial – the lining of the blood vessels. So it promotes the flow of blood that promotes the flow of hormones and endorphins in the system. It stimulates the immune system. There are so many yummy things about laughter. So we go through the exercises, then we give the participants the opportunity to lie down – blindfolded at times – and to use these exercises to invent their own laughing ritual, in preparation for what they can take home and do.

Our role, as facilitators, is to create a safe space for people to go into the laughter zone because it's a vulnerable space. People laugh around their friends but in a workshop, if you're not familiar with everyone who's there, there's a certain hesitation to give yourself fully to your real laughter. I discovered that the vulnerable side of laughter is that you let go of your boundaries; you let go of your identity as a serious, firm being. And another thing I didn't realize until I did this in Japan, when I saw, especially women, covering their mouth while they were laughing, I realized that exposing your vulnerability means exposing your teeth. People's teeth are the big issue. Children don't have a problem about that; they might have teeth missing but they will still burst out laughing. And so my partner and I, our business is to make people feel like they're in safe company, that they can surrender to laughter and get into the play zone and really let loose and cut loose. What we discover is that not only do people cut loose with laughter but other emotional streams come through too – tears of sadness come through. After the laughter ritual, participants get to just lay still and notice how far they've come into the Shavasana (or Corpse Pose) – relaxation through laughter. Laughter is a relaxing of the breath, the muscles, the mental activity so that you're in a state of spontaneous meditation. That's where the two words come together: Laughter and meditation; meditation arrived through heavy laughter.

'This' Dissolving

What's going on with the planet now – it's the releasing of our new field identity from the cocoon. The chaos is the cocoon dissolving and we don't know it. We're trying to hold on to the cocoon and we're saying, ‘This is bad. This is awful. We got to save the cocoon.’ We are emerging. There are those who know it; there are those who have been talking about it for quite a few years. Center your spiritual practice to go deeper during times like this, so that you can save yourself from the funny farm, the wild things that are going on out there. They're not going on to make life miserable. They're going on to let you know that you're ready for something new. I say there are two kinds of pain: the pain that's being afflicted or the pain that's leaving – the pain that's coming up and that which is going – and that we're experiencing it and we think, ‘Oh, this is awful.’ But no, this is something that's in our portfolio and it's dissolving and we're experiencing it as ‘this’ dissolving.”

Paintings by Jen May