Music and exercise have been sidekicks since the days of Jane Fonda doing leg lifts in thong leotards and leg warmers. While there have been many iterations of this pairing before and after Jazzercise, no spin class can match the spiritual depth of combining live music with yoga.
A conscious discipline that focuses on flexibility, strength, and balance as well as mental, spiritual and emotional serenity, yoga has become embedded within our popular culture. Ranging from its unchanged traditional forms to the modernized versions found at your local gym, yoga is ubiquitous and available to any who seek it. No longer must we search for yoga in hippie communes or travel to India to reap its benefits.
Bringing music and narrative to the practice of yoga is Tony Giuliano, co-owner of Yoga at the Raven, a part of The Raven Spa, located in Silverlake, Los Angeles. “From a young age, I was encouraged to explore my creativity and to follow my heart,” says Giuliano. “I began this journey into self-expression with painting and the visual arts, later on moving into music and songwriting to eventually finding a deep passion for meditation and yoga.”
East Forest performing in Yoga Elementals
Known by friends and students as Tony G., his unique style is both challenging and attainable as he pushes his student’s bodies towards their full potential. Through his calming instruction, he encourages you to try the more demanding positions but only at your own pace. While strength often comes more easily to men as flexibility does to women, Tony G.’s classes create a balance between the two. Though he has found success in his yoga career, his mind continues to devise new ways to reinvent his craft. “Yoga is the art of life,” he says. “I love music, yoga, dance, language, storytelling and weaving them together to take people on a journey of self discovery.”
It was the weaving of the many creative facets of his upbringing that led to Yoga Elementals, a multimedia, at-home yoga experience that comes on a USB drive and is accompanied by printed literature for additional guidance. After teaching for 13 years, Tony G. was approached by another yoga instructor to create a video series that is based on the five elements: space, earth, water, fire and air. Each one is a separate, hour long segment that focuses on the various yoga poses appropriate to each element. Yoga Elementals also includes tutorials on how to properly execute each position safely and effectively to ensure a fully immersive class, even in the living room of your studio apartment.
“I wanted to make a program that was accessible and inspiring and helps people dive deep into the practice of yoga. We wanted to tell the story of the universe through the elements and have people be able to take a journey of transformation in their heart, mind and body. From the subtle aspects of meditation and pranayama breath work to the more physical aspects of asana, Yoga Elementals was born and is an offering for both new and experienced students. “
When Tony G. accepted this undertaking, he added one extra element to the five that has become an integral component of this project: music. Being a part of the blossoming transformational festival community, he became familiar with the music of a Portland producer and DJ named Trevor Oswalt who goes by the artist moniker East Forest. Full of rich bass, introspective soundscapes, the biophany of nature, and live instrumentation ranging from a wooden flute to a mylodica, East Forest doesn’t just create sound, he creates narrative.
Tony G. & East Forest
It is often when we are coaxed from our comfort zones that we achieve greatness. Tony G. approached East Forest with a bold request: to play a live five hour set for his Yoga Elementals video project. Though with a tickling itch of apprehension in the back of his mind, Oswalt accepted the task through Tony’s glowing encouragement. The result was a most sacred union between music and yoga.
“Nature is by far my biggest inspiration — the cycles, the silence, the sounds, the harshness and the beauty,” Oswalt says. “I created the music because I admire and respect Tony and knew we shared a vision to allow music to be more than just a background element.” The music has indeed transcended, playing a central role in Tony G.’s yoga instruction as he reminds students to focus on the sound as intently as they do their poses.
Tony G. and East Forest recently hosted a release party for Yoga Elementals at The Raven Spa where he taught a condensed, two hour class showcasing the five elements represented in the video series. The walls, ceiling and floor were bespeckled with multicolored lights as East Forest performed a live set that breathed like a living organism. The music’s cadence ebbed and flowed, raising my pulse then gently slowing it down. His set moved through my mind as organically as my body moved through the poses. During the final moments of meditation, he weaved between yoga mats while softly playing the flute, our minds continuing to stretch even as our bodies lie still.
The Yoga Elementals release party ended in a most unexpected way: with pizza and beer. After journeying through space with Tony G. and East Forest, we floated back down to earth to appreciate the simple joys of eating, drinking, and conversing with our fellow humans, three rituals that are shared by all cultures. This sweet gesture was the perfect end to the event, like the honey that gathers at the bottom of your mug only to be discovered with your last gulp of tea. In a city full of kombucha-swigging, kale-munching, gluten-free, yogis (myself included), it was nice to simply sit down with some friends after an invigorating yoga class and chow down on some pepperoni pizza.