The therapeutic effects of music have long been recognised and documented. The quasi-magical power of music to induce sleep, trances or out-of-body experiences is attested to in literature and oral traditions down the ages. Like almost no other non-pharmaceutical agent, music can draw the listener down and into the deeper reaches of the subconscious.
Music as wildly disparate as the chanting monks or the cyber enchantments of The Orb of Laurie Anderson can produce this effect: even from the far shores of metal, transcendence beckons.
It's not surprising then to find that in Irish traditional music tunes were often accorded fairy or other non-conscious world provenance, Port na bPucai (the Fairy's Tune) being a well known example: frequently this kind of music is associated with pipes or blown instruments of some kind.
In its emphasis on inner harmony, the eastern practice of yoga shares psychic space with music. Anyone familiar with the burgeoning market in New Age relaxation recordings will have listened to the repetitious use of Tibetan temple-gongs, bells, and assorted percussion - the favoured accompaniment to such material. This is likely, more often than not, to suffer from cliched aural associations - sea sounds/ethereal fluting/ birdsong/wind chimes and so on. Until now, that is.
A propitious conjunction involving two hemispheres, as well as the oriental and the occidental, led to a unique exploration around music and yoga, which culminated in a group of west Kerry-based musicians joining a local yoga teacher Honka Miklosi in a recording studio. The result is an album bearing Miklosi's name Deep Relaxation Through Words And Music/Your Colours In Yoga Nirda, which comes complete with a thoughtfully constructed musical soundtrack.
A Berliner of German and Hungarian parentage, Honka Miklosi has lived in Dingle for 16 years. A dance and physical education enthusiast since childhood and the beneficiary of a culture which held all things physical in high esteem, she followed a career path through gymnastics, ballet and sport to Ananda Marga yoga philosophy and latterly to the lyengar yoga method in which she trained as a teacher. Her yoga classes in Dingle have been popular for more than 15 years with local and visitor alike. In that time she and her husband, piper Eoin Duignan, have had five children and run a wholefood restaurant-cum-music-club (the late lamented Cafe Ceoil).
As a yoga teacher, Miklosi's understanding of the body is that in itself it contains great recuperative powers. Through yoga and the practice of deep relaxation techniques, the channels of regeneration and healing are opened.
Some years ago, Australian musician Steve Cooney arrived on the Dingle peninsula. Two summers ago, in Cooney's recording studio, Miklosi, Duignan and Cooney began to work out ways in which the deep relaxation method developed by Miklosi and used in her classes could provide the spoken element of a recording which would resonate with the music sequences worked out by Cooney and Duignan. In this, they were assisted by two other Australians, the virtuoso percussionist Greg Sheehan and harmonica player Justin Brady.
The result is a harmonious whole where voice and music performance, on low whistle, percussion, harmonica and talking drum are in continuous dialogue, one leaving off where the other begins. The effect is to create a kind of mesmeric interior space where spatial and temporal formalities are put to one side. (Be warned though: to play it while driving would be to risk losing touch permanently with the spatial and temporal). Anyone suffering from stress, fatigue, insomnia or hyperactivity stands to benefit from the techniques demonstrated by Miklosi, whose gentle, soothing voice guides the listener to that elusive kingdom, the state of rest.