The Sway

In June of 1997 my friend Fred Haas flew me to High Mowing School in the mountains of New Hampshire to teach yoga and meditation to jazz musicians. We had met back in the winter of 1981 when he was a patient at our holistic health center, New Direction In Health, in Saint Johnsbury, Vermont. The position of his body when playing combined with the weight of his tenor sax had tightened his low back.

Fred Haas, founder of Interplay Jazz

Fred, an accomplished musician who played with Pat Metheney, the Duke Ellington Band, Ray Charles, and taught Jazz at Dartmouth College, had created Interplay Jazz an innovative approach to take jazz to a new level. We decided that a holistic experience for jazz musicians would be a good thing. Drugs, alcohol, and junk food were replaced by healthier alternatives, and I offered my Essence Therapy programs as a means to correct the physical imbalances created by playing a musical instrument - the rounded backs of the piano students, the hunched shoulder of a horn player, the stiff neck of the bassist, and the stress caused from performing. Over and over again, I discovered how physically and emotionally challenging playing jazz could be.

Interplay Jazz staff, 2008

Yoga and meditation classes were combined with gourmet organic food, and Fred assembled a stellar faculty that included Matt Wilson on drums, Bob Hallahan and Armen Donelian on piano, Dave Clark on bass, Eric Friesen on cello, George Voland on trombone, and Freddie Bryant on guitar. During the next twelve years we taught musicians how to deal with performance anxiety, physical imbalances caused by playing their instruments, and how to be more creative. It was an advanced improvisational jazz experience, packed with laughter, insight and great music!

Radha and I were novices when we first started working with Fred and the faculty, but all these years later we credit them with our deeper appreciation and love for all that jazz! Working with musicians has been an honor and a delight, and I was able to adapt specific corrective and restorative yoga poses for the dynamic challenges musicians encounter playing their instruments. (I especially loved designing programs for the singers!)

One morning eight years ago, after a late faculty concert the night before, I looked out to see about eighty tired musicians in my hatha class. We needed to get the energy moving, so I put on Jai Uttal and instructed everyone to stand with their legs apart, eyes closed, and breathing deeply. I had them listen, feel, and allow their body to sway along with the music. It was electric!

Over the next fifteen minutes everyone surrendered into the sway. We shifted our weight from one leg to the other, moving our hands and arms through a series of bandhas and mudras. The energy in the room exploded as we gracefully created our 'Yoga Dance'. We danced forward and back, moving our arms and legs in and out of a series of poses, each person tuning into their bodies needs. Then, slowly I had them transition to the floor where we moved through a series of floor poses, after a deep relaxation exercise we spent the next twenty minutes meditating. After we had opened our eyes my dear friend Matt spoke out into the room- Tippin'!

Thus the Sway was born!

Four years later…

We were in Charlottesville Airport when my cell phone rang, it was Matt. He had just finished a performance with his band at Carneige Hall and excitedly described how he had taken the Sway public. He had composed a song, named The Sway, and even had his singers (The Swayettes!) dancing to it as they performed on stage.

All things have a beginning, a middle, and an end, however...

After thirteen years of designing and developing programs along with Fred and Sabrina, we won't be returning to Interplay Jazz in Vermont this year, but...

the Vancouver Jazz Festival is calling.