What Happens in Harmony Club?

Harmony Club is the invention of myself and the late Jan Emerson. We conceived of this gathering as a way to promote the benefits of not only singing together but deep listening and layered precision of voices to create resonant and harmonic chords. With experience we have noticed the additional benefits to this practice.

What happens in Harmony Club?

 

It is not about singing, although there is some very soft vocalizing

 

It is not about meditation, although the practice draws on our inner attention.

 

Harmony Club invites us to go within and learn about ourselves in an experiential way. In our daily lives we learn about “resonating” with an idea, getting “good vibes” from someone or some situation, we use the expression “that sounds good” when we hear san idea we like and we speak of living together in harmony and having harmonious relations.

 

The practice of Harmony Club borrows from many sources including: physics, ancient Sikh awareness, Western music theory, common singing skills, yoga, meditiation, circle singing and practices of inner awareness.

 

Our culture is geared to recognize the elements of creating harmony conceptually, as ideas, as theories but most of us have little or no experience with the elements of harmony, how we can create harmony intentionally or how it feels when we get it right. And how we can include this awakened intelligence into our everyday mind.

 

Literally, harmony is the relationship between two or more notes. Their relationship may not be pleasing. We are interested in creating harmony in pleasing, blended ways.

 

With this as our first goal, we use a variety of personal tools to enable a pleasing and blended sound. When we do this:

Our whole body benefits.

a. It has been established in many social and medical studies that singing together is good for our health. In fact, when we sing, our whole body is engaged and every cell in our body is vibrationally stimulated and aligned to our vibrational tone.

 

b. Our heart rate and breathing become stimulated and aligned in collective vibrational agreement.

 

c. Our circulation is enhanced and our mood is elevated. It is no/low impact and succeeds in enhancing our reactions and attention span.

 

d. When we awaken our senses to vibrational sensations and engage with these vibrations vocally we are using parts of our brains that we do not engage with logic, ideas, verbal or math skills. We create new neural pathways and expand our brainpower. The brain functions most likely stimulated are creativity, intuition, empathy, composure and peace of mind.

 

Our relationships benefit:

The experience of creating harmony together connects us in intention without using words or ideas. The experience is not intellectual. Listening is the key component to blending accurately. We listen with our whole body. It is feeling based. Our sensory engagement in harmony is an experience that only we can identify. That is why we participate in community but focus on our individual awareness while individually we identify our own harmonic experience. Our unique, individual participation is our authenticity in action. It brings us to meet ourselves in relationship where we respect and lift up each one together as we listen and align ourselves to the larger community. We learn how “right relations” can stimulate musical and social harmony.

 

Our community benefits in the ability to co-create safety and joy in a mutually safe and supportive environment. By listening and participating we co-create a sonic community interwoven with unique and individual expression. We co-create a safe context for social connectivity. When we are in the harmonic mode, we stop thinking and start feeling our way into a harmonic relationship. Ideas, politics, religion do not enter into this state. It becomes a condition of joy and grace shared by all. These qualities of joy and grace carry over into our daily awareness and harmony becomes a more likely choice in our behavior.

 

We are hardwired for social connection and acceptance. It is very important for our survival to be connected to our families, groups and institutions. So much so that we are at great risk of poor health consequences due to stressors of anti-social reactions and rejection. These stressors have been proven to lead to damaging health outcomes in a variety of consequences.

 

Considering all this, harmony becomes a practice that has potential for many positive outcomes and benefits.

 

AND it is great fun!

If you would like to discuss this article or anything in my posts feel free to connect with me.

In Harmony

jim