The Path of Nada Yoga: Science, Music, and Healing in the Yoga of Sound

By Stefano Manfrin

This book explains in detail the bases of the yoga of sound, its therapeutic aspects and its effect on the biological and psychic system of the human being.
From the thousand-year old Indian tradition a scientific method to regulate your own emotional and physical state through the vibrational resonance of singing.
The first traces of Nada Yoga appear in the most antique and sacred Indian scriptures such as the Natya Shastra, the Gandharva Veda, the Naradiya Shiksha, and many others. Thanks to the extraordinary work of the musician and researcher Vemu
Mukunda it was recovered from the ancient traditions and diffused throughout the world.
The author, Stefano Manfrin, relying on years of in-class experience, as he was committed to spreading the science of Nada Yoga, in this text revisits and further deepens this discipline. He has developed and coined his original contribution: the System of Music-evolution.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Associazione Culturale La Cicala
• Release date: Mar 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9791222053424

Book preview

Introduction

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.

John 1:1-3 (King James Version)

I feel very lucky to have come in contact with Nada Yoga during my lifetime.

In the beginning of the ‘90s I was admitted into the prestigious theatre company Teatro Tascabile di Bergamo. At the time I was nineteen, theatre was my main interest and I was undergoing a rigorous training for eight hours a day to learn acting according to Jerzy Grotowski and Eugenio Barba’s method.

Among the activities that I had to attend were acrobatics — for which I nurtured a certain passion — Indian dance, walking and dancing on trampolines, juggling, different types of acting, the use of musical instruments, and singing — alas, my sore spot.

I was, in fact, particularly tone deaf, something that brought me huge frustration. Since childhood I was very timid, and finding myself with a singing teacher that was quite impatient blocked me even further. In particular her choleric reactions to my difficulties with intonation had me permanently inhibited.

I had tried without success different private singing lessons with teachers who used various methods. A dear friend of mine, who used Indian singing as a birthing preparation with the renowned French doctor Frédérick Leboyer [1], was in that very moment holding an introductive class of Nada Yoga. She told me that if I went from listening to sound through the auditory canal to corporeal perception (that is through the door of tactile sense) I would sing in tune in a matter of hours. Therefore I decided to change doors and approach singing from a tactile manner. I signed up to the course for parturient and immediately obtained, as my friend had promised, optimal results. I began the course on Saturday and by Sunday afternoon I eleft the class in-tune. That was the beginning of my studies in Nada Yoga, the revolutionary science of singing rediscovered by the musician and Indian scientist Vemu Mukunda.

I was quite moved by Mukunda’s method and inside me a new and wider perception of life began to make way. Already since a tender age, from when I was 13 or 14, I had had my first spiritual experiences and began to feel a strong calling towards the Divine. But I was still stuck in what we can define as worldly desires, among which was to become a professional actor.

Nada Yoga had profoundly impressed me, but not only had it helped me become in-tune, more so because it had introduced me to a practical method to perceive vibrations and interior states of being. Given that these were the principal arguments of The Mother — Mirra Alfassa, the mother of Pondichéry — founder of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram of which I had read the teachings every evening with great voracity, I was more and more attracted to Nada Yoga. Using this technique which consisted in singing the notes on specific points on the body, I could perceive vibrations and states of being, and live a direct experience of that which She spoke of in her teachings. If I had not been off key most likely I never would have studied this technique that has allowed me to radically change my life.

VEMU MUKUNDA AND THE REDISCOVERY OF NADA YOGA

Vemu Mukunda (Bangalore, 11 March 1929 – London 4 February 2000) was born into a family that sent him to study the veena, a musical instrument associated with the goddess Saraswati. The veena was part of Mukunda’s family tradition and he quickly learned to play it in excellent fashion. He studied in Mysore under the attentive guidance of A.S. Chandrasekharah, nephew of Veene Sheshanna, the great innovator of Carnatic music. He was even sent to play at Brahmotsavam, the biggest yearly event in the temple of Venkateswara at Tirupati, one of the most sacred and visited places in India, a fact that allows us to understand the level of his acknowledgement in his homeland. Music was not his only passion for he earned a degree in nuclear engineering. Despite his success in various fields and the acknowledgement for his musical prowess Mukunda suffered from depression.

As his family was devoted by tradition to Shirdi Sai Baba, a great saint with phenomenal powers [2] — a Siddha Avadhuta — Vemu was invited to hold a concert in Sai Baba’s ashram. In a quandary over what to do he finally accepted, thinking that it might be a boost to his career to perform in a place where thousands of people passed including great Indian dignitaries. The concert greatly pleased Sai Baba who, fascinated by his style of playing, invited him to his room because he wanted to speak with him. Perceiving Mukunda’s potential, the depth of his comprehension and his intelligent mind, Sai Baba advised him to consult sacred texts through which he might gain ulterior understanding of the domain of music and would discover a great secret. Mukunda followed this advice and applied himself to study in great depth the antique texts as indicated by Sai Baba. Thus he discovered the secrets of Nada Yoga contained and conveyed in the scriptures (among which the Vedas) for millenniums. He was shocked to discover that all this knowledge had been forgotten in India and he wondered if it was possible to still find lineages that preserved and transmitted this science. Thus he began to wander through India and found two schools, one in the North and the other in the Central-South, where these techniques were taught more or less as he had understood them. He then applied himself to further amplify his comprehension of this field.

Mukunda travelled throughout Italy, France, Germany, England, and Holland and began to hold workshops on Nada Yoga. The type of training of those workshops is similar to that which I currently offer, whilst Mukunda’s approach is inextricably tied to Indian philosophy where almighty God is glorified through the scriptures and yoga methods. Mukunda was a man of rare intelligence, a sublime musician. He took it upon himself the difficult task of introducing a discipline between art, science and spirituality that resulted to be, at that time between the 1980s and the 1990s, absolutely arduous for the most part, especially in the West. I met him at the beginning of the 1990s. At that time the knowledge of Eastern disciplines was not very diffused and so Mukunda presented Nada Yoga in Italy as music therapy, which then was being confirmed as a valid scientific and therapeutic mechanism to help us to understand the effect that music can have on the subtle bodies.

The human being is in fact not only composed of a coarse body made of nourishment, but also of many bodies called subtle bodies, made of ether, prana or vital energy, emotions, and mental material none of which are directly detected by the five senses. The profound techniques of Nada Yoga work precisely on the body that in the sacred texts of the Upanishad and the Tantra is generally called sukshma sharira; a body made of instinctive and emotional energy as of mind and thoughts. It pre-exists the formation of the coarse body made of nutriment, and it sustains the coarse body. The subtle body of the human being is basically a musical instrument that vibrates, generating sounds (anahata nada) in the subtle matter that are externally inaudible in the outside world. These intersect with sounds (gross or subtle) and emotions from the external world. The work of Nada Yoga allows the aspirant the possibility to understand and experiment that his states of being come not only from hormonal exchanges in his endocrine system, but rather from a reality much more complex belonging to the subtle body and its profound intrinsic structure, made of vibrating, luminous, sonorous energy.

The work of Mukunda was still in evolution when he died. The task of transmitting his knowledge passed onto one of his students who still lives in Germany and who wrote a book based on the teachings of the master [3]. I came in contact with her. Even in Italy there are various schools that follow Mukunda’s approach. His method was transmitted through workshops that were then broadened in courses that lasted approximately three years. He was a very valuable teacher, who exclaimed, Continue to research and expand this field, the work is not finished.

NADA YOGA AND MUSIC-EVOLUTION

Through the technique of Nada Yoga, I passed from the perception of vibrations in various points of the body to the understanding that every vibratory level inside us corresponds to a certain functioning level of the mind. For example when the vibrations are intense in the heart region we can feel joy, love or a strong displeasure of sentimental nature. It is exactly for this reason that we cannot say to a person who we love, while looking them in the eyes, I love you with all my nose, it would not make sense. Instead we say, I love you with all my heart, because love is sensed exactly from the heart.

Whomever has scarcely escaped an accident feels they can easily say, I was so afraid I almost wet my pants. The reaction of fear originates on the level of the neurovegetative system, which is the regulator of urinary tract muscular activity. At the same time anxiety is perceivable in the solar plexus. It then accumulates in the umbilicus region. The sensation of peace is instead detectable in the centre of the head, in correspondence with the pineal gland (defined as The Seat of Peace).

I therefore realised that every vibratory level has a corresponding mind and thanks to Nada Yoga I could enter in contact with fundamental vibratory levels as a direct sensorial experience.

All this introduced me to a second notion. Not only do vibratory states correspond to various points in the body and to specific emotional states — that the aspirant enters in contact through precise notes — but a musical octave (raga; a scale of notes) unites various vibratory points creating a family of emotional state (rasa), that we could call a way of being.

There are sequences that are capable of creating profound psychic and emotional states, for example what is called serene peace and good fortune, an amalgam of feelings that in turn is part of a specific category (thaat). In this case that of Peace, where we find profound peace, the happy or the melancholic peace, or yet other types.

I became aware that by connecting the various vibratory points I could create inside the energetic system a kind of circuit that enabled the formation of global and well defined states of being.

So as you make a soup putting together various types of vegetables thus obtaining a rich and diverse flavour, in this same way I could create inside of myself a vibratory circuit that ascended and descended through the various points of the body giving life to a collection of precise states of being. And it was possible to propose this operation again, or if you prefer this recipe, and relocate a certain state of being every time I needed to. For example from singing the raga called Mayamalavagaula or Bhairav, I could enter into a very profound state of peace, of mental silence, and mystic melancholy towards the Divine.

These states were induced in a way that was almost impossible to control, they happened through vibrations that circulated inside well-defined circuits. When I understood this, I realized, in wonder, that I had an enormous opportunity in my life to change and evolve.

My personal contribution to the expansion of the field of the practice of Nada Yoga is therefore, the connecting of the occult and esoteric knowledge and of the vast world of yoga to Mukunda’s wonderful work. Like many other researchers I owe him much. In this book