Article about Joelle

This is not your typical rehearsal studio. Or maybe it is — in Marin.
As rock musicians, Ernie and I have rehearsed in a variety of spaces over the years. Instruments and microphones are always part of the package deal, and a PA is important, aside from that, really anything goes.

Nashville decor and supplies tend to be down-home practical. With so many professional musicians in town, studios and music equipment are tools for work — often incorporated inside the home. We rehearsed in basements, apartments, and one former funeral establishment. I don’t know why, but that house stayed so cold all the time.

In Oakland, we discovered that rehearsal studios can be seriously no-frills. And a lot of beer and cigarettes.

But now we’re in North Bay. Just as with everything else, folks from North Bay have their own unique way of doing things here. I’m finding their ways really suit me — I’m able to adjust.

Couches, rugs, and other luxuriously comfortable features seem to be part of the decor in many North Bay studios. I’m digging that.

The photo below is Band Headquarters for our new band, 3! (Ernie rockin’ the guitars, yours truly on vocals, and now with fabulous drummer/percussionist Laurence Polikoff!)

Image by rockinpaddy via Flickr

So, yes, new Band Headquarters: Persian rug, antique reproduction couch, fridge. Very comfy — I like it.
They’ve rigged a PA system that works great, with a nice monitor setup. I can hear myself without feedback. The temperature always seems to be just right in the room. And I really love having a fridge in there — I make a full meal to take to rehearsal, and after a serious music work-out, I dine well!

Our hosts, Laura and Laurence, seem to delight in feeding us, too: lots of local organic produce straight from Betty’s Organics in Lagunitas. It feels as if the Universe is blowing kisses in our direction these days.
But here’s where the Marin-ness really takes center stage.

When we arrived at rehearsal last week, Joelle St. James of Vastu Sacred Spaces had just finished doing a Vastu clearing on the studio.

Vastu is the Hindu version of Feng Shui, “based on a set of principles meant to restore balance in the home and bring success, happiness and spiritual well-being. The philosophy uses the five basic elements — space, air, fire, water and earth — to align spaces to maintain harmony with nature. ” (San Francisco Chronicle)
From an energetic perspective, it was clear that Joelle St. James is a very skilled Vastu practitioner: the studio was significantly lighter in vibration, substantially more spacious — energetically, as well as by physical layout — and a powerful tranquility pervaded the sandalwood-scented air.

What could Joelle St. James possibly have done to make that much difference on a room’s “vibe”? How is it that a room can even be described as energetically spacious?

Typically, a space dedicated to “regular” human activity takes on a lot of dense energies. As a result, the room starts to feel heavier, and sort of closed in and stagnant over time.

Vastu practitioners lighten the vibrational energy of a room through their knowledge and understanding of how to increase the balance and harmony of objects and space in relationship to each other. They literally clear out, or transform, denser heavier energies into lighter ones. Lighter energies are more expansive, and thus create a sensation of increased spaciousness and calmness in a room.

As I always try to emphasize, it’s really not a big deal whether you’re interacting with dense energies or lighter energies; it’s just a matter of preference. It’s all important to existence — it’s all valuable. Sometimes we want a more spacious, tranquil experience. Sometimes we want to liven things up.
Take rock music for example. Now that is a dense energy. It can really get your body movin’ and groovin’. Whether you’re the performer or the audience, rock music provides an outlet for energies and emotions that can’t always find socially acceptable expression in daily modern life.

And why is that? What’s rock music about? It’s assertive, aggressive, passionate, voracious, rebellious. Angry or angst-y, it’s the feelings inside that say: “we’re not going to take it anymore!”

When people feel this way inside — such an intense feeling that they’ve just got to do something about it — they usually attribute it to their circumstances: “such-and-such happened and it makes me feel frustrated or oppressed and I’m not going to take it. “

But what does it look like from an energy perspective?

From an energy perspective, the energy comes first — before the external circumstance that seems to have prompted the emotion.

Energy moves faster and is more subtle than physical objects or actions. And so, long before the energy makes itself known in a physical way, it is already visible in a person’s energy field. It’s that quality of energy in the field that has actually created the external circumstances that follow.

It may be easier to understand this phenomenon using an example from the physical world.

Everything we see in the physical world started out as energy activity first; we see the same behaviors in the energy world that science is able to document in our physical one.

Let’s take the formation of the Grand Canyon as example. How did that canyon get there in the first place?
Here is a wonderful animation of “downcutting,” the process by which a river creates an ever deepening pathway through solid rock. (how I love youtube!):

See how the flow of the water is actually cutting a deeper and deeper groove into the mountain side? The water exists before the canyon — is in fact creating the canyon.

In other words, before the outward situation takes place that “makes” the person feel frustrated, the individual’s vibration has already formed an “energetic pathway” visibly indicating that matching situations are getting ready to manifest physically for this person.
Whatever vibration is dominant in your essence, whether joy or love or peace or frustration, that vibration activates a reaction in all similar vibrations around it, through a process called “sympathetic resonance.” Whatever you’re experiencing first on an energy level, then in the physical world will continue to increase in time, unless you make a change to the vibration you’re generating.

It really doesn’t matter what vibration is your dominant one, from the universal perspective. As I say, they’re all valuable. The only time it matters is if you wish “things were different.” That’s when it really matters. Because things can be different, once you have a better understanding of how vibrational reality works. It pretty much just comes down to physics.

So to get back to rock music. Rock music is great because it gives those angst-y, edgy vibrations an outlet, a way to release energies that may seem “stuck” in the physical body. Instead of allowing them to build and take on a powerful vibrational dominance, they get release through singing and dancing, getting wild, and letting go a little.

Not to mention, it’s a lot of fun.
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