Food for the Soul
Arcade Fire’s Sarah Neufeld on Practice
Sarah Neufeld is a powerful performer whose violin bow sings with a sense of drama, emotion, and the play of prana. This member of the Grammy Award-winning Canadian indie rock band Arcade Fire is also an avid yogi who commits to daily practice on the road.
Sarah is one of the cofounders of Moksha Yoga New York, part of the community of hot yoga studios founded in 2004 in Toronto, by Ted Grand and Jessica Robertson. Moksha (Sanskrit for freedom) has grown to 75 studios worldwide with a strong sense of community, environmental responsibility, and emphasis on accessibility of the practice.
Between practicing at Moksha Yoga LA with her friends, LA studio cofounders Deena Robertson and Emily Morwen, and an evening of electric solo violin among a sold-out crowd at Dilettante in the downtown LA arts district, Sarah paused to talk music, her Moksha Yoga family, and rolling out her mat on the road.
LA YOGA: How do you find a way to practice while on tour?
Sarah Neufeld: Touring is a great example of something that could lead to a lot of chaos if you don’t do the work to balance or ground yourself, so developing a regular practice has created a lot of stability and peace for me.
I’d been practicing over the years but I didn’t have that real deep daily dedication until my teacher training, where part of it included a 30 day challenge on the mat. I chose to do it on tour in Europe; I wanted to take it to that level. No matter the circumstance, my practice would have my full dedication. I was practicing anywhere from a hallway in a hotel in Germany with guests walking by while I was in downward facing dog, to beside the drum kit during our 30 minutes off during the sound check. It was kind of awesome. Even in all the chaos, the challenge reconnected me both to my practice and touring in a different way. I was so much less stressed and moody, not that I’m an incredibly moody person, but you know, you get moody with your band because you’re tired and crazy. I had more fun on that tour than I’d ever had before. I was able to be more present with my circumstances and was just making friends with them. From then on I have committed to have a daily practice.
LA YOGA: Sometimes when you think you have the least time for it is when you need practice the most.
SN: Sometimes backstage there isn’t enough room, and even with Arcade Fire we have a really grand tour, but I remember in Calgary when we played at the stampede grounds, and I practiced in a wheelchair accessible bathroom.
LA YOGA: How did you get started practicing yoga?
SN: I was curious about it growing up on Vancouver Island in British Columbia where there was a lot of it around but I never went. Then I took a couple Ashtanga classes in college and I loved it, but I was a dedicated music student, 19-20 years old; I wasn’t finding that much dedication in my life for healthy stuff. I didn’t think I needed it.
Throughout the years, having a little bit more of a rollercoaster of a life led me to find a home to practice at Moksha in Montreal. I could walk into the studio after having been away for a month or two or three and they always welcomed me in, they were always so open and friendly and the practice was perfect for me. I needed something accessible, and the sweat was great. A few years later I did the training.
LA YOGA: What inspired you to get involved with opening the studio in New York?
SN: Co-founder Rebecca Foon and I have always shared a parallel path. We’re both from British Columbia, we both play string instruments in rock bands and we’ve known each other since we were 15. We did the yoga teacher training together, roomed together, and we started dreaming.
She’s such a great dreamer – she’s not afraid to have really big ideas, and I’m sort of more of a conservative Virgo, I’m like, “Well, you can’t have a dream before you can seal the pieces, Rebecca.” And she’s like, “Let’s go to the moon!” I can’t remember who said New York, but I was spending a lot of time there and it’s such an incredibly vibrant, exciting city. It’s close to Montreal, and I fell in love there, and we were always going back and forth.
I love tons of studios in NYC, but there was nothing like Moksha. So we dreamt big and slowly made it happen. We found amazing partners who were willing to be there full time to run it.
Our opening party was a performance: We played solo work in the room with our community, new students, and people who were already helping us with the studio. We want to make this not only a practice space but a sharing place for all of our passions, and a huge part of that is music, art and performance.
LA YOGA: What drew you to playing violin?
SN: A big draw was my older brother; I was two and he was five when he started lessons. I adore him to pieces and wanted to do everything he did. But also I really loved the instrument. I remember the victory of having my own instrument when I was three years old.
LA YOGA: Has your yoga practice influenced some of the other band members when you’ve been traveling?
SN: In two bands that I’m in, Bell Orchestre and The Luyas, there are a couple of yogis who do daily practice. I’ve lead practices, and that’s really fun, and I know that the three of us really appreciate having that on the road because it’s rare.
With Arcade Fire, one of my bandmates practices with me sometimes. Along the way here and there people will be interested in taking a class with me, so I’ve done some sweet backstage classes, with roadies and sound people. It’s definitely infiltrated, but I don’t feel right about pushing people into practicing. It’s more like, I’m here if you want to practice and I know where the yoga mats are.
LA YOGA: How did you get involved in playing violin in rock bands?
SN: When I was a teenager I wanted to improvise so I played guitar in rock bands, but I learned I was a better violin player than a guitar player. When I figured out that I could plug the violin in, it was a natural mode of expression. Studying at Concordia in Montreal, I was playing jazz violin in bands. I was interested in exploring what I could do with this instrument how much I could be free with it.
I was one of the founders of Bell Orchestre, a project collaborating with dance and theatre. Around the same time, Arcade Fire was becoming active; I became involved around 2003 before they recorded. That was the first real rock band I ever played in; real in the sense that this is a band, we are making an album, we’re going on tour, it was exciting. When I first saw Arcade Fire, they were screaming through traffic pylons instead of microphones, and Régine Chassagne was springing around the stage like a crazy little sprite, and I thought, “This is theatre but it’s this beautiful rock music.” It wasn’t just like I’m going to play strings and sit in a chair, it was like, “I’m going to explode in this music.”
LA YOGA: What are you excited about in your solo work?
SN: This is the first time I’ve played alone since I was a kid playing classical music. I’ve always wanted to, but what I play, “a genre-less avant-garde instrumental solo thing” sounds daunting, so I was a little nervous. It is also challenging for me to perform solo. It’s intimate, and if you stop playing, nothing else is happening.
LA YOGA: What has been the most rewarding moment in your musical career?
SN: There have been so many. Arcade Fire has had such an incredible time in the last year. We won a Grammy, and that blew our minds because we were in this category with the most commercial music in the world, and we won best album. This is a dream, not like winning this is the end-all-be-all of why you make music, but it was so shocking and so fun—that moment of hearing Barbra Streisand’s voice stuttering out the words.
LA YOGA: What are your hopes for the Yoga studio?
SN: I want to reach everybody who has a moment to come in, which is why we offer donation and community classes. I want to reach people who think they can’t do yoga because they aren’t strong, or flexible, or fit, just getting everybody together in a big sweaty pile.
LA YOGA: Do you ever teach at the studio?
SN: When I’m in New York I teach full time, in Montreal I usually teach part-time. I’ve had time to dive in and to be a yoga teacher, and I love it. It’s great because I leave everything at the door and I’m just there for the students. It’s challenging and demanding and yet it’s so simple.
LA YOGA: How do your yoga teaching, yoga practice and music tie together?
SN: They all lead me to just being present in every way that I can be: There’s a real connection in that each one balances the other. Teaching ensures that I’m living my yoga. With music, yoga makes me stronger and I’m able to make space in my mind to listen more. Listening is a huge part of making good music. I can’t have one without the other.
Images by David Young Wolff: Davidyoung-wolff.com
Felicia Tomasko has spent more of her life practicing Yoga and Ayurveda than not. She first became introduced to the teachings through the writings of the Transcendentalists, through meditation, and using asana to cross-train for her practice of cross-country running. Between beginning her commitment to Yoga and Ayurveda and today, she earned degrees in environmental biology and anthropology and nursing, and certifications in the practice and teaching of yoga, yoga therapy, and Ayurveda while working in fields including cognitive neuroscience and plant biochemistry. Her commitment to writing is at least as long as her commitment to yoga. Working on everything related to the written word from newspapers to magazines to websites to books, Felicia has been writing and editing professionally since college. In order to feel like a teenager again, Felicia has pulled out her running shoes for regular interval sessions throughout Southern California. Since the very first issue of LA YOGA, Felicia has been part of the team and the growth and development of the Bliss Network.