India.Arie Embraces Meditation and Yoga to Fuel her Music
Many a yoga practitioner’s playlist has included a heartfelt composition by Grammy-winning soul singer India.Arie since her 2001 Motown Records debut, Acoustic Soul. India.Arie takes us right along with her with groovy beats and thoughtful lyrics in songs like, “Beautiful,” “The Truth,” “Video,” and others. Her exploration of life is definitely a spiritual one and it’s possible to sing along. In “I Am Not My Hair,” she sings, “I am not my hair. I am not my skin. I am not your expectations. I am the soul that lives within.” These are the attitudes we spend a lifetime cultivating.
In her own life, she’s been taking it to another level. After a four year hiatus from recording and touring, 2013 welcomed her latest album, Songversation; a highly anticipated release by those who follow her positive messages and powerful voice. In a recent yoga class, when I turned on “Cocoa Butter,” the entire class sang along to declare, “Your love is like cocoa butter on my heart….I show you my burns. You show me lessons learned.” All the tracks here are filled with messages of renewal, rising up like a luminous phoenix from the ashes of burnout leading to self-reflection.
India.Arie took time to come back to her inspiration, her practice, and it shows in her songs, her stage presence, and her dedication. As she says in “Soulbird Rise,” from Songversation:
“I believe in open doors…I’m ready to let the world come inside and touch my life. I will no longer be defined by what someone else believes that I am. Now that I have dropped the weight, I am light as a feather. It’s time to elevate. Soulbird rise. Spread your wings. Prepare to fly. This is the moment of your life. Go ahead and fly.”
Through the bravery and devotion of her own journey, one she shares through her artistry, she gives us all permission to fly.
LA YOGA caught up with India.Arie after her Los Angeles show at Club Nokia, while she was taking a break between legs of her Songversation world tour.
Conversation with India.Arie
FMT: India.Arie, you’re a powerhouse! In person and in performance, you exemplify your practice with powerful music and a positive message.
Indie: I did a lot of work to get here.
FMT: It comes across. What has been meaningful for you in your work?
Indie: I had been having a hard time with the music industry. Really hard. I was exhausted all the time; it was affecting my health and relationships. The year 2009 felt progressively worse and worse; I was in lower vibrational environments. I loved to be on stage but I didn’t enjoy anything else that went with it.
By the Fall of ’09, I was exhausted. I had just completed a 40-city tour that I intuitively knew I shouldn’t do, but I did it anyway. At that point, I could not blame anybody else for anything; I was allowing it to happen. Right before Halloween, I was writing in my journal — I remember saying it out loud because it was an epiphany: “I am responsible for myself. I am letting this happen.”
It was like this: “Okay, what are you going to do about your business situation? What are you going to do about your relationship? Where do you want to live? What are you going to do about this extra weight? What are you going to do about your relationship with your mom and dad? What are you going to do?”
I decided to be responsible for myself. Everything else came from that, and that started the work. I went on a quest to figure out what I wanted my life to be, and to clear up all the areas that were weighing me down, leaving me free to rebuild.
Then came the learning phase and being honest with myself about who I am—all the things I didn’t know about myself. For instance, I had been giving my power away and I was always blaming somebody for taking it and I was just giving it away.
The rebuilding phase was the next part of the work. I consider where I am right now to be past the rebuilding phase. Now I’m testing what I have built. I have loved touring with my latest album Songversation. I love the way the audience feels. I love the way that I feel on stage, and it’s working for my business. I’m still waiting for my personal life to come into the picture, but I feel more ready for those things than I ever did before. I think it is all working.
FMT: So many of your songs have a strong message of self-acceptance, and that’s part of what you’ve been describing — that you have been claiming, reclaiming, and owning your power. It’s a lifetime practice. We don’t do it with just one song or just one interaction or just one business decision or even one show. We have to do again and again.
Indie: Every once in a while, someone–often a young black woman–asks me something like, “How did you become you?” I think I know what they mean; my answer always is that it’s not about trying to do a thing, or be a thing, or act a certain way. Your life is the culmination of your choices—that is what makes you you.
Make choices that are loving for yourself—with your diet, your relationships, and in speaking your loving truth—that are in are in alignment with what you want to be doing. When you see that in a person, you are seeing their passion and fulfillment, and that person feels good to you because they feel good to themselves. I know that I feel good and I think that comes across on stage; when I didn’t feel good before, I think that came across on stage.
FMT: What practices help you claim, reclaim, and stay in that space? What have you found that brings you back?
Indie: The best thing that has come out of this process of transformation for me is my understanding that honoring yourself really does work. It presents itself as something hard to do because if it were easy to do, then you wouldn’t even think twice. But it’s those hard decisions you have to make: when you know what you need to do but you are scared– and then you find out that it was the right thing. I’ve done that so many times now, that even when I am afraid, I can tell the difference of how the right thing feels inside. Once you do it enough times, your muscle for it becomes strong, and it’s easier to get yourself back to that set point.
One of the things I do is journal. You can draw in your journal, you can write one word on one page in your journal. You can do anything. I journal because it is a place where I can just put things down on paper, out of my head, and I don’t have to think about them anymore. One of the things that has helped me a lot over these past four years is to ask myself questions and then answer them honestly.
I pray. I don’t think that there is any right way to pray other than just being sincere. I meditate; I practice TM (Transcendental Meditation).
I don’t know if this is a practice or not but, I tell people what I feel. Sometimes it’s easy to fall into the trap of being pleasing or holding on to other people’s stuff, but that all affects your health in so many ways. I just tell people what I think because holding stuff in is what made me the most sick. All of that leads to clarity. I do everything that I can to be clear with people and with myself.
FMT: Even speaking to the people around you is a practice. We have ingrained in us that we have to please.
Indie: Yes, that was a hard one. I’ve read all the books but I didn’t know what any of this felt like until I decided to take 100% responsibility for myself. It’s all real to me now.
FMT: Do you feel that part of it becoming real was inspired by that sense of exhaustion, from hitting the wall, and then saying “This is enough, what is going to be different?”
Indie: You know that saying, “Every breakdown holds a breakthrough?” I didn’t know what it meant until I went through it. The rock bottom is the seed for your elevation.
FMT: What does your elevation look like in your life now?
Indie: The bottom line is asking for what I want and making sure that I have what I need. Making sure that I can be myself.
During this tour, I asked for what I need: a vegan chef, a guy bus and a girl bus; my mission is too important for somebody to tell me no. There is no no — you can say no if you want to, but move aside and let me continue on my journey. It has all been proving the theory that all these things that have come to me in my prayer and meditation can be real. Getting what you need is also telling people how you feel, that is how my life is working, and that is why things are better with my mom and my creative team. In every aspect things are better.
I speak to the crowd too. I tell the audience this is not a concert, this is a “songversation.” I talk and I sing. I needed to be able to get on stage and be all me, I didn’t want to pretend to be an entertainer or try to fit into someone else’s mold of what an entertainer does. I see myself as someone who is doing spiritual work thought music and I would like to see myself as a healer. My hope is that people are healed though the messages in my music.
FMT: How has your yoga practice been meaningful for you?
Indie: Somehow I ended up being a young adult who lived in her head. Literally, on a physical level. As an artist, I go to that place that is way out of my body or way into my head.
Yoga started for me in ’06 when I was having chronic back issues. I was on the road and struggling with everything that we have been talking about and the stress showed up in my back. I always had a yoga mat somewhere and I played around with yoga because it felt natural to me. At that time, I got on my yoga mat and burst out crying; something started to release from body. That is when I realized I needed to pay attention to my own body.
In the two years after that, I gained somewhere between 20 and 25 pounds. While I was talking about mind, body, and spirit, I was living in a mental and spiritual world. But I wasn’t paying attention to my body. Yoga helped me to do that. It’s also how I ground myself. When I wake up in the morning I still feel like I’m not yet in my body, so I stretch for 10 or 15 minutes by doing some sun salutations. I feel clear—my mind, body, and spirit are ready for the day.
Yoga has also been important because on tour, sometimes I don’t have time to do everything, but I’m at that place where I can just fold forward at my waist and my back will adjust itself. It just works.
FMT: Although you said you tend to live in your head, there is an aspect to being on stage where you are using your whole body. How are you embodied on stage?
Indie: People who get on stage are not present in their bodies all the time. I would be tired after a show and I would be in the back of the dressing room spaced out because I would be disconnected from my body. I’m learning how to be in my body on stage and how much it is available to me. It is very different now: I love that feeling of being in my body on stage.
FMT: Whatever you are doing is working for you. The response from your fans is so positive. It appears they’ve caught up with you.
Indie: I hope so. I think so, that makes me happy.
For more information about India.Arie, Songversation, and her world tour, visit: soulbird.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.