FMP Presents is an interactive series where mindfulness, storytelling, and music join together in an imaginative and meditative setting.

The first event is next Tuesday, September 22nd, when we celebrate the Autumn Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. This date also happens to be my birthday!

Storytelling and meditation led by Tanya Birl-Torres

Revolving around the theme of autoimmune disorders in women and its link to the suppression of truth, this story is witnessed through the body of a young black girl who has decided to fight “the system” within her own cells, weaving together her identity as she travels through time and across generations.

Music by Big Dog Little Dog (Jessie Montgomery, violin & Eleonore Oppenheim, bass)

Our improvised soundscape is based on the prompt Savasana. I used my background as a yoga practitioner and teacher to inform the structure of the music for this. In the Integral style Hatha Yoga, we have a practice called yoga nidra, or yogic sleep, that we do after the asana, or physical portion of the practice. In yoga nidra, we lie in savasana, or corpse pose, and we go through all of the koshas, or layers of the body-mind system, paying attention to each one in order from outermost to innermost, relaxing the physical body and mind systematically until the body is in a state of waking sleep, which allows it to repair itself like a battery recharging. For the structure of the improvisation, we are using this practice to dictate the structure of the music.