May 10, 2000
Didgeridoo enthusiast offers thoughts on life, sound and healing
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
It's ninety seconds to Nirvana, a shortcut to Samadhi.
Phil Jones has found that playing the didgeridoo, a native Australian instrument, is a quick way to enter that blissful state of peace sought by practitioners of meditation or yoga. With seven years of study with a Hindu master and decades of meditation practice under his belt, the Taos, New Mexico, resident was in Traverse City last weekend offering his thoughts on life, the universe and didgeridoos at a seminar entitled 'The Yoga of Breath and Sound: An Interactive Healing Workshop.'
Held at the Union Yoga Studio Friday evening, Jones led 16 participants through the basic breathing and playing techniques, weaving in a dose of metaphysics and philosophy for good measure.
"After studying in England with a Hindu master, I went back to Australia and started playing this instrument," said Jones, an Australian native who now lives and travels in the United States to share his discoveries.
"I had a quantum spiritual leap with the didgeridoo. I can reach a level of consciousness usually reserved for yogis in a cave with this shortcut."
Traverse City resident Tricia Mead has been studying yoga off and on for 12 years and has been a teacher at Union Yoga Studio for two years. She was intrigued by the seminar and came to learn the circular breathing techniques, where you inhale and exhale at the same time while blowing gently into the didgeridoo. This circular breathing is one of the hallmarks of didgeridoo, which enables players to make music for hours at a time. Jones noted that he once played for 10 hours straight with only a few small breaks.
"Breathwork is very central to yoga, so I probably gained a new level of understanding of breathing from this," Mead said. "It was nice to hear someone else's approach."
The didgeridoo is a primitive instrument, the authentic Australian ones made by termites that hollow out the log to live in. To have a didgeridoo, a person simply evicts the termites and starts blowing into the log. The length and circumference of the log changes sound, with ones more than four feet long making a richer, fuller tone. A beeswax mouthpiece at the opening operates like a reed in a Western wind instrument and allows the instrument's opening to be customized.
Some of Jones' didgeridoos are made by a native Australian in the Central Australian desert, an area he lived and studied in for years. The artist there uses delicate dots of paint to decorate each instrument with elaborate designs.
During his workshops, Jones brings along enough instruments so that all participants can have hands on experience playing one. After explaining the history of the instrument and his experiences with it, he coached players for the next two hours on the breathing, how to achieve the instruments distinctive 'twang,' using its unique voice and how to play it in the meditative way he finds so rewarding.
"The didgeridoo is an instrument of pure self-expression," Jones said. "Anyone who tries to tell you this is the only way to play it is wrong; I'm just giving some general guidelines."
The idea that practicing yoga and playing the didgeridoo are compatible was immediately apparent to Sandy Carden, founder of the Union Yoga Studio, when Jones contacted her one day out of the blue. He had initially contacted staff at WNMC offering to conduct a seminar in Traverse City, but they sent him to Carden who agreed to host his seminar.
"It was great fun," Carden said. "I could feel the resonance in my chest for hours afterward. Once you kind of accidentally get the circular breathing you have it, like learning to ride a bicycle."