Context
On the occasion of International Yoga Day 2025, a national seminar titled, ‘Harnessing the Healing Power of Yoga: From Mind-Body Balance to Clinical Applications’, was organised and hosted by Advanced Centre for Yoga Therapy Education & Research (ACYTER), Department of Physiology, JIPMER (Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research), Puducherry, an institution of national importance and a tertiary care referral hospital under the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Govt. of India.
As the final offering of the national seminar, a stress-management workshop titled ‘Mind-fulness and Melody: the Art of Stress Relief’ was offered.
Arnab’s oral paper presentation was titled ‘Know Your Rhythm — Blending Yoga of Music and Mantra with Yoga Therapy’ and co-led the workshop ‘Mindfulness & Melody: The Art of Stress Relief’ with Bryce Grinlington, senior faculty, Indian classical flute, Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education. The workshop served as the practicum for the oral paper presentation.
Scientific conference brochure: https://ninad.in/IYD-2025-JIPMER-Brochure.pdf
Oral paper: Know Your Rhythm — Blending Yoga of Music and Mantra with Yoga Therapy
At the outset, can we ask ourselves?
‘Can stress, anxiety possibly illness be considered as a disequilibrium of rhythms?
Can we proactively find, know and re-establish our rhythm so that equilibrium re-emerges and we enable optimal health in ourselves?’
We are told that all stress is not necessarily bad and to be avoided or to be escaped from. Instead we can understand its meaning and message through introspection. Once observed, it can be rightly oriented.
So what are potential ways to rightly orient ourselves?
Know Your Rhythm, is a training programme and methodology, which offers immersive exercises of Yoga in music, sound (Raaga and Taala-based Music Therapy, Mantra Yoga), body (AAsana, Mudraa), breath (Praannaayaama), sleep (Yoga Nidraa). Our speciality lies in composing therapeutic music for a given condition in collaboration with medical and psychiatry team, which is tested on both care-receivers and caregivers in a clinical setting. Backed by our evidence-based studies, Know Your Rhythm is also offered to seekers from all walks of life including teachers, students and managers who wish to discover their own sense of Rhythm in life and work, raising well-being, wellness, empathy, teamwork, leadership.
At its core, Know Your Rhythm aims to create conditions for the Aha! Moment to happen in the care-receiver. The Aha! Moment ‘refers to the human experience of suddenly understanding a previously incomprehensible problem or concept or arriving at a solution that has eluded the analytical mind.
In a spiritual context, the Aha! Moment could be considered to be an intense shift from unconscious instinct to conscious will, leading a revelatory spiritual awakening. An intense “Aha!” or breakthrough can be the direct result of responding to the Divine Grace. If yes, then the objective of our immersive exercises and their streams mentioned above, becomes a modality to create conditions for us to be in a state of receptivity to the Divine Grace.
Workshop: Mindfulness and Melody: the Art of Stress-Relief
Case study 1 leveraged our exploration, practice and application of the Yoga of Taala. ‘Rhythm is where we begin, since we believe it is innate in each one of us.’ Our Project Empathy has engaged over 1,000 children with health challenges including children with special needs, cancer, HIV, learning disabilities and trauma.
The Konnaakol system, the Carnatic vocal percussion system, combines well-coded phonemes such as Taa, Kaa, Dhi, Mi etc. with specific claps and gestures. Know Your Rhythm has pioneered the application of Konnaakol with gait, fine motor-skills, speech therapy and body movement into a protocol in alignment with neurological music therapy (NMT). NMT can be described as the therapeutic application of music and neuroscience on cognitive, motor and sensory functions and development. This protocol has been applied to children with special needs, patients with neuro-motor disabilities, geriatric patients.
Case study 2 blended an immersive exercise from Yoga Therapy and Music Therapy, while combining ‘visualisation methodology of Guided Imagery and Music (GIM) and Yoga Nidra to induce deep relaxation’. It was offered in the form of Guided Imagery and Music (GIM), where the audience members were requested to hold Sukhaasana with Mukul Mudraa and visualise a series of images as gently instructed by the trainer, Arnab. Bryce was asked to improvise a slow initiation (alaap) on Raga Ahir Bhairav, a raaga most potent to be experienced during dawn. Arnab initiated a guided meditation, expressing a series of visualised images and inner movements which signify what Raga Ahir Bhairav represents as a metaphor, dawn as an inspiring source of transformation. This exercise was adopted from our Project Susthiti, a stress-management programme, which engaged Covid doctors and nurses across India. ‘68% participants recorded significant change in alertness followed by calmness and control over anger.’ Project Susthiti won the 2021 SEVA award from the International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT), USA.
Source Material
Chowdhury AB. The Rhythms within Us. WONCA Newsletter, October 2021, World Mental Health Day.
Pandey A. Veda of the Body. Pondicherry: AuroPublications; 2014.
Kounios J, Beeman M. The Aha! Moment: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Insight, Current Directions in Psychological Science, Sage, August 2009.
Chowdhury AB, Kalaskar, Korotynskaia S. Project Empathy: Offering Therapy and Care to Children and their Caregivers NAMAH January 2023; 30:4. [Online] https://www.namahjournal.com/doc/Actual/Project-Empathy-vol-30-issue-4.html
Chowdhury AB. Project Susthiti — Reducing Stress, Increasing Well-being in COVID-19 Healthcare Workers in India. Yoga Therapy Today, 2022.
Yagnik et al. The Effect of Music on Healthcare Professionals Working in Covid 19 Isolation Wards — A Pilot Study 5th Medicine Annual Conference Virtual 2020. Department of Medicine, Christian Medical College, Vellore, November 2020.
