Social Workout

Soundtrack for Home Workouts

From Roof of the World to Your Living Room

Jungchen Llahmo

It was deep winter 2007, and I was heading up to Shelburn Falls, MA to write a story about Vipassana meditation for Fortune magazine. It was seriously snowing, and I shared a Hertz SUV with the photographer, a British ex-rocker in vintage tweeds and no overcoat named Steve Pyke. Pyke, it turned out, had made his name shooting old musician pals like Joe Strummer and Johnny Rotten in the 1980s.  Crawling up I-91 in the snow, Pyke and I talked of music and meditation, and pretty soon he asked me if I had ever listened to a Tibetan singer named Yungchen Llahmo, for whom he'd shot some cover art. No, I confessed. He looked at me hard, and I promised I'd buy the CD if we survived the blizzard. We did, and I did, and Tibet, Tibet is now my go to soundtrack for yoga in the home. Run, don't walk to Amazon, where it's currently availabe for as little as $4.91. Best five dollars you'll ever spend.

The liner notes are these: Yungchen was "born in a labor camp outside Lhasa in Chinese-occupied Tibet." Though Tibetan devotional singing was outlawed by the Chinese, her grandmother managed to teach her the form. In 1989, at age 23, she fled her job in a carpet-weaving factory in Tibet, and managed to make it safely overland 1,000 miles to find the Dalai Llama in Dharmsala. When the latter heard her sing, he more or less said: Go West young lady, and show the world the richness of Tibetan culture.

Tibet, Tibet is her second album, released in 1996 by Peter Gabriel's Real World Label, and it has long since achieved cult status. It's a mostly a capella collection of simple Tibetan prayer songs, and, when Llahmo sings them, there's never any question that these are prayers. Her voice is painful in its beauty, and sadness. Occasionally, she is accompanied by a chorus of monks who chant in bass tones so deep its not entirely clear the sounds are coming from human voices. The overall effect is mournfal, and moving, and deeply calming.

To transform your living room into instant yoga shala: Dim the lights, draw curtain, perhaps light incense, unroll yoga mat. If necessary, situate handy laptop computer nearby displaying a website showing a decent vinyasa series. I usually default to the Ashtanga primary series.  When ready, cue up Tibet, Tibet. The run time is roughly 45 minutes, perfect for an abbreviated home yoga practice, or a long meditation.