Notes on Being Acoustic

I had a dream a few nights ago.

I was sitting with my sister in a sea that felt like her home. Beneath us was a structure made of Legos, some parts sturdy and well built, others unstable and loosely stacked. From somewhere within the structure, really horrific music was playing. It filled the water. I felt scared and unsettled.

I turned to her and asked why she listened to such frightening music. She looked at me calmly and said, “Oh, you can change it if you like.”

She showed me a boombox, a small radio floating there with us. I reached out and changed the music to something softer, gentler, more beautiful. Instantly, the entire sea transformed. The water became clear. I felt safe. I felt happy. I could see the structure below us more clearly, where it was strong, where it needed support. The children playing in the sea were happy too.

Then my daughter woke me, asking for water.

When I lay back down with her sleeping on my chest, the dream stayed with me. And something landed with absolute clarity: whether you realize it or not, all of life is acoustic.

The music we listen to, the words we speak and hear. The thoughts we think, the beliefs we carry, both conscious and unconscious. The food we eat, the images we consume, the sensations we experience and the environment we live in. All of it is vibration. All of it is acoustic.

In Katonah Yoga®, we use a lot of metaphors. We speak about the body as an instrument. We fine-tune our instrument through personal practice so that we can play in a band, and play well with others. The breath is the melody.

From this perspective, we are first and foremost self-responsible for tuning our own instrument. We are responsible for what we allow to move through us, and for the quality of frequency we emit. When our instrument is clear, what we broadcast is clear.

It’s also true that we are only as refined as the band we play in. And the band is not just the people in our lives, though they matter deeply. It’s everything we expose ourselves to. Every vibration we consume affects our instrument and the energy we put back into the world. Frequency does not work like a sealed room; our bodies, minds, and nervous systems are in constant relationship with our environment.

Lying there with my daughter breathing softly against me, I took an inventory of the acoustics in my life. What frequencies am I exposing myself to? What am I sharing? What words am I using? What am I taking on and amplifying?

Fear, I believe, is the loudest and most dominant acoustic in the world right now. It is also the sneakiest. Fear can run your life in ways you don’t even realize.

We live in a culture that glorifies fear: violence, pain, horror. We choose music, movies, news, podcasts that center around murder, catastrophe, and the darkest aspects of being human. As a society, we are obsessed. And that obsession is reflected everywhere, especially in the body.

Life has become processed. Loud. Artificial. Scary. Plastic.

We live immersed in the darkness of the news, the phone, the internet. Our food is ultra-processed, our attention fragmented, our nervous systems overwhelmed. And then we wonder why our instrument can’t play a clean note and why life feels so out of tune.

Most of us aren’t even aware that we have an instrument, let alone that we are in charge of what we consume and what we broadcast.

Life is not happening in your podcast, your Instagram feed, or your doom scroll. Life is happening right in front of you. It’s the very thing you are yearning for, and you can’t sense it because as a society we’ve grown disconnected from the real, tangible world.

We now have to over-regulate because being part of society itself has become so deeply dysregulating. 

All of this is to say: we do have power. We can change our focus. We can change how we live, even within difficult circumstances.

One of my most unpopular opinions is this: you are almost never a victim of your circumstances. There is always something you can shift. It may not be perfect. It may not look the way you want it to. But there is always a way to shift perspective, to move, to choose differently, to change your own frequency and broadcast differently. 

The first step is simple, though not easy: accept things exactly as they are; the pain and sadness, the numbness and partial despair. 

The second step is to stop fighting it, stop trying to push or sage it away or fix it immediately. Instead, allow it. Embrace it. Let it be there.

That’s it.

From there, perspective changes. Awareness widens. And you are different. From that place, you can choose differently and take your life forward with more clarity.

You, my dear reader, are not stuck, you are absolutely not broken. Nothing is wrong with you. 

Just because your life isn’t always beautiful, graceful, or Instagram-worthy does not mean something is wrong with you. This is life. All of it.

So embrace all. Reject none. And seek to be as wildly present as possible. And remember that you get to choose the music.