Let It Ring by Rachel Frankenthal
I’ll never forget the first time I experienced the true power of sound. I was singing in a church in Mitchell’s Plain, a township in Cape Town, South Africa with my a cappella group from college. We were singing “You Raise Me Up” by Josh Groban. Even though many of the congregants did not speak English, everyone knew the words to the song as it was an international hit at the time. As our individual voices united and rang through the walls of the church, the beautiful people of Mitchell’s Plain joined their voices with ours. I stopped listening to my individual voice and allowed my body to listen with every pore of my being. Tears streamed uncontrollably down my face and my heart felt like it was going to explode out of my chest. As I
looked around the room, I realized that everyone was crying. Everyone was feeling it. For the first time, I felt a oneness with the world and with a group of people who were seemingly completely different from me. I felt a power greater than myself take over. I felt connected. I felt alive.
What I love so much about yoga is that it is so relevant and so relatable. What I experienced in South Africa was Nada Yoga, the yoga of sound… how through the vibrations of our internal rhythms and outward voices, we connect through our hearts. There’s nothing like sitting in a room full of yogis, and feeing that moment when the frequency of all our voices intertwine and create a ringing sound of harmony. And it’s not so much something you hear, but something you feel. Sounds cut straight through the brain and right to the soul. And because sound is simply vibration, we don’t have to have perfect
pitch or even the ability to hear at all to feel it. We are comprised of it. We are made of it and it is always there. We just have to get quiet enough to let it ring.
