Ontogenesis by NTHNL

Ontogenesis is the third in a series of albums called the Tranquility Studies. The idea was born in 2020 around the beginning of the pandemic as a way to formalize my explorations into making music to affect feelings of peace and introspection in listeners. This music combines electronic binaural frequencies with performances on a variety of instruments to create soundscapes that are at once calming, poetic and healing. The music uses a technique called brainwave entrainment, which uses certain frequencies to sympathetically vibrate the mind, inducing it into meditative states.

In 2021 as I was finishing Cosmic Flute Rides Again I was approached by Leslie Graves, a yoga teacher and musician I collaborate with frequently, to see if I’d like to make an album to accompany a yoga class in its entirety. We began with the Chakras and worked from the bottom of the body to the top, meeting for a few sessions in which we sketched ideas on the piano with Leslie prompting the musical ideas through certain body-related keywords and I responding in sound. Originally, this “Music of the Body” (the original title) was conceived as a meditation on and through the body. Over the course of the next year, as I spent more and more time with the material I realized that the album’s progression through the body should exist in time as much as in space.

I came upon the word Ontogenesis in Erwin Schrodinger’s What is life? A book written before the discovery of DNA which attempts to find the physical basis for life’s existing and reproducing itself and coming upon many deep and beautiful ideas in that exploration. Ontogenesis means the progression of an organism from conception through death. As we move up the body, we move through a life: from before the beginning to after the end, reflecting and accepting at every stage in order to move on and through. Each of the tracks on the album has a corresponding visualization meditation you can do while listening, you can return your focus to the music or to the given meditation, using them in tandem to amplify the experience of each to the other.

Meditations

welcome procession: this can accompany a walking meditation, this is the only meditation for which the eyes can be open. Start by synchronizing your breath with your walking, four paces in, six paces out or however many feels right (lengthening the exhale helps to settle down the nervous system). This track is designed to fortify and ground a person, determination can come to mind.

straightening, dispersing: from an upright and seated position, bring your attention to your spine. Visualize your energy traveling up and down the spine and spreading throughout the body. Try to sit as tall as possible.

nourishing, holding: this is a track of rebirth. Lie down or listen in the fetal position, imagining you are in the womb. Sync your breathing to the sound of the waves, imagine yourself to be nourished, growing, fresh with life and possibility, a butterfly still in the cocoon.

reaching, striving praying: take an equal in and out breath of any length. Once you are settled in your breathing, focus on your limbs, individually and then collectively and individually again and so on. This is a track of action, of how we use our bodies to do what we need to do via the limbs.

processing, detoxifying: place both hands on the liver (under the ribcage on the right side of the body). Bring your attention to your hands and to your liver. Imagine your blood flowing into your liver, breaking down nutrients, processing toxins in your body and balancing your system. Once you feel grounded in this visualization and using the analogy of the liver and the blood, imagine you are doing this with the thoughts in your mind.

assurance, rising: take steady, powerful breaths. Focusing on the solar plexus (the space just beneath the sternum), on your inhale, fill up your lungs as much as possible, and empty the lungs completely on the exhale. Your breathing should be steady and exaggerated. Imagine your breath fortifying you, strengthening you for the life ahead. Strength and determination.

Heart: place both hands on the heart, take slow and steady breaths, exhale longer than the inhale. Feel your heartbeat and focus on it, as your exhales become longer, your heartbeat becomes slower. Feel gratitude for the biological miracle that powers your life, that never stops. Feel gratitude for the blood which nourishes your cells and brings you life.

aerating, billowing: take half breaths which are as long as possible never completely inhaling nor exhaling. Focus on your lungs (two large sacs in your mid to upper chest cavity), imagining you are less buoyant than air, that they will help you to float above the world, above your troubles.

transmitting, unraveling, communion: bring your attention to your throat, focusing on sending energy out in all directions and then receiving energy. Back and forth, back and forth, dissolving the boundary between sending and receiving until the two become enmeshed. Focusing on the throat area, enmesh yourself with the world around.

synthesis, memory: conjure up a memory, perhaps one which is unpleasant or haunting. Embody the memory, as the music swells, you can make peace with the memory, you can rewrite the memory, you can use the memory to create a new future for yourself. Focus on time. Breath deeply, take shorter exhales and longer inhales. Love and forgive yourself.

return to the cloud, thank you: inhaling gratitude, exhaling stuckness and anxiety, thank yourself for giving yourself this meditation. Send love out from the top of your head into the world, be grateful. Begin to open your eyes as the track continues, bringing yourself back into the room. Ever grateful, thank you for experiencing this album with me.