Madeleine Bachan Kaur

www.bachanmusic.com   www.huemanbeing.com  INST: @bachan.music

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I have always found home in song and dance.

As a child you could often find me weaving union with my spirit like a dervish in the backyard, or on the toilet singing improvised songs of imagination.  In my teenage years, I began to awaken spiritually through plant medicine, nature and community. Exploring sound was one of the most natural forms of expressing my heart, soul, awareness and devotion. At the age of 18 I discovered Kundalini Yoga and fell in love with the power of sound, meditation and mantra to heal and uplift consciousness.  I am now almost 40 and since that time, sacred sound has been the heart and guiding force for my life path. I continue to experience in my own life and the lives of the people that I touch, that sound and song is one of the most profound ways to shift consciousness, bringing clarity, healing, joy and love.  It is woven through all spiritual traditions and is continually being expressed as the song of the universe, nature and our very essence. By cultivating a personal practice and relationship to our own sound, we are given infinite gifts in the most subtle and divine ways that for me personally, are the greatest sources of joy and fulfillment.

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I have spent years traveling, recording, leading devotional sound, kirtan and supporting others in connecting with their voice and creativity.  I first met Thomas and Paul at the Singing Alive festival in Oregon and we felt like family immediately. I have been so fortunate to participate as a support and facilitator at 2 previous Yoga of Sound and Chocolate trainings and they changed my life.  I have always struggled somewhat with the structures of spiritual traditions (for myself most specifically with the Kundalini and Sikh tradition). I long to surrender fully into the healing and spiritual grace of a particular lineage, but I always hesitate as I find myself in conflict with the limitations and dogmatism that seem to be present in even the most open of paths.  One of the most beautiful and unique gifts that I received through participating in this special training is that I found it to be a conscious synthesis of the unified wisdom of diverse traditions. It was a breath of fresh air to be part of a community experience that simultaneously honors the gifts and uniqueness of diverse practices and perspectives, while consciously cultivating an openness to the unknown and the curiosity to discover our individual and collective evolution through sound.

I found myself both extremely inspired and empowered to follow the true unique voice of my own soul. It gave me the courage to face deep seated fears of conformity that were influencing my expression, practice and relationship to myself and the world.  I feel that this training has directly impacted my self trust as I continue to channel and share diverse sounds of prayer and healing into the world as a recording artist in a way that is authentic and beyond genre. It has given me a deeper curiosity about who I am and who we are as beings, instilling an orientation of wonder and lifelong learning. 

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Another of the most special gifts received through these trainings has been the freedom of expression and the loving relationship that is supported and cultivated with the inner child.  At the beginning I did not think I would actually drink much cacao, as I find so much ecstasy in sound alone…it seemed unnecessary!  However, I quickly experienced the deep and loving presence of the Divine Mother through the ceremonial relationship with the cacao medicine. The earth and her plants are directly related to mother and child, heart and embodiment. For, me this opened a whole new level of compassion, permission, forgiveness and kindness for the wounded, afraid and anxious parts of my inner child to feel safe and held.  In that warm embrace of the mother cacao medicine, I felt free to be vulnerable and to fully express my innocence, joy, magic and play in the dance of life.  I continue to call upon these lessons daily whenever I find myself getting too rigid, goal oriented, stressed or forgetful of my birthright for happiness.

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I have been teaching Kundalini Yoga for almost 20 years and over the last decade have trained as an educator both through my Masters in Art Education and my Secondary School teacher training in Canada.  When I first joined the Yoga of Sound and Chocolate training I was struck by the pedagogy and teaching methodology that was being explored as it was putting into practice the most cutting edge, empowerment oriented approaches to “education”. In university teacher training programs, these principles were theorized and taught, but rarely practiced. As a teacher, this is one of the elements that most moves me in this training.  It is not a place to be told what to do - rather a spacious container, with integrity, wisdom and intentional structure to support your relationship with yourself, sound, each other and the unknown.  It invites personal and collective trust, curiosity, experimentation and collaboration. Through ritual, ceremony, prayer and creative exploration, we are all invited into the space of true listening and receptivity so that we may discover more and more who we are and what our potential and purpose is on this beautiful planet.  We are all called to our dear earth to learn and share our love in a unique way. I found this container truly offers a vast space to dive deep within, discover and gather strength and courage through beloved community and real life experiences to take that magic into your life and communities in whatever you feel called.

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I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be, or what I’d rather be doing than singing, dancing, drinking, loving, playing and learning in a community of soulful siblings and servants of consciousness. 
Looking forward to the magic!