WELLNESS
PRAYERS ARE ALWAYS ANSWERED
Just Not the Way We May Think
T
hree years ago around this time, a year before I produced my “YIN: Yoga in the Nightclub” album, I was flat on my back in bed, in agony, with a severe spinal injury. I was
undergoing a deep spiritual transformation, one that required profound surrender and trust
like I had never had before. From that injury, my whole world changed.
In the fall of 2010, I travelled to the North Pole to give the northernmost musical performance ever, to help raise awareness of the melting polar ice. When I was at the top of the
world, I did some shamanic healing work on the planet, while the sacred Hindu 1000 names
of the Goddess were being chanted – all as a gratitude offering for the benefic bounty
of our Mother Earth. Then I quietly prayed with all my heart and said to the planet herself
something like, “Mother, I know you are suffering. If there is any way I can help, if I can help
alleviate your burden in some way, let me know.” And that was that.
In the ensuing months, I had a very intense time trying to integrate the immensity of suffering
I saw in our world. I cried for weeks, not because I was particularly “sad”. I was in shock from
what I saw and felt, and I was grieving. My heart was breaking open to a whole new reality.
A couple of months after I returned from the Arctic, that phase of grief started to subside.
I thought that my life was going to return to normal and I could resume the musical tour I
had put aside for the North Pole journey. But the emotional shift I was experiencing was just
the tip of a huge iceberg I had hit up against. What happened next I would never have
imagined possible.
I woke up on the morning of March 11, 2011, the day the tsunami devastated Japan,
having had a turbulent night riddled with nightmares and feeling shaken to my core. The