May 13

May 13 Interview With David Newman, Renown Kirtan Musican, Spiritual Teacher And Presenter At The Hanuman Summit

By Ashley Shires

Join the beloved Hanuman Community June 11 - 14 for a FREE, epic online experience, including live streaming morning meditations and evening music, and recorded yoga classes and interviews with over thirty master teachers and consciousness leaders.

This is an important time to remain connected to each other and committed to our practices. We have the opportunity to rewrite our future, and we have the gift of yoga to help us recover quickly from the difficulties.We are resilient. Join this extraordinary confluence to learn practices and insights into how the technology of yoga can help us collectively renew.

We had the incredible opportunity to interview one of the presenters David Newman on his philosophy, the inspiration behind his music, and his favorite parts of Hanuman Festival from past year!

David, we’re excited that you’ll be participating in the Hanuman Summit. You have such an intriguing spiritual journey, from law student to yogi to world-traveling, world-renown musician. Can you tell us a little about your path?

I discovered yoga years ago, living in LA, but I was inspired deeply in law school in New York City; I was practicing three to four hours a day, which made my law studies much less stressful (laughs). My colleagues noticed, and they got me to teach a yoga class in law school. I took the bar exam in the summer of 1992, really bouncing back and forth between opening a law practice or a yoga studio. I saw a “For Rent” sign and decided to open a yoga center. Three or four months after taking the bar exam, I opened Yoga on Main in Philadelphia. It’s gone through a couple of reincarnations over the years, but it’s still going strong.

Are you still involved with the yoga center?

I had been a musician prior, and seven or eight years into running the yoga center, I had a dream that I was inspired to pick up my guitar and start writing songs, and I did. I became a traveling gypsy and recording artist at the age of 40. Things took off when someone from the NPR show, “All Things Considered,” went to one of my kirtan performances and asked to write a review of my album, “Lotus Feet: A Kirtan Revolution,” and my career just skyrocketed. Things are different now, but for 15-16 years, I was on the road non-stop, playing festivals, yoga centers, releasing albums; it was an extraordinary ride.

How are things different for you now?

Eight years ago, I had a child, Tulsi, and there was a natural inclination to slow down a bit, and I hit the end of a cycle, didn’t want to travel with the same intensity. Now I’m more careful about what aligns – I just got back from a 10-day tour in Florida, and I’m playing in my hometown of Philly in a few weeks, and I lead trips to the Himalayas with Benjy and Heather Wertheimer of Shantala. I am a devotee of Neem Karoli Baba, a great northern Indian saint, and we go to the foothills to an ashram and up into the sacred mountains. We visit all the sacred sites and temples; it’s a pilgrimage into the heart of Bhakti India, and we chant there and feel the land and the history and the energy that gives back to us.

What was your inspiration for the song “Love Heals All Wounds?”

The song is aligned with the foundation of my teaching practice, which is to choose love at every moment, even if it’s your knee jerk reaction not to. The song is aligned with the principal that love has the power to heal anything that comes along in life. Everything I teach has to do with the practice of Bhakti, the practice of love, cultivating a reflex for love instead of fear. The effect of kirtan is to open the heart, which is the essence of the practice, to be loving in the world and to be engaged in the world, especially considering what is going on in the world right now, with the elections, the virus. The question is: how we can engage in highly volatile times, strewn with duality and lots of fear, how do we not shirk from being a citizen, from participating and coming back to trusting love? More than ever it’s important to stay connected to community, to sangha, to what is important and what is real – the whole point is to take these shifts in consciousness outward; we have the responsibility to bring it forward and be part of the transformation on the planet in so many ways: environmentally, politically, and in intimate relationships; conscious of what kind of human beings we choose to be.

This inspiration seems aligned with the Hanuman Summit.

Hanuman has always been one of my favorite destinations for so many reasons - it is a heart-based festival that really puts the love front and center; there is always such a good feeling, a community feeling to it. Yoshi, the founder, besides being a dear friend, his intention is so pure and beautiful to create this energy where people come and get nourished and bring it back to their communities; it sends ripples out into the world. I am always grateful to be a part of it.

For more information about David Newman, visit his website: davidnewmanmusic.com. And click HERE to register for the Hanuman Summit.

The Hanuman Summit will be featuring: