The Flow State - Free Class from a Former Prodigy!
- Erin Clair
- Jun 8
- 3 min read
Dear Community,
In fifth grade, I became something of a child musical prodigy. I had picked up the saxophone a year earlier through the usual elementary school band process, but for whatever reason, I took to it like a duck to water. It came naturally, and my little heart was grateful to have found an outlet for all of my big emotions.
As the years went on, though, performing started to feel stressful. So much of it seemed outside my control, and if there is one thing a person with anxiety cannot tolerate easily, it is precisely that: the feeling that the outcome is not in your hands.
But my love of music never left. As a performer, you learn to live inside a song, and that is what I loved most about it. I am not sure anything has ever felt more beautiful to me than that.
Decades later, after years of teaching and writing about music, film, and literature as a professor, a friend gave me one of the greatest gifts: Cora Wilson let me start teaching a Music Monday yoga class at Força Martial Arts & Fitness, with each week dedicated to a different artist, genre, or musical theme. In practice, this meant spending serious time with artists I might never have chosen on my own, learning their full body of work whether I liked them or not. That is the gift: it required me to live inside music again, to truly know it and feel it the way I did when I was young. And once again, I took to it like a duck to water.
So when someone smirks at a class title ("A Taylor Swift class? Ew."), that reaction only makes me want them in the room more, because they genuinely do not know what they are missing. Building a music yoga class is not about curating an artist's greatest hits. It is about crafting an experience in which students get to feel and understand a theme, and then recognize how that theme is already present in their own lives. Getting to do that for other people feels, to me, like a culmination of everything I have spent my life caring about.
This experience has also taught me not to be so narrow-minded in my musical tastes. The human mind is incredible and what people create reflects that. There are so many amazing ideas and moments I would have missed had I not opened myself up to new music.
TL;DR: It does not matter what theme I am teaching. Trust me. Show up anyway...for yourself.
New Podcast Episodes
41. Eranda Jayawickreme: Suffering May Indeed Make You a Better Person...If You Wait
Eranda Jayawickreme is Harold W. Tribble Professor of Psychology and Senior Research Fellow at the Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University. His research focuses on post-traumatic growth, character, and well-being. He has been featured on NPR’s Hidden Brain, in the New York Times, BBC, the Guardian, the Washington Post, Scientific American, and Slate.
Upcoming Classes
FREE! THIS TUESDAY!
For the love of Arkansas—where my kids were born and raised—I’m teaching a free online Inside Flow yoga class. Arkansas Roots: Music about Arkansas or by Arkansas artists.
Tues. June 9, 2026 @7:30pm Eastern
Zoom Meeting ID: 876 4492 2339
Passcode: 884616
Saturday, June 13 @4:00pm EDT: Taylor Swift Inside Flow Power Yoga at The Inferno (Fitchburg, MA)
Sunday, June 14 @10:30am EDT: Taylor Swift Inside Flow Power Yoga at Waverley Oaks Athletic Club (Waltham, MA)
With gratitude,
Comments