Basking in Gravity (2023)

MUNCIE, IN
06.24
Muncie Makes Lab
¡SOLD OUT!

INDIANAPOLIS, IN
06.26
StorageSpace
¡SOLD OUT!

TAOS, NM
07.08
High Frequency Loft

LOS ANGELES, CA
07.16
Coaxial Arts

BERKELEY, CA
07.22
The Alembic

Basking in Gravity is an opportunity to explore our relationship with one of the fundamental forces of the universe. This art/mindfulness experience combines elements of audiovisual installation and participatory performance with yin yoga and sitting meditation. It’s a practice of finding equanimity in discomfort as gravity pulls our bodies apart, overwhelming false binaries, and expanding mental and corporeal boundaries in the process.

We are limiting attendance to allow for social-distancing, so sign up sooner rather than later. If you’re feeling under the weather, or suspect that you’ve been in proximity to particles and droplets of respiratory fluids that contain the SARS CoV-2 virus, stay home!

Basking in Gravity takes place in an immersive and adaptive audiovisual environment that includes organic video projections and “heavy mellow” audio. Based on Chamberlin’s weekly Inter-Dimensional Music FM radio broadcast, the soundtrack builds from contemplative drone, spiritual jazz, and ambient music to a crescendo of cosmic metal.

Artist Daniel “Cosmic Chambo” Chamberlin uses his experience as a Zen student, yoga teacher, and former emergency medical responder to lead practitioners through 90 minutes of non-self improvement meditation and unhurried movement. This is a slow-and-low yin yoga practice, a descending, non-striving counterbalance to the uplift of exercise-focused yang yoga. It is a chance to drift and sink into the flow of our bodily fluids in a ritualistic celebration of impermanence. As another yoga teacher once wrote, “savasana – corpse pose – is the ultimate yin pose: at the end of our lives we become completely yin.”

The first installment in our circular, non-hierarchical list of favorite 2021 music, presented on an interconnected yin/yang scale as applied to both atmosphere and tempo. For this session, join us as we sink into a flow of the year’s coldest, darkest, most wet and heavy downpressing yin vibrations.

While Chamberlin is an experienced teacher and practitioner, with Basking in Gravity he presents himself as an artist and “spiritual friend” in the tradition of kalyāṇa-mittatā. This art project is an intentional collaboration between fellow seekers, driven by the anti-hierarchical concepts that radical mindfulness traditions share with politically-minded movements working for social justice and spiritual liberation.

Basking in Gravity builds awareness of the suffering that connects us, and encourages encounters with the dark, difficult emotions and sensations that can give rise to compassion. It is an non-aspirational group performance where we observe our bodies as they are today, and another step in our shared journey home to the dirt. You can read more about the concepts behind Basking in Gravity in this recent interview with Psychedelic Sangha.

Previous events have taken place at meditation centers, DIY spaces, and experimental galleries such as the Indianapolis Zen Center, Healer (Indianapolis), PlySpace (Muncie), Magick City (Brooklyn), and Returning Home Farm, an organic burial ground and goat farm near Pittsburgh, PA. For more information on all of these topics, visit Chamberlin’s Vøid Contemplation Tactics newsletter at cosmicchambo.substack.com.

Basking in Gravity is intended to be accessible to all bodies and experience levels. In the interest of accommodating epidemiologically vulnerable practitioners, the session is only open to vaccinated individuals. Further COVID-19 precautions are subject to change based on specific settings, and each group’s level of comfort. We are particularly sensitive to these concerns as Chamberlin is an insulin-dependent type-1 diabetic, and cares for several immunocompromised family members. We thank you for your consideration.