Celebrate Yourself in Nature

Yoga, Meditation and laughter
Celebrating yourself in nature
A weekend of regenerating wellness in the nature of the Itria Valley.

Celebrating yourself in nature is a residential weekend dedicated to the regenerating wellness of Yoga, Meditations and Laughter, in the splendid natural scenery of the Itria Valley under the oaks of Par Tòt.

Two immersive days of regenerating practices in an environment that raises peace and harmony. A residential workshop has the charm and power of community, like a family, either small or large, celebrating every aspect of life together.

The journey will begin with a ritual, a Sufi “Karunesh” dance to open the heart and connect us deeply, working on the heart as an intelligent organ, an energetic and spiritual portal.

The first day will begin with Hatha Yoga, to find inner peace. You will learn some techniques for immediate well-being by improving posture, breathing, increasing flexibility and tone of your whole body. Then we will practice a visualization and exploration of the Chakras. Yoga Nidra will follow to let you experience deep relaxation, as to sleep like a baby!

Throughout the whole first day, you will be guided by the music of the American ambient musician, Michael Reiley. Michael will play the hang drum live during Hatha Yoga, he will give us a sound bath on the Chakras to activate specific frequencies during the Chakra yoga session, and for the Yoga Nidra practice he will accompany us with a relaxing concert of deep immersive ambient music to help us fall asleep.

The second day will be dedicated to Laughter Yoga and to the discovery of unconditional laughter, source of happiness and strength. You will find that laughing with or without a reason makes no difference to the brain, and that laughing is a medicine for everyone, with multiple benefits. Laughter Yoga is a very powerful practice that brings joy and fun. Even the most shy will not be able to stop laughing!

Coronal Loops

I’m very excited to share a new album of ambient music on the sublime label Healing Sound Propagandist (a sub-label from Past Inside the Present).

Healing Sound Propagandist is a digital-only sublabel of Past Inside the Present that further explores the sounds and textures that PITP has become known for; expanding both upon their dreamier meditative output as well as texture-focused arrangements by ambient artists from around the world.

All albums and artists associated with HSP are hand-picked by the PITP team. The goal of the HSP imprint is to highlight talented artists and open up a broader opportunity for artists and composers to release their works with the backing, support, and promotional assistance from the parent label. The intent is to bring a collection of hidden gems to a wider audience through the Healing Sound Propagandist sublabel.

Coronal Loops is a sonic reflection on the nature of waiting, uncertainty, and isolation. This album contains loops and fragments created during the 2020-21 Pandemic. Many of the tracks were born from the much longer sonic meditations created for Michael’s YouTube channel. The intention was to provide a soothing escape and to illuminate an inner light that shines in each of us. Michael’s work as a certified Deep Listening® facilitator, Therapeutic Musician, and meditation teacher inform a sense of expansiveness, stillness, and transcendence found in each track.

Binaural Sound Therapy and Talk

Join us for a special Sound Healing Night led by Michael Reiley, a Therapeutic Musician and Deep Listening® Facilitator.

This binaural sound healing will be based on the principles of therapeutic music, a tradition with ancient roots supported by contemporary scientific research. This approach has the potential to relieve anxiety, reduce stress, and cultivate an inner sense of ease and calm.


The healing will be composed of two distinct phases. The first portion of the evening will be devoted to a discussion about the nature of sound healing with time for questions and group discussion. After a quick bio-break, participants will then be invited to settle into a comfortable position and simply receive the vibrational support of Michael Reiley’s amazing binaural sound healing. A sample of his work can be found by clicking here. It’s recommended, if possible, that you listen to this concert using headphones in order to fully experience the healing effect of binaural beats. A discussion of potential health benefits of binaural beats can be found here. (If you don’t have access to headphones, it’s OK, you’ll still derive considerable benefit from this experience.)


Date: Thursday, June 17, 2021
Time: 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm EST
Cost: $20.00 (or $30 Buddy Discount — Two attendees for the price of 1-1/2)
Location: Online


Teacher:
Michael Reiley is a composer, musician, teacher, Therapeutic Musician, and Deep Listening® Facilitator. With over 20 years of experience as a keyboardist, producer, composer, and performer, his work explores the nexus of inner and outer soundscapes as a mode of transpersonal connection and oneness. His music uses techniques and technologies such as drones, binaural beat frequencies, color therapy, data sonification, field recording, tape loops, sacred geometry, esoteric frequency ratios, alternate tuning systems, extended improvisations, sound healing instruments, and more traditional instruments like piano, hand pan, and synthesizer. Michael teaches at the Center for Deep Listening® at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and leads somatic listening workshops around the world called Listening Bodies with his partner Monica Gentile.

Sound Sangha

🧘🏽‍♀️ Hello everyone, I hope you are doing well. I am pleased to announce that I’m starting a weekly meditation group called sound sangha (“Sangha” is a Pali and Sanskrit word that means “community”). This will be an exclusive meet-up for Patrons. It will be a 45-minute session, with 20 minutes of meditation, followed by a group discussion around a topic of listening and mindfulness held on Zoom. 

🧡 You can become a Patron and join the community of Mindful Listeners here: http://patreon.com/michaelreiley.  🐚 The focus of the group will be on the intersection of meditation, sound, and listening. We’ll work with classic mindfulness-based meditation practices, as well as the work of Pauline Oliveros (Deep Listening), R. Murray Schafer (Soundscapes), Kay Gardener (Sounding the Inner Landscapes), Ajahn Amaro (Inner Listening), Thich Nhat Hahn, and Nada Yoga (just to name a few). 

🐘 Listening can be a wonderful tool to develop mindfulness, clarity, and calm in your life. No meditation experience is necessary! Depending on the experience level of the group, I will adjust the guided meditation accordingly.

🎶 In addition to our weekly meditation group, you’ll have access to download basically all the music I make. I upload at least one form of soundscape music track a week to download for your collection or stream on the Patreon website or app.

 🗓 The first meeting with be Friday, May 7 at 12 pm Eastern Time, and every Friday at noon thereafter. 

🙏🏻 Thanks so much for your support and love over the past year as my Patrons! I’m really excited for you some of you to meet each other and for us to grow as a community. Please share with anyone who might be interested.

Heavenly Bodies

I have a new album out today on the Italian ambient label Pregnant Void. This new collection of healing frequencies was derived and dedicated to the classical nine planets of our solar system.

The sounds of Heavenly Bodies were composed using the spatial movements of the planets translated into frequencies. Astronomy is the application of geometry through space, music is the application of geometry through time. This album seeks to bridge the spatial and sonic by exploring the sacred ratios and mathematics that guide the planets as they dance through our solar system with perfect balance and precision.

Available for download on Bandcamp and on all streaming platforms.

The Dream Cycles

Hello everyone, I am pleased to share with you a new album of sleeping > dreaming music. This album is eight and half hours long and is a supportive soundtrack for a deep night’s sleep and an extended journey into the realm of dreams. Available as a “pay what you want” release on Bandcamp and coming to streaming platforms soon.
“We sleep, but the loom of life never stops, and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up in the morning.” –Henry Ward Beecher

The Dream Cycles

For almost two decades ambient musician and consciousness explorer Michael Reiley has an interest in creating music for the liminal space between waking, dreaming, and sleep. On the 21st of January, 2021, Michael will release a long-form work called The Dream Cycles. This eight and a half-hour long album contains a carefully crafted mix of musical tones, binaural beats (for headphone listeners) tuned to aid sleep, long periods of silence or barely audible soundscapes to aid in the cycles of deep sleep, an extended session during the third phase of sleep to guide in lucid dreaming, and a gently unfolding piece of music on the piano that emerges slowly from the lucid dream suite like a mirage to welcome you into the Hypnopompic state of shifting towards waking consciousness.
The album is the third in a trilogy of sleep music albums. 2014’s eight-hour sleep album Quiescent was hailed internationally for its soothing, sleep-inducing textures described as “A ‘gateway’ to an ephemeral place and beyond”. Michael also has several years of experience playing sleep/dream concerts in lofts, homes, studios, and even a dream psychologist’s office.
The Dream Cycles evolves from Michael’s 2020 offering Celestial Music Box, an online platform that generates soothing ambient music by using the position of overhead stars in the sky creating an immersive, healing wash of sound conducted by the stars and planets above. Also during the pandemic, Michael offered several overnight steaming sleep concerts in a series called Sleep Stream on his YouTube channel mixing field recordings, looped keyboards, and hand pan improvisations for fans around the world.
The Dream Cycles’ title is adapted from a book by H.P. Lovecraft from his “Dreamlands” series. Michael’s study and practice of Buddhism, Dream Yoga, Lucid Dreaming, and his work and teaching of “Listening in Dreams” practice with Deep Listening co-founded IONE all inform the musical journey through the spectrums of consciousness illuminating the night as we listen, sleep, dream, dissolve, and reemerge reborn and anew every morning.

Virtual New Year’s with Fidget

Hello everyone, we wanted to take a moment to say hi, wish you a happy holiday and new year! Listening Bodies did not offer any in-person workshops this year, but we were creating videos, online experiences, and planning for the future. 
The first thing we wanted to share with you this holiday season is the “Meditation on Light” written by Monica Gentile (read by Michael in English and Italian by Monica). It’s a lovely guided meditation exploring the sensorial nature of light during this deep wintertime.
Also while we were in Philadelphia for several months this spring, due to the pandemic, we were happy to live near and spend time with the wonderful dance/media company known as Fidget. This year Fidget will be hosting a Virtual New Year’s Eve Party called Age of Aquarius co-hosted by Forbidden Fruit. Listening Bodies will premiere a new video dance piece we created called “A Song the Earthworm Sang”. This piece is dedicated to Deep Listening founded by Pauline Oliveros and is a reference to a poem she wrote called “The Earthworm Also Sings” found in her Anthology of Text ScoresPlease consider purchasing a ticket to raise a toast and enjoy hours of art and entertainment for this virtual party in the comfort of your own space.

You can view the video we shared here:

Sending you love and light for a happy 2021,
Monica and Michael

H E L I O S T Ā S I O

I am very pleased to share with the world a collaborative album with French ambient pop artist, Wild Anima. Heliostāsio stands for the balance of the sun by ancient Greeks to describe the solstice. This ambient album is the outcome of an impromptu live jam session when I was in residency at GlogauAIR in Berlin.
Inspired by our own individual stays in Iceland this album paints a multi-layered soundscape standing in between night and day and time and matter. Translating this infinite yet ephemeral moment found in the dance of the celestial bodies, where shadow and light slip softly in between the rhythms of nature and the cosmos. The spaces in between, dawn and dusk, solstices, and equinoxes. Recurring patterns yet never the same.

Weimar Workshop / Bauhaus.fm

I had a wonderful time co-leading a two-week workshop with the sound studies students at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar in Germany. We had a deep and expressive time exploring Deep Listening, Field Recording, and Sonic Art with a very gifted and interesting group of students.

I also had the privilege to discuss my work on their radio station over at Bauhaus.fm on the show called “Every Dreaming Body is a Listener?!” with Brandon LaBelle. You can find a recording of the conversation on their website (in English).