PADMA SOUNDSYSTEM

Padma Biographical Details

Intention sent out into the universe from Garchen Dharma Island,  Chino Valley AZ

December 31, 2005 - January 1, 2006

Born: Blue Electric Night

Blue/West
Transform their worlds, one person at a time or groups. Move the world and stir things up. Transformation, intuition, energy, vision, magic, healing

Electric
Bond Activate Service
Sees connections and possibility where many don't. You are the activator. Electrics are often of service to others, valued and make contribution.

Night
Dream, Intuition, Abundance
Mind as womb of creation, deeper logic of the dreaming self. Thoughtful and organized, introspective, self reflective and introspective

we are evolving some of us revolving in and out of the padma band

here are some people who made the music you'll hear on this website

some of us will appear as the padma soundsystem when you find us in your local yoga studio

Nancy Green

Nancy is an internationally recognized cellist, known best for her many CDs that span a wide variety of repertoire. She was trained both in the U.S. (Juilliard School, NY) and in Europe (London, England and Germany) where she performed and taught for many years. While living in England she first began her meditation practice and later became passionate about shamanism, attending numerous workshops given by the Foundation for Shamanic Studies (Michael Harner) and participating in a regular drumming group. Having grown up in a suburb of Boston where she roamed the woods as a child, her passion for nature had been frustrated by years pursuing her music in urban settings and her shamanic studies felt like a home-coming back to nature. During her last years in the London area she heard of Carlos Castaneda and his cohorts, (whose books she had been immersed in for many years) going public and was filled with a deep longing. After a health crisis that catapulted her back to the U.S. she sought a job as a University professor of cello. On hearing of a vacancy at the University of Arizona in Tucson (a strategic location in the Castaneda books) Nancy felt immediately that the job was meant for her. Her first week at the University included a faculty retreat which she cut short in order to attend a Castaneda seminar in Phoenix, and subsequently attended numerous seminars in California. While in Tucson Nancy also participated in many other spiritual workshops and practice groups. When she met Lewis Humphreys her dream of combining her cello with an interest in meditation, healing, and shamanism found a home in padmasoundsystem.

Nancy has extensive training in shamanic counselling and a life long interest in the teachings of Carlos Castaneda. You can listen to Nancy's classical oeuvre at her website.

Heidi Wilson 

Visit Heidi's website

I was invited by Lewis, Yeshe Dorje, to be a part of Padma Sound System as a healer/body worker/musician. I agreed to check it out because he is my friend and I like his crazy wisdom. What I discovered was a healing opportunity for myself. Using my voice with the intention of being of benefit to others has opened me to a relationship with my voice, my energy, my body/mind, the universe, that is of benefit to me as well. I'm grateful for this practice.

I was born into a family of professional classical musicians in New Haven, Ct. I played violin as a child, later switched to the oboe, and as an adult, began playing the saxophone, finding this instrument the truest expression of my voice.

In the seventies I joined forces with Ajule Rutlin, a poet /drummer from BAG (Black Artist Group of St. Louis) to form a performing duo called Eneke-the-Bird (also to form a family -- two daughters and now two grandchildren). We explored the combination of music, poetry and dance in improvisational performances in downtown Tucson, Arizona from that time until the early nineties. Since 2001, I have been performing with Tucson Playback Theatre, an improvisational theater experience where the audience tells stories from their lives and the troupe plays it back in words, sound and motion. www.tucsonplaybacktheatre.org

Aryen Hart

Arjen van den Eerenbeemt (Aryen Hart) was born into a family of writers and visual artists in Haarlem, the Netherlands, on January 31, 1958.
Arjen was exposed to many different and inspiring stimuli during his youth, and developed a strong interest in spirituality, psychology, and the arts through his parents' public and renowned literary careers. Changing his career orientation from electronics to meditative arts during the mid-eighties, Arjen explored the blending of the two.
After moving to the United States in 1986, he discontinued the electronic art projects in favor of a more direct approach to his artistic vision. Through the blending of his scientific and spiritual interests, Arjen conceived his contemporary meditative abstractions. Visit Aryen's website www.aryenhart.com

 Yeshe Dorje

Yoga led me inside my body and out into the universe. I have been practicing yoga since 1993, and attended teacher training at the Esther Myers yoga studio in Toronto in 1995. There is something about visions from other realms and times when I hear the inaudible music, Nada Yoga, which is difficult to explain but essential to what I do in the group.

Yeshe Dorje is my Dharma name which was given to me by Khenpo Sonam Rinpoche in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1996. Translated into English, Yeshe Dorje means immutable wisdom. My given name is Lewis Humphreys, but I identify with Yeshe Dorje more and more. I am a musician who also happens to have an extensive background in workshop facilitation, adult education and leading group meditation, which comes in handy for Padma Soundsystem performances. I obtained graduate degrees in feminist theory (MA Dalhousie) and Industrial Relations (MSc London School of Economics), and have a life long interest in the science of human consciousness.

I learned much about human suffering during my professional career in labor relations. My main gig was helping organizations to create equal pay for work of equal value for working women, which led to over fifteen years of professional experience in collective bargaining, leading retreats and facilitating workshops in Canada and the United States. It also helped me to experience how gender roles influence the nature of human suffering and directly introduced my mind to the alienation caused by the modern workplace. It also helped me to pack it all in and move from Toronto to Sedona, Arizona for a couple of years of retreat and meditation.

After taking refuge as a Buddhist in 1996, I developed my meditation practice through direct experience, undertaking spiritual retreats, and attending extensive teachings of Tibetan mind training techniques (including both the Mahamudra and Dzogchen lineages of the Drikung Kagyu). I have been a student of HH The Dalai Lama since 1995, attending two Kalachakra initiations and various teachings in North America and Europe.

While I have attended and organized many Dharma events over the years, there are three Tibetan masters I am quite close to. I have been a continuing student of HE Garchen Rinpoche since attending his first teachings in the West in 1997. As Coordinator of the Drikung Dzogchen Community of Arizona (under the auspices of my teacher the Venerable Ontul Rinpoche), I lead a weekly meditation practice group and host visiting Tibetan teachers for Dharma events in Tucson. My Heart Lama is Khenchen Gyaltsen Rinpoche.

I have been blessed by precious moments with my teachers, and these blessings are the treasure I wish to share with you through our music.

In addition to using my voice in sound healing, I also use the didgeridoo, Tibetan bells and some hands on cranio-sacral methods. Sometimes I will add binaural beats to the recorded music to assist brainwave entrainment, altering consciousness and promoting the relaxation response.

Padma Soundsystem is fed by visions and the intention to benefit all beings with sound.

In the spring of 2005, having recently returned from a meditation retreat and pilgrimage of sacred Buddhist sites in India, Yeshe was looking for a way to communicate some simple methods of mind training that would help people who wanted to change their minds. Nancy was exploring ways to integrate her talent with the cello and interest in shamanic counseling. They met one day at a coffee shop with the intention to discuss working together on Nancy’s concert performance career, but instead they unexpectedly began creating a simple workshop where beginners and experienced meditators alike would benefit and nurture their spiritual growth.

This is heart centered fun, with the intention to transform the mind through the senses. There is nothing to join, nothing to believe, there is only experience. You meditate, listen, and free your senses from the daily onslaught of routine and ceaseless thoughts. Our intention is to help people experience the beauty of music and interpret the performance as a metaphor for their own spiritual journey.

Consider the rare experience of listening live to a gifted cellist as she conveys the spiritual energy of the music. We want to help people use their senses to transform the mind in a simple to understand and easily repeated experience. The participants learn a way of listening and singing that can nurture what we think of as bio-harmony.