Nūtone recording artist Will Blunderfield has released a new single, "Amazing Grace" (Pink Ribbon Celebration Remixes) feat. Bif Naked. The track is now available on iTunes, and all proceeds benefit the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. Listen to one of the included tracks above and download the single here: www.itunes.com/willblunderfield.
Press contact:
Danielle Romeo | romeo@nettwerk.com
A hip, young generation is rebranding spiritual growth as sexy, stylish - and sellable
Excerpt:
NOT JUST FOR WOMEN
Creating a life, and a work life, connected to values is a core spirit junkie principal, and it's not just women getting in on the action.
Will Blunderfield, a Vancouver singer and yoga teacher, wears black eyeliner, nail polish and the same kind of exuberant glow as Bernstein.
His "Glee Yoga" draws jammed classrooms at Yyoga and West Coast Hot Yoga, and his new CD Hallelujah (Nettwerk/Nutone) just shot up to No. 1 on iTunes World Music.
Blunderfield has happily embraced his role as student, and teacher, in the new spirit brigade while pursuing a career in pop music - infused with and influenced by devotional Kirtan chant.
Blunderfield studied musical theatre in New York and tried the pop route, making top 75 on Canadian Idol, and found success when he found a purpose.
He is as fluent in the text of the Bhagavad Gita as he is pouring forth pop, rock, devotional Kirtan and his own compositions: "It's cool to be conscious, it's cool to tap into strong reasons for whatever you're doing, whether you're raising a business or raising kids or writing a book."
Before Blunderfield takes off on a U.S. tour, he'll be featured on Life and Style with Zara, a new Vancouver lifestyle show created by Zara Durrani that explores spiritual experience in contemporary life.
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/Meet+spirit+junkies/5591734/story.html#ixzz1...
“I discovered that all I needed was to let the oars go, just flow” - from The River, by Will Blunderfield
Step into a class with Will and be prepared to forget everything you think you know about yoga.
He sings, he dances, he invents. He shakes his Asana.
On any given day with Will you might feel like you’re in an episode of Glee, you might find yourself shaking your booty like J.Lo, unleashing your inner Radio City Rockette, or simply smiling in a pose that once made you grimace.
Is it yoga? Oh, yes.
“I look up to yoga teachers who aren’t afraid to be themselves,” says Will.
Will began practicing yoga when he was a teenager, and an acting student at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City.
From the beginning, teaching was part of his practice. “One of our acting teachers said you have to do yoga, it’s very grounding. He also got us to teach our fellow students hour-long sequences.”
At first, yoga simply helped him chill out. “I thought, oh this is really relaxing! New York is really stressful.”
But there was something deeper there too; it was as if he found a little more of himself each time he closed his eyes and breathed. “Not knowing what my mission was, I was still searching. I think, being that age, I was still susceptible to other people’s opinions. I didn’t really know what I was doing, where I was going.”
On the mat, Will found he could be himself. He also found inspirations, like Sadie Nardini, a New York teacher with a freewheeling style. (She’s been known to teach yoga in cowboy boots.)
“I came to yoga feeling really insecure. I walked around with a root of shame. I was bullied in high school. When you’re different, you get picked on. Yoga helped me so much because I realized I am not that feeling.”
“The mat is a place,” he says, “where we can observe our feelings as they come up, and realize that we are not them.”
Like so many students who come to the mat, Will found that what he encountered there stayed with him when he stepped off the mat. “It is a practice that helps us cultivate the ability to be loving in difficult and different situations.” He hopes every student that comes to his class find their own way of doing yoga, follows the path that works for them and sheds the rest.
“The basic message of the Bhagavad-Gita is your passion is your purpose.... follow your heart is one of the basic teachings of yoga to me.” There is no right way to practice yoga, and the reason for incorporating yoga into life may be different for everyone.
“Yoga means connection. Some people are connecting to their bodies; some feel like they are connecting to the non-thinking mind, to god, or source. Knowing that yoga means connection, I believe that there are over 7 billion ways of connecting to yoga.”
Anything that makes you feel wiser or more loving can be a yogic practice, says Will.
Setting an intention is a central part of his practice, on and off the mat.
“You have to set the intention. That’s been a core teaching of mine. When I feel the ground shaking a little bit, it’s getting dark and getting cold, metaphorically or weather wise, I tried to bring myself back to my original effort, to stand for the highest version of myself, to stay positive and keep looking forward.”
Will isn’t looking for perfection in his practice — or in his students.
“I just want to know how can we use these poses to love ourselves more deeply, to believe in our own being more deeply and more solidly.”
When we practice yoga, Will urges us to do more than practice a pose. “Let us practice embodying qualities that serve us and the world: self-love, tenacity and determination. Use this pose to embody something that will serve you today. Even when I fall out, I know that falling is inevitable. If you fall out of dancers pose, don’t criticize yourself. That’s not your inner being. That’s your inner gremlin. That’s not your true self according to the teachings of yoga.”
When a pose is challenging, he says, “Let us harness that challenge that is presented in this practice, let us ask ourselves are we going to close down because of this, or are we going to open up. If we focus on the intention, the universe tends to conspire to help us more often.”
Will’s debut album, Hallelujah is currently available at Lululemon, Yogapod and YYoga, will be released worldwide by Nutone/Nettwerk in 2011.
On any given day of the week, he can be found, eyeliner and all, teaching and singing his heart out in Vancouver at various YYoga locations.
For more information on Will’s recordings and Shake Your Asana workshops, go to www.Willblunderfield.com
It's a glistening 40 C in the yoga studio where three rows of students sitting cross-legged on mats wait patiently, hands at heart in prayer.
"Let's begin by singing three times the bonjo-vi chant," says the instructor, "followed by 'Om.'"
We prepare with a deep, cleansing breath.
"Whooah, we're halfway there," he belts out, surprising newcomers to the drop-in class. "Whooah-oh! Livin' on a prayer."
If Sanskrit swapped for popular rock anthem is any indication, this is no typical yoga class. Sporting eyeliner, black nail polish and a wicked grin, Will Blunderfield dubs it "Glee Yoga," a nod to the hit TV series.
One thousand students cram into the 25-year-old's self-styled classes at five studios across the Vancouver area each week to participate in the ancient practice with Blunderfield's musical theatre twist. He teaches all the traditional poses in his hot hatha yoga classes, but they're exuberantly spiked with Tony Robbins-like motivational affirmations and set to a sensational score.
He jokingly describes himself as Richard Simmons' love child with Capt. Jack Sparrow.
"With who he is, you'd think he'd be limited in who he would attract," says Lara Kozan, co-founder of Yyoga studios, which aims to make yoga more accessible.
"Whoever you wouldn't think would resonate with his class, he has those people resonating too. They might have their eyebrow up for the first half of the class, and then they're singing along for the rest."
It may be because of Blunderfield's message: "Follow your heart, love yourself, there's nothing wrong with you," he says in an interview. Or perhaps it's his stellar voice, coupled with genuine delivery: "Do everything you're doing, but don't do it to impress people — do it to inspire."
Midway through class on this particular Friday in May, Blunderfield directs his sweat-soaked students to grab one another's hands, raise arms skyward and take several sweeping bows.
"Yoga is politically and socially subversive," he tells the room as we mimic a curtain call. "Because it makes you like yourself. And if you like yourself then you call the shots. No one can control you."
Blunderfield hasn't always been this uplifting and assertive. Four years ago he was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, and put on medication for frequent panic attacks. He spent eight dark months mostly watching "Oprah" from his couch.
His depression had started a few years earlier during the "cattle call" audition process he was enduring in New York City, where his ears rang with "No" despite two years training at the renowned American Musical and Dramatic Academy. Broke and discouraged, he returned to his hometown of West Vancouver, and that's when he delved further into the singular calming force he first discovered in acting school.
"What's helped me so much is this practice I've created, this rock 'n' roll-yoga-Bon Jovi thing," he said. "It's helped me so much that I hope I can spread it to as many people as possible.
"I know it's possible to thrive despite what your past has been, and I want other people to thrive too."
Even then, it wasn't easy.
Senior yoga teachers that Blunderfield respected told him "you're bastardizing the tradition," he recalls. At the same time, close friends and even his parents intoned a music career was out of reach. He couldn't quite shake the ego blow of being cut from the first season of "Canadian Idol" — after making it into the top 75 of 3,000 contestants — for being "too theatrical."
Blunderfield finally just decided to put up blinders.
"Quite frankly, if I listened to what they told me to do, I wouldn't be wearing makeup, I wouldn't be singing, I wouldn't be raising my voice, I wouldn't be talking about personal empowerment," he said. "And I don't believe my classes would have waiting lists."
Responding to the critics, Blunderfield says his reading of the sacred yoga texts tells him it's perfectly acceptable to drop the teachings and create your own truth.
Respected yoga guru Eoin Finn says what's paramount to every yoga practice is an element of tranquility, or "zen," that balances out the inclusion of acts to elate the spirit. He sees a "danger" of dishonouring the tradition in some new, inventive versions, like so-called disco and hip-hop yoga.
"If we're just dumbing it down and not spiritually affirming people, it's really sad," said the Vancouver-based yogi of nearly 25 years, who knows of Blunderfield but hasn't seen him teach. "But if we can make it more relevant to our cultural context it's not necessarily a bad thing.
"This is someone who's following his bliss and trying to bring it to others."
Last June Blunderfield was offered a record deal with the music label Nettwerk Records/Nutone Music. His album "Hallelujah" will be released worldwide in late July.
"He's definitely become more confident, because he's starting to get recognized and appreciated for being himself," says student Michelle Clausius, who's been taking Blunderfield's classes since Day 1 three years ago. "And that comes naturally."
Clausius says their most poignant connection occurred a few years ago, when Blunderfield found out her mother had just died.
"I just felt like for the rest of that class he was talking just to me," she said of his signature heartfelt dialogue. "Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't — but it worked for me.
"At the end of the class I was just sobbing."
As our own class concludes, the lights are dimmed and students settle supine on their mats in a final resting pose. All is quiet as Blunderfield performs a song, this time a cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah."
"He mesmerizes people," says student Tracy Tahara. "Everybody who leaves Will's class has a smile on their face."
We applaud.
"I have made a career out of my shame and rage. I'm using it for good now," says yoga instructor Will Blunderfield, whose debut CD,Hallelujah, is being released on Nettwerk Records' affiliate Nutone Music in July.
In a city where it's common to encounter yogier-than-thou types who view yoga as just another competitive quest for perfection, Blunderfield cuts a unique figure.
Demanding that his students shake their asanas and embrace themselves regardless of any abuse they may have experienced because of their sexual or gender identity, race or size, Blunderfield forgoes the soft chanting and nature CDs in favour of Pink, Lady Gaga and Jiminy Cricket.
"If Johnny Depp and Richard Simmons had a baby, it would be me," laughs the homoflexible Blunderfield, decked out in his usual bandana and sporting a generous application of black eyeliner.
His fan base is growing. From the alcoholic who started attending AA meetings to the woman who left an abusive relationship after taking classes with Blunderfield, his students tell him his message packs a positive punch.
A dad brought his recently out teen son to a class and gave Blunderfield a heads up beforehand that he thought the experience would be good for his son. Afterwards, "the kid said, 'Thanks man, that was awesome.' I've gotten a few comments from parents that this is good for kids... It does feel good to hear that," he says.
While he admits his brand of yoga "isn't the most pleasing style to traditional yogis," he insists it serves a purpose nonetheless. "I know that what I'm doing is helping a lot of people, so I'm just going to keep listening to my heart."
Blunderfield's self-awareness didn't come easy. "I didn't really have any role models when I was in high school, and it was really difficult for me. I didn't have a practice like yoga to ground me in the knowledge that there's nothing wrong with me."
Blunderfield recalls wearing makeup and platform boots to a school talent show he was writing about for the yearbook. "I remember the guy who was coordinating the event saying, 'You better watch your back.' That was sort of a running theme throughout high school. It was hard. I was bullied; not as bad as another kid in my grade who was more out there. I tried to be out there and then I'd get attacked and I'd sort of shrink."
Blunderfield discovered empowerment through yoga in New York, after a teacher at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy told his class to take a class to improve their performance.
"If you're going to be a singer, confidence is such a huge thing," Blunderfield explains. "When we practise the postures with a tall spine and a calm breath, testosterone goes up and stress hormones go down. So you start to feel more confident just through your body language and your posture."
He has even been back to West Vancouver High School, where he was once bullied, to teach yoga. "I think we can use yoga to help forward a society that is more equal, where people aren't judging each other. I like the philosophy that we're all equal in yoga, moving as one in a group."
Yoga also opened new musical possibilities to Blunderfield. Hallelujah fuses pop with Sanskrit chanting, or Kirtan. He approached Nettwerk CEO Terry McBride, who is also CEO of YYoga where Blunderfield teaches, to listen to his demo.
Blunderfield's unique sound was initially a tough sell to Nutone, a label dedicated to traditional yoga and meditation music. However, "they were willing to take a chance on me because they saw that people were enjoying it -- it was uplifting."
Kirtan music, says Blunderfield, is meant to elevate the listener out of shame, insecurity and fear, with the ultimate goal of spreading love. This is a message he now weaves through all of his work.
"I teach what I need. When you come to my class, you'll see someone healing himself. When you listen to my album, it's somebody trying to heal himself. I believe that when you heal yourself, that energy is available to everyone around you," he says.
