Hu Grace

About

Track Details

Three 20-minute tracks (for a total of 60 minutes)

Full package includes:

• 3 tracks (20 minutes each for a total of 60 minutes) of entrainment-encoded music
• Tracks accessible on the free iAwake Technologies app for iOS and Android
• Downloadable audio files available in MP3 and WAV formats
• User Guide (downloadable PDF)
• Ongoing support (responsive email, active Facebook forum, FAQs, videos, audios)

About Hu Grace

We can often feel life is a serious burden.

We feel we have to “do it all ourselves,” that we have to “save the world,” “stop climate change now,” “care for all the refugees”… and not only that but also be a better parent, heal ourselves of all our ailments, have no shadows and meditate and exercise two hours a day. Even though these are good and noble intentions that are useful, we have a tendency to take on too much pressure and blame ourselves for not being able to do it all. It often creates more conflict and stress as we push ourselves. This may stem partially from our not accepting ourselves, a deep feeling that something is broken in us.

This program helps us get to that space of acceptance, forgiveness, compassion, and care — for ourselves and for one another… to see the divine everywhere and in everyone.

Hu Grace was inspired by the practice of chanting Hu — the secret name of our absolute nature — that often has a powerful heart-opening effect on all who chant together. Hu chanting creates an experience of unity and wholeness.

Samuel Törnqvist’s Inspiration for Creating iAwake’s Hu Grace

I was once part of a very interesting group, the Diamond Approach, where among many great practices was a chanting practice they called the “huu-chant.” The idea is very simple: everybody sings “huu” on any note they prefer. This idea, with no specific rules apart from singing “huu,” created one of the most beautiful sounds I have ever experienced in my life.

As a composer, I often strive for “music with less limitations.” I think most composers do, in fact. We look for “free flowing” music in the moment. This is no easy task, and in many ways actually quite contradictory when you think about it. I think the wish is to experience “free music” that we can listen to without knowing what it is, and so, feel surprised and fresh, like life is new and alive. Interestingly enough, many composers are discovering that very specific limitations often create more of the free evolving music they were after. Minimalism is one example.

Nevertheless, doing this chant was one of the first times I truly felt music just coming out, without me being able to predict it, and my heart burst open. Being a 5 on the Enneagram, that is saying something.

Every time I have done this practice, it has had similar results on both me and the participants. I have even tried it with groups who were not part of the Diamond Approach, and often they say the same thing.

So naturally, I wanted to see if I could recreate this feeling myself as a composer. The best would be to actually find a big space and invite a bunch of people and start recording. Perhaps I will some day, but at the moment it was too cumbersome and expensive to do so (not to mention finding enough people with the right mindset), so I decided to try it myself with my own voice. I figured with today’s technology it should be possible.

Since I am singing all of it by myself, the randomness of course disappears somewhat; I had to have a plan so that I knew what I was doing and where I was going. But within those limits, I could still be quite free. (If you want to improvise dance, you still need a floor to dance on, as I like to say.) The benefit was that I could “create music” and also form it in a way that seemed appropriate to me. It is absolutely great to chant “huu” and let it take you wherever it wants to go, but I believe that sometimes having a program that gently guides you in a specific way is also helpful. Now, the guidance is very subtle and shouldn’t interfere with where you want to go. But let’s just say the guidance is about going deeper, like what the entrainment does.

The voices you hear in the tracks are all my voices, and I want to stress that the voices have not been manipulated. (You will, of course, hear the entrainment which affects the sound somewhat).

It took longer to create these tracks than I thought it would. Each track is 20 minutes long, and some tracks have more than 16 parts — all of which I had to sing. I tried many ideas before I arrived at the version we have today. In the end it is not so much a “huu” chant as I originally intended, but rather a creation of its own. Something else came out of this project that has the spirit of “huu”-chanting, but is also something else, something new. Slowly the idea flowered into what this is really about for me, and I hope that is being transmitted to you.

I still encourage you to try “huu”-chanting one day if you can.