I came to a point in my life where touring and playing 200-plus shows a year for the better part of a decade started to get physically, emotionally, and spiritually taxing. I had heard that if you build the body, you fuel the mind, and the fact that I needed to make some lifestyle changes kept my thoughts on spin-cycle. Like most small epiphanies in my life, bass being first and foremost, yoga seemed to find me when I needed it. 

To many in the West, yoga is often stereotyped as neo-hippie hocus-pocus exercises in over-relaxation. The reality is that yoga embraces a wide range of disciplines whose ultimate goal is the joining of body, mind, and spirit, a conscious unification into oneness. Some of the classic methods are meditative, karmic, or devotional in nature. Hatha yoga, for example, is part of Raja yoga training. Some of the other forms of yoga are Nada yoga (music), Mantra and Japa yoga (chanting, using beads) and Kundalini yoga (study of the psychic centers or chakras). In the Western world, the most popular form is Hatha yoga (Sanskrit for “Union of Force”), which stresses mastery of the physical body as a gateway to attaining spiritual perfection. Bikram yoga is a variety of Hatha yoga.

I’d always been the kind of person who looked outside the box for inspiration. I studied woodworking in college and wrote down all the clever tricks of the trade that I could relate back to the bass. (Phrases like “measure twice, cut once” had deep significance with both crafts.) I used to think I could never practice yoga because I wasn’t a flexible person, but I came to realize very quickly that’s exactly why I needed to start. Immediately after starting to practice Bikram yoga on a regular basis, I realized there were so many ideas cross-pollinating with my bass practices. It wasn’t just my yoga practice affecting my bass playing; I was taking my discipline for bass into my yoga classes.

I remembered, from practicing bass, that sometimes things moved painfully slowly, and that more often than not it’s the process, not the product, that is truly important. I had to remind myself daily that having a “beginner’s mind” and making mistakes is sometimes the only way to make anything. I noticed that the more flexible I became physically, the more flexible I was becoming mentally and emotionally. Soon I was leaving the yoga studio eager to apply what I learned in class to my instrument. For example, I started noticing how often I held my breath during difficult postures, and how much easier things were when I remembered to just breathe normally. I discovered that the same was true for difficult sections in Dillinger’s songs, and how irregular my breathing was when performing in general. I’ve become more aware of my breathing, and I can really hear how it has made a difference in my playing, both live and in the studio. Bikram also teaches the ideal pose, as well as helping you be aware of problems you will have as you try to do the pose, what clues will help you make rapid progress, and where you might be tempted to “cheat,” thus depriving yourself of the benefit of doing the pose properly—not unlike serious bass technique study.

Yoga is one of the only proven forms of preventive medicine for repetitive stress injuries. Locust pose specifically targets and breaks down the calcium deposits in our wrists and elbows that cause these ailments. Your lower back or shoulders taking a beating from years of slinging your instrument around your neck? Try the Cobra series or Triangle pose. Want to really warm yourself up before a gig? Throw some Pranayama breathing into your routine.

I’ll sign off with a quote that has been my mantra of sorts for years. Said the sculptor Henry Moore to the poet Donald Hall: “The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is—it must be something you cannot possibly do.”

Liam Wilson plays bass in Dillinger Escape Plan, whose latest album is Ire Works. He was profiled in April ’08.

www.myspace.com/dillingerescapeplan