How To DJ and Facilitate Simultaneously

A member of the DJ Mystery To Mastery community, Ayla, sent me a message about how to DJ well and facilitate at the same time. It seems a hot topic for many health and wellbeing practitioners, so I thought I’d write about it here.

The short answer is, knowing the DJ tools and techniques.

Because I’ve learnt about things like beats, bars and phrases, beat matching and harmonic mixing, I’m able to work with music more intuitively now. I don’t have to think too much about what tunes go together. I know what to look out for in the software and I know what to do to blend the tunes together. That means my focus can be more present on the facilitation and responding to what I’m witnessing in the space.

I love the creativity Ecstatic Dance offers me as a DJ. I love how I can really hone in on my music selection and the skills of mixing.

And I love the depth Movement Medicine offers, both to the dancers and me as a facilitator.

When I’m holding Movement Medicine classes my mixes aren’t always as elaborate or intricate. Although I say not always, because sometimes they are!

For instance, when I want the dancers to rest in the beat or the teaching I’m bringing, I might say less and let the music/mixing hold the space.

I also bring in DJ skills throughout my teaching - looping beats for example is a great way to bring verbal facilitation to the front. And I know, because of the skills I’ve learnt, that my mixes don’t always have to be ‘fancy’, but they will be more supportive of the dancers experience than just playing one tune after the next (or beat matching badly, or clashing harmonics!)

Sometimes, if I’m holding a relaxing meditation session, I might pre-record the mix at home. You can listen to examples which combine my healing instruments with electronic beats in my mixes for Shakti Mat on my mixcloud page. That means when I’m holding that space, I can play out the mix with confidence and really concentrate on the words I’m saying and the journey I’m taking my clients on. This technique also works really well for yoga classes and breathwork sessions.

If you’re using music skills in your health and wellbeing facilitation, a few easy DJ techniques are really going to supercharge your medicine.

DJing and Facilitating at Cosmic Pineapple, Pikes, Ibiza