“Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and openhearted vision of people who embrace life.” ~ John Lennon

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Singing the Akaal is a powerful part of my Kundalini yoga and the first time I recognized the magical power of a group.

All of our voices are needed to help guide the soul out of the worldly realm and into the “Undying Being.” Putting everything else aside, our energy connects to sing for the soul’s safe passage, and in turn, heightens and strengthens the individual’s inner resolve.

Another, larger group gathered for three days of peace and live music to escape the civil unrest plaguing the country in 1969. Woodstock was a monumental gathering of free spirited Californian hippies to Midwesterners who’d never left the farm before that rainy August weekend. Over half a million people, 32 musical acts, and a community of peace, love, and understanding—all brought together by music.

Joni Mitchell said: “Half a million kids saw they were part of a greater organism, and it was a spark of beauty.”

Woodstock has come to symbolize the youth-driven social, cultural, and political upheavals of the late 1960s, and how banding together for peace left each individual changed forever by the magic of the group.

“It wasn’t just a concert or a speech. It was the sense of finding such a huge group of people and how we started by sharing the music and ended up by finding a gentle, moral view of life.” ~ Rocky Bayer, New York Times interview

I’m sensing now a wave of another political movement as youth see what they are capable of by banding together. Poised to lead the country in becoming a land filled with authenticity, inclusion, truth, passion, and a love for all. I hear them marching in unison, and it will be another spark of powerful beauty.

Since ancient times, and woven through all cultures, group gatherings and rituals have been known to facilitate deep transformational change and healing. In group healing, the collective group empowers the inner process of each individual as we start to become little pieces and parts of those that gather around us.

Nicholas Christakis, Director of the Human Nature Lab at Yale University, describes groups or social networks as “being comparable to ‘living entities’ similarly to cells in the human body. They all function in harmony with each other, influencing each other’s behaviors and experience of reality.”

By coming together, we strengthen ourselves. We then have the ability to go out and make a difference, acting with what we know needs to be done for our families, our communities, our people, and our planet.

We’ve become desensitized to the inauthentic voices screeching out at us in every direction, from every medium. This generation is not tolerating the status quo, and it’s infectious.

Whether it’s a concert or political rally—you know the authentic ones the moment you see or hear them. Their energy connects with the part of your brain that’s ready for it. The real ones take themselves out of the shrieking BS we are used to and tap into our truths with excitement; adrenaline courses through our bodies, and we sit up a little taller to take note.

I have found this feeling through live music among groups of strangers drenched in sweat, tears, and song—just as I imagine it happened at Woodstock.

“Well, I don’t want to be king, I want to be real.” ~ John Lennon

Music and its surroundings affect my entire being, and I am on a mission to heal with it. The benefit of gathering together as one, participating not as an individual, but feeling what the power of a crowd invested in the same thing can bring forth.

This mentality helped me find a commonality with groups of strangers as I immersed myself in live music to hear and use it as my therapy when I found it nourished every inch of my soul.

I often scream at my friends that humanity could get back on track with a music revolution. Everyone loves music. It will work. Music connects every sense and brings together every walk of life—a togetherness for no other reason than a common love of a song or artist.

Eyes closed, swaying, belting out your favorite lyrics…that moment the entire room knows every word, filling your soul with happiness, joy, and contentment. And with this comes an openness to your surroundings, a willingness to accept the differences in others by seeing we are all the same.

We become magic together. I love feeling wrapped up in a room with others who feel the passion with me, and being connected to something while searching for the pieces of myself.

Go see live music. Seek out new venues and musicians. Go solo, with friends, and always take your kids when possible. Connect with strangers, not caring who they voted for or where they live. Unite with the power of sound and movement.

Then close your eyes and imagine this feeling everywhere you go.

Join a club or a group outside of your comfort zone, tackle community theater, hear an author speak, play on the local pub’s softball team, and get and stay involved in your kid’s school.

Demand reform. Dive into your city’s local government, march in local and national rallies, knock on doors, create phone banks with friends to stay on top of your representatives. Talk to anyone who will listen about gun reform, and how we need more resources devoted to mental health.

Demand reform.

Support the authentic voices—be one yourself. Find what makes us the same so we can start making a difference.

As in 1969, we are sitting on the cusp of another powerful movement. A gathering of like-minds holding on to each other and fighting for the greater good so we can all prosper.

If we can harness the togetherness and peace that Woodstock brought out in us as we walk the earth today—locking arms and holding the magic of live music inside ourselves as fuel to rebuild our toppled humanity—we’ll be unstoppable.

Even as a child I knew the real thing when I saw it. I would sit on my green shag carpet and sing along with this commercial, back when sharing a Coke with the world did not seem impossible and I truly believed we were all the same.

The story goes: frustrated and tired, Creative Director, Bill Backer, was delayed at an international airport when he noticed people from all over the world were talking and laughing “in between gulps of bubbly Coca-Cola, straight from the bottle.” In that moment, he came up with the pitch: “to see Coke not as it was originally designed to be—a liquid refresher—but as a tiny bit of commonality between all peoples, a universally liked formula that would help to keep them company for a few minutes.”

Young people from all over the world came together on a hilltop to sing as one and the “I’d like to Buy the World a Coke” jingle was born.

Hopefully soon we can find that tiny, universally liked place to keep each other company and sing together in perfect harmony again.

“I’d like to buy the world a home
And furnish it with love
Grow apple trees and honey bees
And snow-white turtle doves

I’d like to teach the world to sing
In perfect harmony
I’d like to buy the world a Coke
And keep it company
That’s the real thing

What the world wants today
Is the real thing
What the world wants today
Is the real thing.” ©

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