Why the music is half the work during a ceremony

Of everything that shapes a ceremony day, this is the most underrated. People ask about the dose, the duration and the guidance. Almost nobody asks about the music, even though it runs all day and, according to Kelly Schuller, decides more than most people think.

It is really a kind of wind in the sails of your journey.

Her explanation: because your feeling is wide open during a ceremony, music lands far more directly than it normally would. It carries you along instead of staying in the background. Which is exactly why we do not leave it to chance.

The music is put together in advance and consists of three kinds:

• meditation music
• more tender, emotional tracks
• what Kelly calls earthy music, hard to describe but recognisable the moment you hear it

No sing-along pop, no death metal, and nothing that pulls you out of your concentration. The order is deliberate: the day has a build-up and a wind-down, and the music follows it.

An obvious question with hours of meditation music, and the answer says something about how a ceremony works.

You do not fall asleep, because your brain actually becomes hugely active.

The music reaches you in your feeling and helps you on, while at the same time leaving enough room. Kelly calls that the room to let your brain find its own way. Music that steered too much would get in the way of exactly that.

In a private or duo ceremony personal music can be played in between, if we think it suits the moment.

According to Kelly that is also the real advantage of that form. A track that is emotionally loaded for you lands very differently on a day like that than at home on the sofa.

In a group the music is a little louder. That has a practical reason: it covers the sounds of the others in the room, so that everyone can stay with themselves.

More about how a day runs is on what a truffle ceremony is, or look through the upcoming dates.