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April Fox and Deep Dark Yoga
27 Plays3 hours ago
April Fox has been teaching yoga in Portland OR since 2014, and running classes to doom metal since 2016.
🌒Deep Dark Yoga 🌘 is slow, gentle flow to the sludgiest, heaviest tunes you can test your amps to. Great for beginners and “not into yoga” people — perfect for anyone interested in tuning on their mat with an epic soundtrack
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Guest
00:00:02
Speaker
You are listening to Something Rather Than Nothing. Creator and host, Ken Valente.
00:00:15
Speaker
Hey everybody, this is Ken Valente with the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast. And a special guest here, April Fox. Let me tell you a little bit of background.
Discovery of Doom Yoga
00:00:29
Speaker
I was on Instagram, where I like to look for a lot of art and artists and what they're doing, videos, and encountered April's Doom Yoga class.
00:00:44
Speaker
And for me, April, as an enthusiast of Doom metal, which really, for me, when I moved to Pacific Northwest, dropped into such a heavy...
00:00:57
Speaker
Beautiful dedication to the movement. People go to the concerts and stuff. Love doing music. And also for my own like health and breathing and everything. My partner, Jenny, is a yoga practitioner.
00:01:09
Speaker
And I try go once a week. But I was like, oh, my gosh, Doom Yoga. hadn't seen it before. You put it out there. So, April, tell us about like ah this great thing well this great thing that you've created.
00:01:24
Speaker
ah Well, you know, what's funny is I don't really think of it as a thing that I created.
Journey into Yoga and Doom Metal
00:01:29
Speaker
So when I moved to the Pacific Northwest in 2014, it was right around there that somebody asked me to go to a Yob show. And I was like, they're like, you like metal? Come to Yob. I'm like, okay, cool. What's this Yob thing?
00:01:42
Speaker
And I was it's spending my afternoons at the park by my house and just practicing yoga in the park. and like, I'll listen to this yam sing so I know if I want to go to the show. And so I'm practicing yoga and listening to the music. And it was the Prepare the Ground album. And that breakdown at the start of in Our Blood just like hit at the right moment. I was like, oh, this shit's really cool.
00:02:04
Speaker
And then I would just be talking to people are like, oh, what do you do for fun? And I would say, oh, haha, I practice yoga to do metal. they're like, oh, wait, where do you do that? Because I want to do that with you. And so I started teaching the classes just by request, really. I was a full time yoga teacher at the time. I teach yoga and I teach dance and fitness classes and stuff like that. So.
00:02:27
Speaker
It was something that I was already set up to do, but the metal came by request.
Grounding Qualities of Doom Metal
00:02:33
Speaker
People said, no, I really, really, really want to do with that with you. Please make it happen. And it's been going for about 10 years now.
00:02:41
Speaker
It's incredible. I think about grounding and I think about doom metal music and for folks who might, you know, you know, heavy metal music, doom, if you're not familiar with the doom metal and it's kind of,
00:02:55
Speaker
know that For me, it's like a really tuned low, grounding. Percussion has like an important role within, and it's a very moody i and slow in general.
00:03:09
Speaker
And talking about yoga, I was wondering about that like right up front. um In practicing yoga and the body practice, what are your thoughts about um ah the sounds, like sounds in general as they come into you as you're practicing and how that works?
00:03:26
Speaker
fills out the experience. Oh man, there's so much with that. well yeah Yeah. So talking about like, if if people aren't familiar with doom metal, like I talk to people all the time, they say, what do you do for living? I teach doom metal yoga. They're like, that sounds very strange. Like, no, no, no. Here, you're thinking of metal as like, ah, and this metal is,
00:03:45
Speaker
a It is background. You described it. Thank you. I'm over here analytically being like, hey. they That's it. Thank you.
00:04:01
Speaker
But that groundedness, like that low resonance stuff. Oh, there's so many things that are deep in the full philosophy of yoga,
Connection Between Yoga and Sound
00:04:12
Speaker
right? And yoga is not just stretching our hamstrings, right? Yoga is so very, very many things has been for a really long time. And in yoga, we chant Aum,
00:04:22
Speaker
And Aum is supposed to be the sound that the universe makes or the sound that God made to make the universe or the sound that like everything like has this like similar frequency. And so it's the sound of connection. And so many doom artists are yoga practitioners, meditators, Eastern philosophy buffs. So like all of those things really impact the music that they're making. And you know we have so many folks who go to gong meditations and sound baths and crystal singing bowls and the specific creation of seed sounds and the way that mantras come off of the tongue. like All of this stuff is so very much tied to impacting our energy and having like different intentions.
Impact of Sound in Yoga Practice
00:05:10
Speaker
One of the the Sanskrit words that we've been focusing on lately in my classes is Purnam, which is wholeness. And so the sound that you make really does make a big difference. And you know it's it's really neat to be able to have this whole genre of music that's just like, let me make this sound for like 20 minutes straight. Yeah.
00:05:31
Speaker
to be able to integrate with that with our practice is a really... Patience is like, I'm thinking of words like patience, like that there's a patience in there. When I i had the experience, um I had mentioned, I listen to a lot of different types of music. Doom Metal, see live, tends to be my favorite experience to to go to.
Doom Metal Concerts as Spiritual Experiences
00:05:52
Speaker
And when I moved, I moved from Wisconsin about 15 years ago out to Pacific Northwest and I'm going to shows. And for me, it was like,
00:06:01
Speaker
being blessed by this like excess, right? Like as a concert goer, as like, you know, affordable tickets, like bands that I think are huge bands in my doom head that are very accessible playing with other bands for like a really good price and just being, and I'm doing that consistently.
00:06:17
Speaker
Most time going on myself because I began to realize there was a communion there. Right. and in and and and And in the moment of realization within that, I'm not sure exactly when it was, but it was through the grounding of the sound. It was like how I was moved next to other people's safe environment, which tend to be in these type of environments. And.
00:06:41
Speaker
there was a connection between some of the Buddhist meditation I had heard in this, the, the droning and the grounding and, and um the percussion, like there, that there would be regular percussion that wasn't interested on finishing or hurrying up or anything like that. That was like the huge, like body and soul underneath.
00:07:01
Speaker
And it was like that physical experience, right. Of being wrung out a little bit within that, that I was like, man, I'm in church. I'm in my metal church. And is, you know, that spiritual piece of it with the work you're thinking is like, sometimes I think our brain obviates away from that and be like, Oh, it's not spiritual or spiritual needs to be in this type of way. But I experienced it. And, you know, around other human beings, communion, music, and, and, and atmosphere. so
00:07:32
Speaker
um thinking about your class and where that's pulled right in deliberately. So as a matter of experience, tell tell us ah just just some basics about um like ah a class that you would hold um and some of your intention around the sound and what you're trying to bring a practitioner through because it is a unique experience that you're presenting to them. So some thoughts about that.
00:08:02
Speaker
Yeah, I make a new playlist about every month. That way we don't get too sick of things, but I don't have to make a new playlist every day because I'd go crazy. And I try to structure it around i goes a softer intro and a softer outro. So we start class with, call it a Dharma talk. It's a little bit of philosophy talk. I'll maybe talk about something with current events. and how we manage that in the lens of our yoga practice. Also drawing a lot from Buddhist teachings as well, because there's a lot of in um interweaving in those Eastern philosophies. So we do a little bit of chit-chat. I try to engage people in conversation. it's It's funny. It's always different groups want to talk to me, and different groups just kind of sit there like,
Inclusive Nature of Doom Yoga Classes
00:08:50
Speaker
I don't know I'm going to say. Yeah.
00:08:53
Speaker
um we We breathe. I do pranayama, which is um like breath work and adapting the breath because different types of breath work impact the oxygen in your brain, which impacts your consciousness. There's all kinds of like really interesting neuroscience about that work. and so A chanting of om always is some breathing. and we move the body. and the We call them deep dark yoga, the doom metal yoga classes. Those specifically i structure her to be very slow, mostly because of the music, right? Like the music is so slow. Like I would feel kind of disconnected just running around and moving. Hi, miss, miss.
00:09:38
Speaker
One of my dogs is very curious, but she can't pass. yeah. ah Pets are like total total guests on the show. so Oh, yeah. Here they go. They're going to come in here soon.
00:09:50
Speaker
but The movement's really slow. And the other reason, aside from the music, is that a lot of people come to these classes for the very, very first time they're doing yoga. They've never thought they would belong in a yoga studio. They didn't think that it was the kind of thing that they would enjoy. but this is, you know, I i get a lot of, um my partner may be come to this.
00:10:13
Speaker
like Shit, my back hurts. People keep telling me I should do yoga, but this is the only yoga that I want to do. People come in and they haven't really practiced before. Maybe they're a lot stiffer. Things aren't as familiar. So we go really, really slow just to give the opportunity for people to be able to catch up.
00:10:31
Speaker
But if you if anybody listening out there is into movement, they will also know that slow is not necessarily easy. It is often much harder to go slow intentionally. So there's a challenge for everyone. Oh, there you are. Hello.
00:10:47
Speaker
This is Jezebel. We got Jezebel joining the show. um Not too much responses to the questions thus far, but very happy to have you in in in in the studio. i um I really appreciate your thoughts and thinking about like the philosophy up ah ahead of it. I encountered Buddhist philosophy in particular when I was studying philosophy at the graduate level. So it was a very analytical way of bringing into it, but you can't do Buddhism analytically and know what it is. You have, there's aspects of practice and understanding within, um sitting meditation and otherwise. So it was like really great to hear because for me, it's like, I don't need to be doing all the mind stuff, but I like to begin like yoga or anything with the intention and thinking about those types of questions and and having that there. Um, so I, I, I just really, um
00:11:45
Speaker
I love the format and it's great. Like, even as far as the people going to yoga, it's like the idea of entering the stream, right? It's like, wherever you're going like, I get dragged into the stream. Somebody brought me here or I'm here by accident, or I really heard the music. I don't know what yoga is, but like, you know, it's, it's, it's like, I like that openness in in in that feel. How popular is it? Like, this is Portland doom yoga. Like what's going on? Is this a big thing?
00:12:13
Speaker
It's become a pretty big thing. i have often had very large classes. yeah a lot of it is, you know, the community is very connected, right? Like I go to shows and it's like, I know most of the people, which is really neat.
00:12:28
Speaker
So that that has been pretty consistent. And then ah back in July, my Instagram started blowing up. And now I run a bunch of online classes that are pretty consistent. Our are in-person classes in Portland, the the weekend ones are always sold out. And then the weekday, it's it's a big group. And we had to move to 8 of Stock. And I was like, oh, nobody's going to come because that's really late. But it turns out that's just really late to me everybody elses happy to be they people hungry but they need it right so you you know you reflect reflect what they need and uh that that's uh and it's great chatting about that i wanted to ask you one of the big conceptual questions of the show as a creator yourself and and the way your your uh your your brain your brain works and in thinking about like um art and do art and philosophy talk some philosophy here and and and and and
00:13:23
Speaker
what we've been talking about with the doom yoga but I just some I wanted to ask the question or for you and you can and you can yeah answer it within the context of like the music or the yoga in general but um for you what is what is art what is art for you April it's like a I think I might answer your question a little bit differently than you're asking. yeah I think for for me, art is this capacity to to connect with other people, right? Like to be able to speak outside of language or using language, right? Like your art is writing and and singing, et cetera. Yeah.
00:14:07
Speaker
But the way that art has impacted my life is that I was able to experience something that allowed me to feel whole like, oh, what I am doing right now is meaningful. And like art for me at the beginning was listening to music and like singing into my hairbrush as a child and to like dance around the room. But like, that was like, oh, I feel whole when I do this.
00:14:33
Speaker
And my pathway as an artist and and becoming a dancer was to realize like, what a cool gift it is. If I can at any moment help anybody else to feel this sense of wholeness and purpose. So I want to help other people experience art. And for me, that was dance. I wanted to teach movement. And then I discovered yoga.
00:14:56
Speaker
And yoga had that exact same impact on me. It was like the second time I was in a class and I'm struggling because I want to get the pose perfect because I was a dancer, right? you have to be perfect all of the time. Yeah.
00:15:07
Speaker
And the teacher comes over to me. She's like, you know, it's fine if it's not perfect today. And I was like, whoa. Huge switch. I can do that here too. Like I can just... be in this thing.
00:15:19
Speaker
And so that very, that, that adapted my life's mission and my life's work. And that's the way that I teach is like, I'm just here to be a facilitator for the idea to give you the tools to be able to,
00:15:33
Speaker
make the art of movement to you know practice. I call it the art of paying attention, which is kind of incredible. And if if like every couple days for five minutes, I can help one person say like, Oh yeah, like I'm, I am in this. I am, I am whole. I am connected to this moment right here.
00:15:55
Speaker
Like it's, it's all worth it. That's, that's just all I want do. No, it's it's a beautiful it's a beautiful piece like that ah is central to my thinking about about art and like underneath like as I investigate is like...
00:16:09
Speaker
Being yourself, feeling whole, feeling like just feeling whole, right? Like that there's like that there's this piece. And when art does that for folks and you mentioned in like movement and and things like that, talking to more artists who engage in in in movement for me has been like a real switch to really think about a different way and see myself in that way through dancing and other ways of moving again, being so riddled in my head at times, analytically not realizing or not like fully seeing the expanse of speech that has to do with us as humans and, and, and, and movement
Themes of Imperfection in Art and Yoga
00:16:47
Speaker
and yoga. And and there's like a great beauty in that, but I became, i became more like you were talking about, like doing things imperfectly. i was like, I don't need to,
00:17:00
Speaker
if it's within movement, I don't need to express myself perfectly that way because i'm when I'm using my mouth here, it's not perfect either. It's like, yeah it's imperfect. like i Go out into your garden and like out of all your tomatoes, like two of them are going to look like something that should be sold in the stores. Yeah, you take the picture of those. Yeah, thank you.
00:17:25
Speaker
Nature's not perfect either, man. Like, it's okay. The bar is much lower than we hold ourselves to. And I don't mean that in the way of giving up. I mean that in the way of like, no, you have, you have all, you can totally like go. Like you don't have to, you don't have to be up here. It's all...
00:17:43
Speaker
It's like the something I find is like ah there's this idea like it's just tied to the show and not trying to be cute of like whether you're doing something like or nothing. Right. Because like yoga at the basis of it is like sometimes you look at as like I've made all this progress, um you know, to lay on my stomach to be comfortable and to be moving into that. But it's like something, you know, you intuitively can do what you need to get.
00:18:09
Speaker
There to realize you're doing really great things with your body. And it's like more simple, right? Like it's more simple than we think. Although, but I think some of the misperceptions around yoga has to do with the many interpretations of it. Like I've taken like... I've been like, I've been in that like TV show, like white suburban yoga class, hot yoga, like 75 minutes. Like if you didn't pass out and didn't die, like, and I've been like, okay. Like we're all like as adults, like even when we're students, we're always like, you always want to pass the test. Right. And then I'm like, I was like, what the fuck am I doing? Like, I'm going to keep up with the gals here, but I didn't know was to be 100 degrees and this was going to be the biggest workout had in four years. So anyways, there's many different variations of, you know, of yoga and, you know, for different people stuff. And I think sometimes when people kind of bump into your spot, I think it's probably pretty interesting. They're like, this is yoga.
00:19:12
Speaker
Like, this is yoga. And it's like, yeah. Yeah, in april and April, I'm talking to you about like the different ways that people like ah would encounter yoga and like kind of and many different ideas that people have ah about it. You find like when people kind of bump into you and they really like what they see, they feel like a relief or like kind of like, ah oh, this is something that I can really like i don't know like improve my life with as a relief or based on misperceptions um of yoga, maybe, or of like forms of yoga.
00:19:44
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, there's the conversation about all of the different kinds of yoga is probably bigger than I think your audience cares about at all. remember like The amount of yoga that is the poses is like such a really, really small part in the grand scheme of things. It's like...
00:20:04
Speaker
But as far as, you know, in the West, like, let's, the genie's out of the bottle, okay? Like, yoga in the West and in the world today is primarily focused on the asana. Even the really good stuff that says philosophy, you know, restraint and breath and meditation and all of that stuff, even when it includes that, most of the time it's the movement. And, and you know, there are, like, so many people think, like, oh, yoga, do you do it in a 100-degree room? And I say, no because I'm not going sit. degree and I did that. who do, and I think that's wonderful. You should do that.
00:20:42
Speaker
Yeah. and you know like I also heard people say, like oh, you shouldn't practice yoga to metal or music at all, and you're appropriating and fucking it up, and that's not how you're supposed to do it. I said, okay, well, you clearly feel like you should practice yoga in silence, and I think you should practice yoga get in silence. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally fine. totally Are doing that, but yeah yeah this is this is a specific container and a...
00:21:08
Speaker
and Just a different lens of looking at it where we say, you know, we're going to get in here. We're going to use our real human adult bodies that probably don't do everything that we want them to be able to do and to be able to adapt that into a way that makes sense and isn't that whole like, oh, shit, I didn't pass the test and I didn't do the crazy one arm handstand. She has to be. one ah Just lovely. I am.
00:21:34
Speaker
I had a big question about, I have the big philosophical question. reason i wanted to ask you I tend to ask it in general, but I wanted to ask you in particular, I think about um Buddhism and I think about like concepts of something and and and nothing. And for me, like there's a lot of, um I think that there's one thing as far as like with some of the traditions we alluded to is that like,
00:21:58
Speaker
within the philosophical tradition of the East is like that um there's an idea of like an inherent emptiness of like things containing an essence in and of themselves. But like the idea of emptiness or nothingness isn't like a vacuous like idea, which it can be a lot of times in the West. So like I like I like ah messing with you know with that question. But I'm gonna ask you the big question, because you get the chops for it, is ah why is there something rather than nothing?
00:22:29
Speaker
Well, nothing doesn't exist. There's no nothing. Meditation. You know, we think of meditation like, oh, I'm really bad at meditation because I'm really bad at stopping my thoughts. Like, dude, you can't stop your thoughts. You'd have to shut the brain down. If you shut the brain down, you're dead. You're not meditating anyway.
00:22:47
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we say, satnam, I am. And I am is a complete sentence. And we try to finish that sentence with, I am a podcaster. I am a yoga teacher. I am a a lady with two dogs and blue hair. like And those things, like they make us feel this sense of of more fullness to finish that sentence. But you are already full and wonderful and complete without all of that, right? like We can contain multitudes. like I could either spend my entire life trying to finish that sentence in as many ways as possible, or I could just enjoy the magical excellence of being in this life and just being.
00:23:34
Speaker
Just something I'm practicing continuously, of course. Well, I appreciate learning learning from you. That's my secret drive in all the episodes that I do is to be able to learn from you. April, tell us about the spots in Portland. And and folks, we're talking here, it's March 2026, but I wanted to get some, you know, like – Where the yoga is, you mentioned in Portland, the the type of offerings and the online offerings, because I want folks and listeners, you'll be able to listen. You might have heard some pieces before earlier the episode, be able to listen to some of the sounds um in in in Naples a class. But um some specifics, April, about ah your program there in Portland.
Overview of Doom Yoga Offerings
00:24:16
Speaker
Well, the the OG class is once a month we meet at it's at the People's Yoga in on Southeast Hawthorne. There's two People's Yogas. i teach I do teach there in their regular classes, but I just rent the space. So one Saturday a month we meet there. Those classes are packed to the gills, super great energy. I love it. If you want to get it, you've got to sign up for that.
00:24:37
Speaker
And then I also run a weekly online class and I do that twice a week and it's just on Zoom. So i have people join literally from all over the world. I lived in Australia for a while. We've got Australians. I've got people in Brazil, and Germany, time the classes so that like the Monday classes in the morning for us U.S. folks and it's in the evening for UK folks. And then Wednesday is at 6 p.m. Pacific. So the after work crowd for us and We also do a class on Tuesday nights. It's at 8 p.m. Pacific, and that gets streamed too, but it happens at Elk Rock Yoga, and that's the one on Woodstock, so kind of further out southeast Portland. But it's a nice studio space there. I get to turn down the lights and put a bunch of blue tea lights in the room so I have my own vibe. and
00:25:28
Speaker
Their sound system's incredible, which I'm very happy about. and We have that consistently on Tuesday nights. um Well, I'll be seeing you live in person at some point in the near future to brag you yeah to practice in person. I've been talking about this. my yeah a good A good friend of mine mentioned this to his name's Eric. and And Eric's really influential on the doom metal.
00:25:55
Speaker
and For me, I've known Eric. Going back, we studied philosophy together ages ago. Going back 30 years ago. And Eric has the largest that I know of He never switched off collecting CDs.
00:26:12
Speaker
Never switched. Stayed consistent throughout. Like, this is how going to get my doing... metal album and has the most extensive doom metal cd catalog in the history and he's already said he said he willed it to me and everything so i don't know if i'm gonna get a museum god bless him i hope he's around forever but supposedly so um but just like um you know being around people is super enthusiastic and throwing in around it particularly around music um just just Just really love the vibe and really look forward to both like online and folks, listeners, check it out. or We have a lot of listeners in Pacific Northwest. yu and They're in Portland. but um Of course, April. I believe it's AprilKindOfRocks, your handle on Instagram. ah so You can find April there. and like A lot of good short videos, folks, like learning like some disparate you know components and exposing yourself to
00:27:11
Speaker
Doom yoga. So yay on you April. I'm a big fan. Thank you. like Thanks for jumping in and talking philosophy and doom and yoga.
00:27:22
Speaker
Thank you so much. you i I forgot to mention, you were saying talk about like the whole website. there is yes There are on-demand videos on the website too. So there's like shorties that are like 10, 15 minutes and then there's longer practices. So I do record things and put them up there.
00:27:38
Speaker
So i I had somebody say like, oh no, that's too early for me. Like I'm a night owl. I'm not. So you're going have to do the on-demand things. So there's ah there's a lot in there. So opportunity is outside of the live thing as well. But the live thing is cool because then we get the the inper the you know the direct communication and community aspect of it.
00:27:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's beautiful. And it's like for anybody out there you know the like with the videos and stuff, like that just connect it to the sound system you have. and get on the floor the the entry point is you know does have to be too much assuming you're able to in you know uh you know physically and such but the the entry point in general uh some music in the ground so uh appreciate the welcome uh april so great to talk to you everybody check out um April's, April kind of rocks website. And it was a deep down, deep dark, yeah deep deep dark, deep dark, deep dark Yoda. And I don't know, let's all make ourselves healthy, more complete.
00:28:46
Speaker
And one thing I learned from you is that the sentence can be done after I am. Yes. Thank you for that. Yeah. Thank you so much, Ken. It's a pleasure. Thanks. Thanks, April. Thanks, April. Great pleasure.
00:29:10
Speaker
This is something rather than nothing.