David Hykes
An award-winning composer, singer, recording artist, sound healer and contemplative awareness teacher, David is a modern pioneer of integral harmonic knowledge linking music, mind, meditation and medicine, recently serving on the faculty of the Mind and Life Institute, which brings together leading neuroscientists with contemplative practitioners, in collaboration with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He is the founder of the contemplative “music of the spheres” called Harmonic Chant (New York, 1975), which he has developed and shared around the world in concerts, retreats, seminars and master classes since 1975, and the Harmonic Presence work (Lausanne, 1980), a body of integral awareness practices for spiritual, emotional and physical well-being. "Hearing Solar Winds," his landmark 1983 recording with The Harmonic Choir, is the best-selling vocal harmonic album of all time, with over 300,000 copies sold and remains an essential milestone in the field. His work, research in Mongolia (1981), and projects within the Tibetan tradition since his collaborations with the Gyuto and Gyume Monks (1985-86) and the Dalai Lama (1989), have all greatly contributed to the growth of global interest in harmonic knowledge. Besides 12 albums of his music, he is the author of numerous privately published teachings, recordings and writings since 1980. His publications include "The Search for Awakened Listening" "Pilgrim Movements," and "Harmonic Chant: Global Sacred Music." He is a well-known composer of music for sacred cinema, for films including "Meetings with Remarkable Men" about the master G. I. Gurdjieff; "Travellers and Magicians" by lama Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoché, and the three films of "Journey Into Buddhism" by John Bush, endorsed by H.H. the Dalai Lama, and “Baraka.” A long-time student of Tibetan Buddhism and the Gurdjieff Work, his earliest musical influences and inspirations came from Taos, Tibet, India, Mongolia, Tuva, Persia, Turkey and medieval Europe. He is a universally acknowledged master of "throat singing," which he began in 1973 at age 20, visiting Mongolia in 1981. He presents his work often in spiritual communities at the request of eminent spiritual masters, particularly in the Tibetan tradition. Hykes was born in Taos, New Mexico where his Taos pueblo godmother said, “we gave you the privilege to sing." He divides his time between the US and France, where he directs the Harmonic Presence Foundation's main research and retreat center, Pommereau, offering teachings and harmonic healing practices throughout the year, and online.
Pre-Conference All-Day Retreat: The Harmonic Presence Work and Harmonic Chant: Visions, Resonances, Perspectives and Possibilities
Friday, November 14
- 9:00 am to 5:00 pm
In this exhilarating program, you learn key principles and practices of the Harmonic Presence work, for inner pursuits, healing and the search for well-being.
Goal: To understand the holistic, transdisciplinary nature of the Harmonic Presence work and Harmonic Chant in relation to music, spirituality, cognitive studies and therapeutic counseling and healing.
Learning Objectives:
- To develop an understanding of the harmonic nature of sound, listening and sensory awareness and their roles in enhancing communication and connection with self, spirit and society,
- To develop a clearer idea of how working with sacred sound and chant can transform listening, awareness of silence and the sense of being in harmony, and
- To increase appreciation of Harmonic Chant as a deep language of non-verbal communication and a vehicle for integration and therapeutic healing.
Click here to register for this retreat
Keynote: Mind, Meditation, Sacred Music and Healing:
Saturday, November 15 - 10:30 am to 12:00 pm
In this program, we link the ongoing songline of the Harmonic Presence, a source tradition of contemporary spiritual sound teachings, with essential aspects of spirituality, cosmology, mind essence and the healing arts.
Goal: To understand how the Harmonic Presence work and Harmonic Chant help the search for lasting attunement to the Real and the relationship of that attunement to the cultivation of specific harmonics of consciousness.
Learning Objectives:
- To develop an understanding of Harmonic Chant as it applies to the music of consciousness and its harmonization in the mind, heart and body,
- To develop an understanding of the role of the harmonics of listening, attention and attunement as key to restoring and enhancing harmony within oneself and in working with others, and
- To increase appreciation of harmonic knowledge in relationship to the use of sound and listening skills in the therapeutic/counseling context.
Evening Event: Harmonic Chant: Music from the Heart of the Cosmos
Saturday, November 15 - 8:00pm to 9:30pm
You venture into a new dimension in music, ‘the music of the spheres.’ These wondrous sounds retain an extraordinary mystery, for they do not belong to man. Musical DNA, as David describes it, provides an unusual ‘Genesis Chapter’ for musical education at all levels. We share an evening of music, teachings, stories and practices. The evening ends with a guided sound meditation, the Harmonic Meeting. You are transported somewhere completely otherworldly.
Workshop: The Harmonic Presence Work and Harmonic Chant: Reattunement to the Pure Primordial State
Saturday, November 15 10:45am to 12 noon
You’ll explore the fuller scale of original primordial awareness that can be recognized through authentic spiritual and healing practices. At heart, this is more the result of reattunement, inner silence and the natural musical resonances of consciousness itself than any acquired technique or skill. And yet, establishing a practice and cultivation of key natural harmonics of consciousness (listening, love, attention, compassion and humility, among others) is crucial to any possible personal evolution. We'll reconcile this apparent paradox through listening-in to the quite specific resonances of, first and foremost, the heart of Human Beingness. We’ll explore the infinite realms of possible Human Doing as harmonies of that timeless primordial awareness.
Goal: To understand the role of awareness-based practices of sound, listening, breath and sensation in the Harmonic Presence work and Harmonic Chant for the transformation of consciousness.
Learning Objectives:
- To develop an understanding of Harmonic Chant as a universal music,
- To develop an understanding of the meditative basis of the Harmonic Presence work in relation to mind research and cognitive neuroscience, and
- To learn and increase appreciation of harmonic knowledge in relationship to the use of sound in medicine and healing.
