About Johann Kotze Music & Yoga

My music is intended as expressions of light consciousness in sound, intended to stimulate elevated, expansive states of being. Music is magical. When I compose music it feels similar to what it is like for me to meditate, or how I feel doing or teaching yoga. It is as if the notes, frequencies and rhythms become a conscious cosmos, breathing, rising, falling, expanding quietly, filling space with light. I think of this as Ambient Consciousness Music.

My wish for my creations is that they are used to infuse the spaces where people live, work, create, do yoga or meditation or therapy in, to help establish spheres of energy to assist the processes of self-realisation. It’s purpose is to help “awaken light resonance” within the listers, rather than to entertain. My music is a kind of contribution, and for that reason I totally appreciate it when it is shared.  It enables me to care. Please share!

I am currently working from home, from a wonderful music and yoga studio by the seaside, in village of Muizenberg, on the edge of Cape Town city. It has views over the bay, beach, and a great surfer’s holiday feel. Here I feel blessed, geographically and spiritually, privileged to engage in and share my work involving mediums of light consciousness. Visit my personal branded page for more about my local music and yoga studio, and biography. Johann Kotze Music & Yoga.

My Online Yoga and Yoga Blog

Yoga is, and has been, for what feels like a very long time, my inspiration for just about everything in and around my life. My teacher’s vocation is to share the practical magnificence and spiritual significance of yoga in a modern and authentic way, with an easy going, simple, do-able and effective practice. Beginners and experienced practitioners are welcome in all classes. For me it’s not so much about the practice of the poses: yoga is about an holistic, conscious lifestyle.

This is what I write about in my music and yoga blogs, and what I aim to capture in my online yoga and well-being contributions. My interest in yoga is based on the yogic philosophy that we live in universe of energy, or Prana (See my article As it is in heaven). I am influenced by Zen, Buddhism and the Tao, and the great Gnostic/Coptic philosophies has shaped my ideas around yoga, well-being, music and beyond. it helped me develop a personal interpretation of the universal values of the classic yogic metaphysics and physical practices as a means to achieve well-being and self-realisation.

I started out as a self taught teacher in 1990, and also qualified as a Sivananda instructor. My classes are usually relatively easy and accessible. For me yoga is not about the difficult to do stuff, when I worked as a well-being consultant and teacher to a general public outside of the traditional yoga studio I soon saw the sense to share the gifts and insights Yoga offers in an accessible form. My method is based on good posture, effective breathing, mobility, stress management and lifestyle Body-Mind-Spirit integration. Sound basics are useful for peak, and sustainable, day-to-day living.

Johann Kotze Yoga & Music since 1990

I collected LP’s as a kid, though creating music only started in the middle 1980’s, with me hacking at the guitar and doing the “young guy folk singer-songwriter” thing. I moved to Stellenbosch in 1990. Here my creative interest in music and yoga became interwoven with entrepreneurial activities, and over the course of a decade or more managed bands, produced records, owned a label, wrote for magazines, and was a bit of musician inbetween. In 2003 I started to concentrate on my yoga career. I self-published my book Five Keys to Well-being. After a couple of years of fiddling on my computer I grasped that I could record acoustic instruments and blend it with electronic sounds, and founded Being Ambient Music in 2007 with my first acoustic-electronica album. My experience with diverse poetry, classical-, blues- and rock, and my own music in these genres, somehow enabled me to veer off into ambient music. A few years of following the Windham Hill and ECM labels, listening to all the Penguin Cafe albums, and Tibetan monks and classical music and stuff like that, led to a late-in-age discovery of Brian Eno. And then came the Cafe del Mar and Buddha Bar releases, and I wanted to do do that type of music. My way, of course.  And I’m still developing a personal style. These days I can also feel how my lifelong passions for reading, travel, enjoying the outdoors and surfing, all somehow influences me.

Acclaim for Being Ambient Music

Wonderful pieces of music, melodies in harmony.
-E-SOUND, Austria

Been listening to your tracks all day, and they are sooo good.
Really helping me stay calm and especially helping me focus.
-Inner Light Spectrum

You music is very beautiful.
I will definitely use your music for other CD albums, mixes and/or videos and promote your music and name.
Thanks again for good music.
Take care, 
Michael Lanfield, 
Ambient New World (Canada)

You take us away to a far better place when we close our eyes nd listen to your music. There is no way to pick out a fav from the lounge tracks. It is all so relaxing and pure heaven.
Anon. Las Vegas

“Being Ambient Lounge” is so smooth and relaxing. It’s a wonderful support in the work place. As a musician who also practices Shiatsu and Acupuncture I find your music to be a great
Kim Merlino, Mount Shasta, California

Wow!!!
You are truly truly gifted. So beautiful….it send shivers down my spine. I’ll most certainly buy some.
Love and light from Vijaya, Yoga teacher, South Africa
p.s. Bless you for sharing 🙂

“Winter’s light” – the piano drops sounds magical, like waterdrops from melting ice in the winter silence and sunlight
… icy piano sound. The light feels nice on the skin, but also in the eyes, when the light plays on the water or through the green…
Luc Van Steenbergen, musician (Belguim)

I have been using your CD’s on my courses and have found it very excellent.
Seems to keep people in Alpha and is very “neutral” and excellent in the background when people are meditating.
You must be the most incredibly attuned, creative person.
Natalia Baker, meditation facilitator

Thanks !!! for your CD’s
Simply love the sound..calming peaceful,uplifting..THANKS..again !!
Take care, Namasta,
Desi Ray, Therapist and artist

Your music opens the heart chakra.
Terry de Vries, Labyrinth facilitator and journalist

Very beautiful music.
Carol, nursing sister

Lovely sounds.
Maggie, Cape Town

New energy music for this age.
Gentle and very uplifting.
Karen, therapist

Reviewer on Amazonmp3
5 out of 5 stars trancendent ambient rhapsodies, July 22, 2009
Lose yourself in this music. Johann Kotze has refined and improved his music over the course of three albums and while the refinement of his distinctive style is obvious, he still manages to surprise one with the innovative, fresh sound in this album. Originality, attention to detail and the subtle but distinct African nuances in this song (New beginnings, Zen Heart Mix) will make you reach for the repeat button.