Supporter Spotlight: Sunrise Transparence
Last Updated: July 26, 2022
DanceSafe’s incredible supporters hail from many geographic locations, personal backgrounds, and general walks of life. On this Supporter Spotlight, we meet Anj, who performs as the meditation and soundbath artist Sunrise Transparence.
The Who: Anj (Sunrise Transparence) is a musician and teacher in Los Angeles, CA whose work centers around the practice of using music to heal and recenter, a practice that has been employed since Anj’s childhood. Anj has been directing and teaching music for 14 years, having been a scholarship recipient at both USC (B.Mus. Music Industry, Magna Cum Laude) and UCLA (M.A. Composition for Visual Media). Anj continues to attend a variety of mindfulness, breathwork, sound healing, and expressive arts continuing education seminars, conferences, and CE classes, and has also achieved a Certificate in Music Therapyand Sound Healing from LMU’s Extension program.
The What: Sunrise Transparence performances are efforts to bring listeners closer to themselves, unwind false narratives, and process emotions. These soundbaths are opportunities for participants to engage mindfully in a meditative state.
The How and Why: “I aim to share what I’ve learned on my path toward mindfulness, awareness, and identifying/releasing false narratives. Not as some sort of some sort of enlightened “guru” but in solidarity, human-to-human: as someone has been there, who was using destructive coping mechanisms to escape from unresolved trauma and narratives I grew up with, and has found some things that help. These are approaches that don’t just mask the surface symptoms, but really open up the core issues and reasons why we feel and act the way we do, giving insights that empower us to truly heal in the deepest parts of our selves.
My mindfulness practice is very embodied- and sensory-oriented. As a brass and woodwind musician, using the breath intentionally and mindfully is a part of my daily life. I was naturally drawn to breathwork and breath-anchored meditation, and have had some incredible experiences of presence, open awareness, and shifted viewpoints through this practice that I hope to share with others. And for almost as long as I can remember, music and sound have had a unique power to not just communicate ideas intellectually, but also to viscerally share immersive experienced emotional/mental/spiritual states–creating them both in listener and performer. Putting these modalities together, accompanied by moving and being present in our bodies and surroundings, creates a unique liminal space for unwinding our subconscious false narratives and experiencing the infinite now in openness and harmony.”
Sunrise Transparence and DanceSafe: “I believe that harm reduction and informed consent are very important. Psychedelic/entheogenic substances can help facilitate very meaningful, sometimes even life-changing experiences and insights, but, with the current state of our society, it can be hard to get accurate, fact-based information about them. Drug checking kits and services are also very important so that individuals can make informed decisions about what they put in their bodies, and the experiences they are about to undertake. Misrepresented substances can have very different effects than what an individual may have been seeking, leading to un-consented-to risks to physical health as well as mindstate. I have been following and making use of DanceSafe’s offerings for years, and am excited to join forces in this new collaboration, sharing this guided meditation and soundbath to further support our community’s wellbeing.”
To hear more of Sunrise Transparence’s work, you can follow the Space Anemone Soundcloud label or the Space Anemone Twitter.