PHOTO COURTESY OF THADDEUS TAZIOLI
What made you want to become a DJ?
After I got let go from my job, my wife and
I started a weekly Friday meditation group.
We were already regular meditators, but
wanted to practice in a group setting. It was
a very calming, healing experience, and after
the meditations I would play songs on my
iPod. People started asking, “Hey, what is that
music?” and they would stand and dance. It
started to create a little community after our
meditation. It made me want to create a more
mindful, high-vibrational dance party for art-
ists, healers, and bodyworkers—the sort of
thing that was already happening on the East
Coast and West Coast, but not in the Midwest.
My next step was to create my own conscious
dance party called Club Divine, at the Bodhi
Spiritual Center in Chicago.How do you describe your sound?
I’m mixing different beats and rhythms —
modern techno, pop, house music, and some
devotional music. You’ll also hear sacred
sounds. I’ll play a lot of different frequencies
and tones at times during Savasana that allow
people to really go deep within.What made you want to DJ
specifically for yoga?
My mission in life is to awaken people with
music and help them live more authentic
lives. I really love the yoga world because
I have chosen a career with a focus on peace.
So, I say that I’m a peace activist by profession.
I get to partner with these amazing teachers
around the world and learn their wisdom, and
I get to share my wisdom through music. My
intention is for students to walk out of class feel-
ing more awakened to their personal joy and
freedom in the world, believing more deeplyin themselves and their personal dreams and
desires, and also falling more deeply in love
with music itself.It must be complicated to sync up your
music with the pace of a yoga class.
How do you do that?
You have to be two steps ahead of the class
energetically so that you can anticipate what's
going to come, and also be present to what’s
happening. Sometimes you play a song and it
doesn’t feel good, so you gracefully move out
of it and mix in another song. Some of the most
beautiful things happen when your playlist is
not planned and it just creates that perfect flow.Listen to DJ Taz Rashid’s
album Sacred Grooves
for free by texting
LOVEYOGA to 44222.BEFORE HE WAS DJ TAZ, he was Tazdeen Rashid, a guy who worked various corporate jobs in
the hotel industry, real estate, and corporate recruiting. But none felt quite right to him. When
he was let go in 2011 from his job as a student recruiter for an online university, he found time
to pursue music, which had been his passion since he took up the keyboard in fifth grade. He
also became more committed to yoga and meditation. Just three years later, DJ Taz started
spinning at yoga events, melding devotional music with remixes of pop songs from the 1980s^
and ‘90s. Now you can find him at Yoga Journal LIVE!, Wanderlust, and Bhakti Fest.