In a departure from its usual format, the McMichael Lecture Series presented Russill Paul and The Yoga of Sound. The Yoga of Sound, says Russill Paul, is a spiritual system 3500 years old and filled with practical applications for living free from stress and maintaining optimal well being. Just like Chinese Medicine and Ayuraveda, it offers us potent sources of energy through its sonic formulae called mantras. Because of its archetypal language and primal energy patterns, The Yoga of Sound reaches across cultural and religious barriers. It is effective in building community, creating sacred space and generating authentic spiritual experience that is life transforming.

According to Arlo Guthrie, Russill Pauls music is not only distinctive, it is extraordinary and brilliant. His fusion of the sounds of India with the energy and technology of contemporary Western music produces a sound unequaled since George Harrison collaborated with Ravi Shankar in the late 1960's.

A native of Chennai (Madras City) in South India, Russill Paul was born into an artistic family. He he took to playing stringed instruments from the early age of four and began professional music in his teens. In 1984, he underwent a powerful transition that motivated him to live as a monk under Dom Bede Griffiths, a pioneering Benedictine monk, who directed a Hindu-Christian Ashram in South India. During the five years he spent as a monk, Paul studied Sanskrit chanting and South Indian Classical Music in addition to yoga, meditation, and philosophy. It was during this period that he learned the tools related to his expertise with the Yoga of Sound. Choosing marriage rather than the life of a monk, he came to North America in 1989 and began performing and teaching sound mysticism. For the past decade, he has remained an integral part of the faculty at Matthew Fox's programs in Creation Spirituality. He currently teaches in the graduate and postgraduate programs at Naropa University and the University of Creation Spirituality in Oakland, CA.