About five minutes before he's due onstage, Krishna Das casually rolls in the door of a gigantic room at the Hilton full of crystal chandeliers in the same red plaid flannel shirt he's worn to each of the 10 or so concerts I've seen him play. (I imagine he has a closet full of those hanging in a row next to 20 maroon t-shirts). A very excited woman greets him with "I missed Bruce for you!"

But in this room, KD is The Boss. It's the same canned jokes and spiritual asides (I enjoy watching his tabla player Arjuna's face every time KD tells that story about the cell phone. Since this must be the 1,099th time he's heard it, does it drive him crazy? Or is it just white noise? Or is there something Zen-ly comforting about it?). But it's also the same lovely, lovely chanting. He opens a door, that one, with his hare hare's and om namo's, and we all walk through to a place that's so sweet.

"You know how this works, right?" he asks. "I sing something and then you sing something that sounds sorta close." Ha. Exactly right--even with this sold-out crowd of yogis, the easy chants are loud and clear from us; the more complicated ones sound like we're singing auditory oatmeal. But it so doesn't matter. The sacred name is the sacred name, even if you have to fake it a little bit.

It was a lovely show tonight. They had up, good energy. KD told a new story about a guy in India.  And for the New Yorkers like me, it's just so strange to walk off the street into a place where people actually touch you. Like, on purpose. A woman squeezing past me laid her hands on my back so long I felt like I was getting a massage. I filled a guy's cup (yes, that was me dancing like a banshee by the water cooler) and he thanked me with a lingering arm-touch. Another woman walked by with a gentle, conscious shoulder-brush. Weeeird. And nice. We don't touch each other much here. Nice to get that warm touch on the outside and some good KD, sacred-name-chanting-touch and clearing on the inside.

"The fact that we come together like this," Krishna Das told us, "It helps us, it helps everyone around us." Amen, my flanneled brother. 

And this is before I even go to Rodney Yee's "Sacrum Secrets" class tomorrow. Yow! I mean "ommmm." Stay tuned for more Adventures in Yoga Conferenceland. (Please post in the comments if there's anything you particularly want reported on.)