Visually accompanied by this self-created music video, “For Me, For You” is written and recorded by Jacob Schaffer. Here is the 1st of monthly memoirs + video/singles leading up to the release of Good Chi, Jacob Schaffer’s debut full length album.
I didn’t full realize it back then… Good Chi was conceived in the rainforest of Costa Rica during September 2012. I was 19 at the time, living and studying yoga for a month on top of a mountain in the mystical Montezuma. The island seemed empty other than my small group, plus a few locals if you walked down the mountain. It was off season. Earthquakes and lightning storms persisted the whole month.
Flashback years earlier… I was 13, entering a severe existential crisis in the suburbs of New Jersey.
Now… at 23, I’m getting ready to share that Good Chi, baby!
YOU CAN’T HAVE GOOD CHI WITHOUT BAD CHI!
There is a give and take to duality and that is something I have 
learned from a very “untraditional” path. Music and art have been an anchor throughout my alternative life.
I knew this album would happen when I was ready. First, I needed to personally understand what the term Good Chi meant to me. My musicianship and production skills also had to reach a certain caliber to match my vision, so I made several EPs in the meantime to get there, performing often around NYC.
I don’t know exactly when I found my Good Chi. Maybe I found it back in Coast Rica screaming across the ocean, butt-naked on the edge of a cliff. Maybe I found it this past year living in Brooklyn, finally producing the album. Maybe it was in me all along, even as the misunderstood kid labeled “defiant” and “unstable,” wrong for being the way I was. A cry for more options on how to grow up, attempting to claim my own identity, the existential crisis of my youth termed “school refusal” baffled my family and many professionals. I love to learn and will be a student of life until the day I die.
When I came of age and the dust settled, there were many emotional wounds to heal.
Back to Costa Rica… We were studying Taoflow, a modern hybrid of Yoga and Qigong, created by a dude named Cain Carroll. I didn’t know it was possible to feel this way. The way we learned to feel through movement/meditation. That subtle existing force in the world is called Qi (Chi). A kind of energy understood by ancient methods before western civilization and science took over, requiring a new kind of analytical processing for things to be accepted.
Anyone can feel it, and there is 100% chance you already are without realizing. If you are alive and reading this, then you are experiencing some form of chi in your body.
Good Chi = Good vibes. Energy, feel me?
I remember at the time it was cool to say stuff like, “Yo, that’s good shit!” That is how the term Good Chi started getting used around our group. “Yo, that’s good chi!” It stuck in my mind and reminds me of a mental clarity I once felt and can feel again, no matter how much bad chi life throws at me.
Remember, Good Chi cannot exist without Bad Chi.
I am humbled and proud to begin sharing this project wth you. Please stay tuned for my monthly posts here leading up to the album release springtime.
Peace,
Jacob Schaffer
