Drumming with others is quite good for our social wellness, psychological wellness and spiritual wellness. It’s salutogenic and salubrious in many ways that we’ll explore this morning. It’s one of many great strategies to use in the Game of Life to achieve our goals.
Drumming was probably the first form of music, which is one of the activities, like laughter, grammar and revenge, that distinguishes humans from other life forms. Making sounds by pounding on something . . . sets that thing into a vibration that then sends out an oscillation in the density of the air, which travels about 770 miles per hour, which then causes our bodies and eardrums to resonate at the same frequency. If it’s between 20 and 20,000 oscillations per second we can experience the sensation of the sound -- we are aware of it’s pitch and rhythm. The 2nd lowest D on the piano is called D2; the piano causes the string to vibrate 73 times per second. (pianist plays d2) An octave up, D3 is double that, 143 hz. (piana plays d3) So when you play them together, they resonate together. (pianist plays d2 & d3) Harmony is when something creates a frequency that seems to fit well, or harmoniously, with the base pitch. For instance F# and A fit with D. Here’s a D chord . Here’s 2 adjacent notes that are not harmonious. (d2 and d#2). Clearly humans prefer harmony instead of discord.
About 99% of humans over 4 years old have the unique ability to move their bodies in synchrony or in resonance with the rhythms they hear, whereas younger toddlers and animals don’t have this ability. We can drum along with, or clap our hands to, or dance to the rhythms we hear. We can resonate and harmonize with others and connect with them in a profound way, thereby improving our social wellness, and gaining crucial social capital.
In a drum circle everyone should try to act as one. The ME becomes the WE.
Social wellness
In Africa, drumming was always a part of everyday life. Groups of drummers played (while dancers danced) at harvest rituals, solstice gatherings, fertility rituals, marriage ceremonies, and all manner of celebrations.
In the 60s Arthur Hull was the most famous proponent of informal drum circles,where 2 - 30 random hippies would creatively improvise around a common steady beat that each player was aware of and tried to keep in synchrony with, or resonate with; otherwise it degenerates into chaotic noise. A drum circle experience is an end in itself rather than preparation for a performance.They tend to happen in parks or churches or during retreats and festivals.they are improvised and co-created by the participants, not prearranged or composed.
Tanice G. Foltz writes that: Drumming levels out differences, engenders altered states of consciousness, and brings people together in abandoned play, where participants feels as though they are part of a single entity engaged in a unique creative experience that can never be repeated. Thus drumming is a form of spirituality wherein participants can heal the self, create community, and even transform society through their re-enchantment of the secular world. -
Keeping in time through any rhythmic group activity contributes to social cohesion through what is called ‘muscular bonding’: the euphoric fellow feeling that prolonged and rhythmic muscular movement arouses among nearly all participants in such exercises’. This type of bonding increases solidarity among people, a solidarity that historically has been channelled into religious or healing ceremonies and war.
Rhythms are played with a sense of group. Each person plays a piece to make the whole. Everyone in the community can join in and not only make music but commune with one another without inhibition and with their own self expression. That is the spirit of the drum circle.
Resonating at the same frequency with another helps to soften our ego boundaries and self-centeredness and nourishes an other-centeredness that is an essential ingredient in a love relationship. We can resonate with another with drumming, but another exercise that works to nourish a love relationship is to synchronize our breathing, in resonance with one’s lover, perhaps while lying close together in bed.
drummer Mickey Hart stated:
The drum circle offers equality because there is no head or tail. It includes people of all ages. The main objective is to share rhythm and get in tune with each other and themselves. To form a group consciousness. To entrain and resonate. By entrainment, I mean that a new voice, a collective voice, emerges from the group as they drum together.
Drum circles tend to have a facilitator or moderator who helps to shape the experience through discrete actions, such as helping to maintain a steady beat, helping those who need it,passing out extra instruments and generally managing the environment to see that everyone is able to participate fully. Participants use their listening and playing skills to make musical connections and express themselves in any and all ways that feel right. Participation is voluntary and often includes singing, chanting, dancing, playing or a flute, or just listening. drum circles often attract both regular and drop-in participants of all ages.
In drum circles, unlike in many more formal types of music there an emphasis an acceptance and respect of all, regardless of their musical abilities. All are welcomed into the circle. Quite often dancers or chanters join in and improvise to the rhythms. Others just listen or meditate.
Individual wellness- Drumming is often used by music therapists to help people free themselves from dysfunctional habitual thoughts. Little ‘mind vacations’ away from our usual mode of consciousness (with its discursive, verbal thinking) are quite good for us. Ideally, while listening and playing with others our thinking stops for awhile. We are intensively living in the here and now. We are practicing a form of mindfulness. Forgetting about our current worries about the future and ruminations about the past can be good medicine for us. It can relieve our stress and generate feel-good hormones called endorphins.
Noell Oxenhandler writes that : Realizing one is simply part of the machinery, or the music, of the universe, with its resonating structure of wave patterns: this one giving rise to this one, giving rise to this one … to hear this music, piercing as it is, restores a measure of order in the havoc of pain.
Drumming can energize us and be revitalizing. One can experience happiness, and occasionally even delicious moments of ecstasy.
Finally, group drumming can improve our Spiritual Wellness- Some consider spirituality to be our relationship with everything outside of our own selves.
There are countless examples of drums playing a part in sacred ritual. Shamans in many cultures have used the drum as the "canoe" to transport the healer to an altered state of consciousness in preparation for healing, or to help listeners experience dreamlike journeys.
During the Sufi Zikr, small groups of drummers play a simple rhythm over and over to accompany the whirling dervishes,or Sufis in a circle, helping them achieve an ego-less, trance-like state . For Sufis,their main spiritual goal tends to be to love God well and feel a unity with God.
Group drumming can sometimes quiet my ego mind, and my egocentric perspective, and help me feel a mystical oneness with others and the Universe. For the last 50 years, the theology that has worked well for me (which is certainly not the only valid theology), is called Pantheism. Instead of Monotheism, the belief that there is an all-powerful, all-knowing, everpresent, loving, compassionate, merciful, opinionated creator God out there that is different than the Universe he or she created. . . and instead of Polytheism, the belief that there are many divine, supernatural Gods with different superpowers . . . and instead of materialism or humanism which believe that there are no supernatural Divine things or powers running the Universe, just natural forces like electromagnetism, gravity and evolution . . . Pantheism is the belief that God is the Universe, the Universe is God. Everything in the Universe that is happening, is God happening. God is not a separate being that created the Universe, God is all there is, and everything happening is Divine. God is everpresent, or omnipresent and immanent everywhere, and God is everlasting in all time. We tend to think of the Universe as consisting of many separate things, such as subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, cells and organisms like ourselves that are each happening in space and time. Pantheists tend to be mystics who strive to realize and experience the oneness of all. Jane Hirshfield wrote: We feel like separate water droplets but we are also ocean.-
Sometimes when my discursive mental train of thought stops for awhile during a good drum circle, or especially when playing my large gong, my delusion of being a separate being dissolves and I taste the delicious state of being one with all. I am not a thing hearing music; rather I am the drum and I am the music.
Singers and musicians are skillful at harmonizing with all the other beings and processes playing in the Divine Cosmic Symphony . . May you harmonize well in the Divine Cosmic Symphony.
Also, nothing seems to be stable, rather everything seems to be moving in space. Dancers are skillful at dancing well with God; may you dance well with God (or, if you’re one of the many who is uncomfortable with the G word, May you dance well in the Cosmic Dance).
Or, since everything on a microscopic scale seems to be oscillating or vibrating, I would encourage you to often practice resonating well with God (or, if you will, with Divine Grace, by which I mean all of the metaphysical forces that are, perhaps, always around us in ways that organize and sustain all the things and processes happening in the Universe).
Probably it’s helpful to choose some mottos for living well that suit you. Or, if you practice affirmations in your prayers, meditations, or spiritual practice, perhaps you’ll consider silently repeating: May I harmonize well with God, and .. . may I dance well with God. And now, perhaps, after hearing some ideas about drumming, you might try, “may I drum well with God.” Namaste.
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