The drum and voice are everyones natural healing instruments.
Today, in our culture, drumming has evolved as a fun way of boosting your energy, health, and wellbeing. It also provides an easy means for building community — you might even be inspired to start your own drumming circle. But drumming has evolved through millions of years as a human medicine. It brings balance and rhythm to the body, a sense of shared power, and the vibrations of the percussion that affect every part of our bodies. In sound healing, a drum beat can break up stuck energies, or provide new rhythm for healing the whole body. Healing is defined as bringing back what is missing — being of “sound” mind, body, and spirit. Drumming and sound are natural processes to do that.
Drumming is also a very sacred form of meditation that can serve as a foundation or a base, as we engage the monkey mind and allow our consciousness to explore other territories. With a drum beat, you can journey deeply into your heart or into the cosmic realms where insights are waiting to be integrated in your life.
The brain changes when you drum. Even if you improvise, and create your own beat, you will naturally turn off self-criticism and judgement, while activating this true expression of the self. The drum is one of the simplest portals to open as we desire to enter the reality of spontaneous self-expression.
Studies show that when we play drums and sing together, we generate kindness and compassion within our circle. Also, the beat of the drum carries our prayers and intentions into the hearts and minds of others through vibrational waves.
Drumming the Elements
Drum beats help us experience whole body healing, including stress reduction, chronic pain control, release of negative feelings, and improved immunity. These beats also calm the affects of PTSD, even though the sounds can be loud and abrupt. The very reason PTSD occurs is that energies and memories are cemented in our conscious minds and are replayed over and over. These drum beats will break the cement, allowing new thoughts to replace the destructive, fearful memories.
The Great Spirit loved the drum so much,
he gave everyone a heartbeat.
— Navajo saying
During gestation, we are held in the rhythm of our mother’s heartbeat. We know this comfort, and can count on it for the rest of our lives. It is our original medicine and the original form of sound healing.
When we drum, we connect with the earth elements – air, water, earth, and fire – and recognize our connection to them allows us to experience creativity, sacredness, and brings meaning into our lives. Rhythm is the first order of consciousness. It remains the primary order of life for as long as we breathe.
Before drumming became entertainment, its primary function was for healing, community, ceremony, and prayer. Many tribal cultures still practice this medicine, while modern culture is still working to understand the metaphysical and spiritual connections of drumming and rhythm. In a single concept, if we learn nothing else from our drumming, we should learn about “sacred sound.”
Once we shift our paradigm from playing the drum as “music” to making sacred sound with a drum, we quickly realize this form of sound is definitely a spiritual practice.
- For Earth Drumming, we use the deeper toned drums and beat slowly and consistently. We create the heartbeat of Mother Earth. If we sing along, our tones are soft, low, and reverential. This type of drumming can help re-balance the body and mind. Our Spirit is naturally rejuvenated and reconnected to our lives when we engage in regular rhythm.
- For Wind Drumming, we use a hand drum and our hand becomes the breath of the rhythm as we tap, flick, and swipe across the skin. We are empowered by the nature of wind, to carry our prayers, wishes, and thoughts into reality. When we drum with the wind, we often use our voices in whispering, lingering tones that become part of the prayer.
- For Water Drumming, we use gourd drums, clay pots, or water-filled vessels. We use mid-base doumbeks, djembes, or frame drums with a beater. We use rainsticks for percussion. When we heal using moderately slow beats, we are replicating the slow movement of rivers and streams, or the rolling ocean waves that continue forever. These beats are very effective for healing emotional traumas, self-understanding, and self-acknowledgement. We are 70% water. When we drum to water, we are drumming to ourselves.
- For Fire Drumming, we use fast and quick rhythms like the flickering of a fire. We vary the beats from one cadence to another, replicating the licking of the flame on a burning log. Our wildest drumming happens when we connect with the Spirit of Fire, drumming our passion, our creative essence, and our sexuality. We use high-pitched doumbeks, tambourines, frame drums, tars, bendirs, and boudhrans. We also use high pitched rattles.
