by Ma Anand Suraj (The Whirling Rainbow Center)

For thousands of years, the drum has been the very heartbeat of community for the world’s indigenous peoples. It has been used for rites of passage and ceremony, and celebrations of the seasons and cycles of life. At the turn of the new millennium, we are just beginning to remember and rediscover the healing power of the drum. Major articles describing the healing effects of drumming have appeared in the New York Times, The Yoga Journal and Newsweek. Numerous studies are reporting the calming and focusing effect of group drumming on Alzheimer’s patients, emotionally disturbed teens, autistic children, prison and homeless populations.

Somehow in our modern industrialized society, we have forgotten the natural rhythm of the body. In science this is called the body’s base resonate frequency. The body is an orchestra of vibrations, a divine melody dancing within our organs and circulating in an endless cycle of rhythmic pulses. Scientists and health practitioners know that the heart is not the only organ with a pulse beat. However, as the strongest pulse beat in the body, the heart sets the rhythmic relationship to all other organs. In a state of well-being, the pulse of each organ synchronizes naturally with every other organ. This divine melody also dances at the cellular, atomic and sub-atomic levels of the body. The power of various rhythms to synchronize with a stronger frequency rhythm was referred to back in the 1800’s as the Law of Entrainment. Christian Hugens discovered by placing numerous pendulum clocks in a room and starting the pendulums at different rates that, within a short time the clocks would “locked in” synchronizing their pulse beats into one rhythm. Scientists at the Heart Institute also discovered this by placing two hearts in glass jars side by side. Within hours, the hearts began to beat together. When a group of women live in the same household, their menstrual cycles often begin to synchronize. Entrainment. A fetus heart learns to beat by pulsing to its mother’s heart. For drummers like me born in the 60’s we called this entrainment, “being in the groove.”

When we experience stress, we experience parts of the body falling out of this natural rhythmic unity. It is like having an orchestra playing and suddenly the string section begins to go out of rhythm, playing a completely different tempo. Soon the rest of the orchestra will have a hard time finding the group rhythm of the music. The group harmony becomes split and disconnected.

A 1996 cover Newsweek story entitled “Your Child’s Brain” presented strong evidence on the brains fundamental need for rhythm. The article described the stress produced when the brain was deprived of this need. We all know how stress is a primary cause of a myriad of life threatening illnesses. The All One Tribe Foundation and many in alternative medicine believe that stress is ” a result of psychic fragmentation, literally being disconnected from our deeper selves”. Shamans of indigenous cultures have used the drum for thousands of years as a journey tool of retrieving parts of the soul that have been lost, frozen or forgotten.

A new study by Barry Quinn Ph.D., a clinical psychologist specializing in neuro-biofeedback for stress management, indicates that drumming for brief periods can actually change brain wave patterns, dramatically reducing stress. Dr. Quinn has been working for over eight years with how a variety of techniques affects brain waves. He calls the results of 30-40 minutes of drumming on the highest stress clients, “by far the most amazing results I’ve encountered thus far in my research.” Until drumming, in fact, no other technique used in eight years of Dr Quinn’s NBT research had been able to bring a significant return of the Alpha relaxation brain wave in any client. Alpha (8-12hertz or cycles per second) is a mental relaxation state missing in nearly 40% of the population.

Drumming seems to create a rhythmic entrainment, allowing our bodies, minds and spirits to remember their natural rhythm. The drum is like the conductor of the orchestra calling back the fragmented parts (in our case the strings in our orchestra example) of the body, the mind and the spirit to come back home to rhythm. As we drum, we feel that sense of being in natural rhythm again, that peaceful state of well-being.

The Heart Institute also discovered that what ultimately signals the human heart to beat is not the human brain as was once thought, but actually the pulse beat of the earth created by its rotation and oscillation. The earth resonates or pulses at 7.5 hertz. Interesting but not surprising, 7.5 hertz is between the Alpha and Theta brain wave cycles associated with deep relaxation, meditation and sleep, the same state that drumming induces.

I find it no coincidence that when we drum we enter an Alpha or deep relaxation state known to the ancient shamans as a “trance state”. When we are in this deep state of relaxation, we are also in perfect harmony with the pulse beat of the earth. Indigenous peoples called this beating in rhythm with Mother Earth. Like the fetus in the mother’s womb, we feel that deep rest when we beat in harmony with the heartbeat of our Mother, Earth. For some this may seem metaphorical but science confirms that this is literal. This is the natural law of entrainment, the natural law of being in unity and experiencing oneness. Science, however, has become such a detached study through the mind, that it reflects the very disconnection from the heart (our center of love and relationship) and the body (our center of intuition) that creates stress. Living only from the mind results in living disconnected with the natural rhythm of life. We may understand the concept of harmony through the mind but we can only truly know union through the united wisdom of the mind, heart and body. Drumming is a universal vibrational language that speaks to all three.

To some of us, these scientific studies are not bringing us anything new. I do not know anyone when they see a drum, does not want to strike it. Underneath our stressful over sophisticated lifestyle, an instinctual five-year-old in all of us loves to drum. Scientists are just telling it to us in a language that our left brain western world will buy. If you have ever experienced group drumming, the joy, the celebration, the magic and the inner peace one feels are self evident. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure it out.

Ma Anand Suraj has worked for over twenty years as a spirit healer, counselor, educator, ceremonial artist, and drummer. She is the co-founder and director of The Whirling Rainbow Center and facilitates a private practice and group work to inspire healing through creative and expressive arts, hands on healing bodywork, shamanic journeying and soul retrieval, meditation, breath, sound and percussion and wilderness rites of passage.

Copyright © by Ma Anand Suraj