Group Drumming Better than Antidepressants

A study published by the Public Library of Science (PLoS) scientifically validates what so many drum circle participants have already experienced first hand: group drumming produces significant changes in well-being, including improvements in depression, anxiety and social resilience.
 

With the World Health Organization identifying depression as the #1 leading cause of disability, globally, and psychiatric medications causing severe side effects, including permanently disabling the body's self-healing mechanism, drug-free alternatives are needed now more than ever.
 

Could group drumming provide just such a solution?
 

Titled, "Effects of Group Drumming Interventions on Anxiety, Depression, Social Resilience and Inflammatory Immune Response among Mental Health Service Users," UK researchers enrolled thirty adults who were already recipients of mental health services but were not receiving antidepressant medications in a 10 week program of drumming versus a control group of 15. The two groups were matched for age, sex, ethnicity and employment status. The control participants were informed that they were participating in a study about music and mental health but were not given access to the group drumming sessions. The treatment group received weekly 90-minute group drumming sessions over a period of 10 weeks. The drum group sizes were between 15-20. Each participant was provided with a traditional African djembe drum and sat in a circle. Twenty percent of the session time involved instruction and talking, whereas 80% was direct participation in music-making. The control subjects were enrolled in community group social activities (e.g. quiz nights, women's institute meetings and book clubs). Both groups were monitored for biomarkers related to immune status and inflammation, e.g. cortisol and various cytokines, to track the biological as well as psychological changes associated with the intervention.
 

The results of the study were remarkable. Significant improvements were found in the drumming group but not the control group. In summary, by 6 weeks the drumming intervention group experienced decreases in depression, increased social resilience; by 10 weeks they saw further improvements in depression, alongside significant improvements in anxiety and mental wellbeing. These changes continued to be maintained 3 months follow-up. The drumming intervention group also saw their immune profile shift from a pro-inflammatory towards an anti-inflammatory response.
 

This remarkable research opens up the possibility that group drumming may produce positive psychospiritual changes that, in comparison to conventional treatment with psychiatric medications like Prozac, support side-effect free improvement in parameters beyond symptom suppression.
 

Additionally, when one considers that the benefits associated with conventional pharmaceutical treatment of depression may actually result from the placebo effect and not the chemicals themselves, as well as the fact that antidepressants can cause severe adverse effects including suicidal ideation, the findings of this exploratory study becomes all the more promising.
 

Another important discovery here is that group drumming down-regulated inflammation within the immune profiles of study participants. Could the dysregulation of inflammation be a root cause of a wide range of psychiatric disorders and anti-inflammatory interventions a solution? The inflammation-depression link, in particular, explains how interventions such as turmeric have been clinically proven to be superior to common antidepressant medications like Prozac, presumably because of turmeric's broad spectrum and systemic anti-inflammatory properties.

Summer Solstice 2023

The 2023 summer solstice is Wednesday, June 21, 2023 at 14:58 UTC. In the Northern Hemisphere, the summer solstice is the first day of summer and the longest day of the year. The summer solstice is a turning point when the days start to grow shorter. This occurs June 20, 21, or 22, varying from year to year, dependent upon the elliptical path of the Earth around our sun. Technically the summer solstice marks the instant at which the Earth's axis stops tilting toward the sun and starts going back the other way. Solstice means "standing-still-sun." At summer solstice, the sun journeys farthest north in its orbital path and for the next three days it rises and sets at virtually the same place on the horizon, appearing to stand still, and then it slowly returns south. 
 
At the summer solstice, we begin a new cycle on the Medicine Wheel of Life, entering the South--the home of summer, midday, youth, joy, trust, and growth. From the South rises the vital energy of renewal, regeneration, and growth. From the South we learn to plant seeds of good cause. We learn that our thoughts and actions create our reality. Whether we realize it or not, we are creating our reality all the time. Our reality is the perfect, exact mirror of our thoughts and what we consistently focus upon. Every thought, idea, or image in the mind has form and substance. Everything that we perceive began with a thought. The structure of our universe is thought, mind and consciousness. Consciousness determines the form of our experience. Consciousness is the "theater of perceptual awareness." It is the collective consciousness of humanity that shapes our physical reality.
 

Creating Reality
 

We are creating our reality with our thoughts, beliefs, intentions, and more. When we are oblivious to the power that we all share to create our collective reality, that power slips away from us and our reality becomes a nightmare. We begin to feel like victims of a dark and chaotic creation that we are unable to influence or change. We are inundated with negative world events that create anxiety, fear and hopelessness. The only way to end this dreadful reality is to awaken to the fact that it is imaginary, and recognize our ability to imagine a better story, one that the universe will work with us to manifest.
 

We cannot "restore" our broken reality without "restorying" our life. It is easy to create in the world that everyone believes to be true, the collective story of humanity. It is easy to reproduce and replicate the reality of the world as we know it; in fact, it is automatic. It requires no thought or awareness. We can only change our collective story by changing the way we think--by changing our beliefs, expectations and assumptions which keep us stuck in a limited perspective of our personal and social reality. Those aspects of our experience that are most enduring are the effect of habitual expectations and beliefs, or in other words, what we focus our attention on.
 

It is through our attention that we influence and direct the aspects of our experience and the world around us. What we pay attention to becomes what we know as ourselves and our world, for energy flows where attention goes. As positive psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi points out in his book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, "We create ourselves by how we invest this energy. Memories, thoughts, and feelings are all shaped by how we use it. And it is an energy under our control; hence, attention is our most important tool in the task of improving the quality of experience." What we focus our attention on is what our life becomes--the clearer the intention, the greater the impact.