6 Ways Drumming Heals Body, Mind and Spirit

Sayer Ji, Founder of GreenMedInfo.com, wrote an interesting blog called "6 Ways Drumming Heals Body, Mind and Soul." According to Ji, drumming improves our quality of life in many ways. From slowing the decline in fatal brain disease, to generating a sense of oneness with one another and the universe, drumming's physical and spiritual health benefits may be as old as time itself. Ji asserts that drumming brings us to a time when "... a direct and simultaneous experience of deep transcendence and immanence [Divine presence and the connection to this presence] was not an extraordinary, rare occurrence as it is today." It makes perfect sense that through ancient rhythms we are transported to a time before the written word--perhaps even to a time before the spoken word was fully developed. Drumming was used to generate cohesiveness and connection in a time when the needs of the tribe were more important than the needs of the individual.

I was also fascinated by the section of Sayer Ji's article that discussed the positive effects of drumming on socio-emotional disorders in children who live in low-income families. I'm encouraged that something as simple and ancient as community drumming can benefit us on so many different levels. In a society in which traditional family and community-based systems of support have become increasingly fragmented, group drumming provides a sense of connectedness with others and interpersonal support. To learn more, read "6 Ways Drumming Heals Body, Mind and Soul.".

The Power of Masks

Rainbow Man

Across time and culture, masks have served to imbue power, transform identity, and connect people with each other and with their sense of the divine and the spiritual. The shaman uses a mask to communicate with or take on the identity of an animal spirit or helping spirit. During a performance, a shaman would seek the help of or take the identity of the spirit -- sometimes changing identities several times throughout by changing masks. In communal ritual, masks are used as part of a broader social function to achieve a benefit for the group. Masks are also an important aspect of storytelling, whether an oral tradition or a theatrical performance. For many cultures, these uses are fluid and intermingled.

The "Rainbow Man" mask featured in this post is a shamanic mask that I crafted twenty years ago. I wear it when holding ecstatic body postures. Specific body postures reappear in the art and artifacts of world cultures, even those widely separated by time and distance. Anthropologists discovered that people who assume these yoga-like postures report strikingly similar trance experiences. The first time I tried a trance posture, I got a clear image in my mind of how I should craft a mask of my face, paint it, and use it in my shamanic work. Wearing the mask enhances my trance experiences.

Shamanic mask making is a very ancient art of bringing out your inner or spirit self and embodying it into a mask form. Crafting a spirit mask of your face can be a very empowering process -- one that enables you to see into the deeper realms of the self. The process reconnects you with your deepest core values and your highest vision of who you are and why you are here. Summoning the energy of the true self, you then channel your discoveries into painting and adorning your mask of personal transformation. 

Earthrise: The Mythic Images of our Time

Earthrise over the moon's horizon.

They are some of the most iconic photos ever taken -- the Earth rising over the moon's horizon. The Apollo "Earthrise" and "Blue Marble" photographs were beamed across the world some forty-five years ago. They had an astonishing effect and in fact transformed thinking about the Earth and its environment in a profound way that reverberated throughout science, religion, and culture. Gazing upon our whole planet for the first time, we saw ourselves and our place in the universe with a new clarity. The photographs of Earth represented a turning point. In their wake, Earth Day was inaugurated and the environmental movement took off and began to have an impact on our national policy. People turned their focus back toward Earth, toward the precious and fragile planet we call home.

Joseph Campbell was a writer and mythologist, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. Campbell achieved enormous popularity and influence addressing the disenchantment of modern life with a message of hope and renewal. Campbell once spoke about the famous images astronauts took of the Earth rising over the lunar horizon. The space age, he felt, had brought us an awareness that is still slowly sinking in: The world as we know it is coming to an end.

"Our world as the center of the universe, the world divided from the heavens, the world bound by horizons in which God's love is reserved for members of the in group: That is the world that is passing away," said Campbell. "Apocalypse is not about a fiery Armageddon and salvation of a chosen few, but about the fact that our ignorance and our complacency are coming to an end."

To view a collection of these remarkable NASA photographs, please watch my new HD video "Earthrise" at https://youtu.be/mPCUJlO_qNQ. 

Healing Story, Singing Drum

Singing Elk Drum

This is a story about healing. It is also a story about a singing drum. In October 2011, I felt spirit calling me. I felt compelled to travel to the sacred sites that beckoned me. I followed my deepest instincts. I traveled with my drum, medicine bundle, and helping spirits to shamanize the meridian system of her numinous web, which is the planetary counterpart to the acupuncture meridian system of the human body.

Early man discovered these planetary currents called ley lines. In China, they were known as dragon currents. The Aborigines of Australia know them as a line of songs. In England, the Druids referred to the old straight track. Native Americans regarded the energy channels as the serpent power or the great dragons. According to Cherokee mythology, the dragons once followed the will of the great shamans who would invoke them to protect the people and the land.

These energy ley lines contain a two-fold element, a male and female, positive and negative, expanding and reverting breath, resembling two magnetic currents -- the azure dragon and the white tiger. At the intersection points of the planet’s energy web exist holy places, power spots, or acupuncture points. Like acupuncture needles, humans are capable of maintaining the harmonious flow of the planetary energy meridians by making an earth connection at power places.

Many magical things happened during my two month pilgrimage. I soaked in the healing waters of Umpqua, Buckeye, Travertine, Whitmore, and Keough Hot Springs. I camped at Panther Meadows on Mount Shasta. I hiked among the oldest living things on the earth in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest.

By happenstance, I encountered my dear friend and master drum maker Judith Thomson in Bishop, California. Judith and her husband, Lloyd studied about the healing power of sound with Jonathan Goldman. She studied the healing ways of the Native Americans who live in the states of Oregon and Washington. This included learning how they crafted drums and used their sounds for healing. Judith taught many people across the United States how to make drums and how to use drumming to heal.

Judith and I began facilitating workshops together in 1993. She was called by spirit to teach drum making and I was called to teach shamanic drumming. Unbeknownst to me, Judith had journeyed from her home in Packwood, Washington to facilitate a three-day drum making workshop in Big Pine, California. Upon her request, I helped Judith facilitate her final seminar before retirement and she helped me and twelve other participants birth the most beautiful singing drums I have ever heard.

After the seminar, Judith returned to Packwood and I was asked to stay for a drum blessing and workshop the following weekend after the wet rawhide drums had dried. The drum awakening ceremony was held outside next to Birch Creek. We asked each of the seven powers/directions to bless our drums. We thanked the animal spirits for giving their skins for our drum heads. We thanked the trees for the wooden rims and asked that our drums' hoops be connected to the World Tree which enables all trees to sing our prayers while drumming. Our drums were consecrated and we journeyed to meet our power animals.

The Big Pine seminar was the last time I ever saw Judith alive. She crossed over into the spirit world five months later on March 25, 2012. Judith mentored many drum makers and drum keepers in many communities across the United States and Canada. Her extraordinary passion and tireless devotion to "the way of the drum" has been a wellspring of inspiration for me. Hers was an authentic life well lived and she will be deeply missed.

The singing elk drum that Judith helped me birth at the Big Pine seminar turned out to be the last drum that she ever made. It has a remarkable range of tones and overtones. It is a powerful healing drum, but it is also a "desert drum." I learned this upon my return to my home in Salem, Oregon. In the humid, rainy climate of Western Oregon, the melodic desert drum that Judith and I created together became flat and toneless. It would only sing on the warmest, driest days of the summer. Even then, its voice was sad and melancholy.

For three years I debated whether I should soak the drum to loosen the rawhide, take the drum apart, and tighten the lacing of the drum, or simply return the drum to the Owens Valley. To rebuild a drum is to embark on a path of no return. You must first take stock of the situation and make certain that you have no other options. It should only be done as a last resort, for its effect upon the voice of the drum is unknowable. It should answer a real need and spring from unselfish motives. As Judith put it, "Making a drum is like pulling your heart together and giving birth to a new part of yourself."

Since rebuilding the drum would have irrevocably changed its voice, I chose to return the singing drum to its natal home. Like the adult Salmon that finds its way from the sea to the stream of its birth, I returned Judith's drum to the arid desert of its birth. I departed from Salem on April 16, 2015, retracing the route of my 2011 pilgrimage to Bishop, California. Along the way, I soaked in thermal hot springs, drummed in the earth's oldest living forest, visited an ancient vision quest site, and participated in sweat lodge and pipe ceremonies. The high point of my journey was when I presented Judith's final drum to my friend Marla. She is now the caretaker of this sacred drum. The drum is happy and sings again; it is full of songs.

Judith Thomson at the Big Pine Drum Making Seminar

Song of the Drum

My drum has many voices.

My drum tells many stories.

This drum is full of mystery.

This drum is full of dreams.

Listen to the drumbeat.

Listen to the heartbeat.

Now you hear the hoof beat.

Now you hear the wing beat.

All are One.

  —Michael Drake