Number 22, Fall 2009

FEATURES

Healing Power of the Drum Circle
by Michael Drake, Sacred Hoop Magazine, Issue 40
Indigenous cultures have been practicing community percussion for thousands of years. Now people all over the world are taking up drumming in astounding numbers. At a grass roots level, small community drum circles are springing up. While some drum circles are content to jam and make a lot of rhythmic noise, others prefer to explore shamanic drumming. Read More

Waking the Drum
by Sarangerel Odigon, Sacred Hoop Magazine, Issue 53
The ‘Hese Amiluulah’ ritual is a Mongolian way of dedicating a shaman’s drum. Mongolian shaman Sarangerel Odigon shares a simple way that you can perform the ceremony yourself. Read More

Jaguar Medicine

by Alberto Villoldo, PhD
Shamans say that the soul has such a longing for wholeness that it will recreate the conditions that caused the soul loss, because it hopes that another opportunity for healing will result in our integrating these fragmented aspects of the self. Unaware of their soul’s wounding, the person will change jobs but end up with a similar boss, move to another city and wonder at how she ended up with neighbors who are just like those she left behind, or divorce the abusive spouse and end up in an identical marriage. If the shaman can discover the source of the original wounding, he can heal it, and break the self-destructive patterns. Read More

Drum Therapy is Hard to Beat: Kids in Special Education Flourish amid Power of Percussion

by Maria Giordano, Staff Writer The Tennessean
The Rhythmic Arts Project was founded in 1997 by Eddie Tuduri. The project is essentially an education program utilizing drums and percussion to address many basic life skills in the field of developmental disabilities. Though applications work very well in other health care situations, we have made significant progress in this population and are for all intent and purposes working most diligently in this area. Read More

Shaman’s Drum Speaks

by Rowland Anton Barkley
The fact that Shamanic drumming has already evoked ecstatic consciousness shifts for thousands of years, means that when a Master Shaman drums, all those who have drummed before him, stand behind and drum. Those thousands past, present and future drummers from across the ages, all focused into a present moment, can easily carry a roomful of trainees into trances in seconds. Read More

10 Billion Beats

by Carlisle Bergquist
Maybe it is ridiculous to think we can change the world. We know it is ridiculous not to try. Are we simply victims of fate, or are we creating a fate that will victimize us? This is a Global Experiment that will use drumming to focus a collective positive intention, and then send it around the world in a continuous wave to improve our relationship with each other, and with a living planet upon which we live, breath, and have our being. Read More

FROM THE EDITOR

Greetings fellow drummers,

I am pleased to announce the launch of ShamanicDrumming.com, a website devoted to shamanic drumming as a vehicle for healing, consciousness expansion, and community building. Read More

FEATURES: 

Healing Power of the Drum Circle
© 2003 by Michael Drake, Sacred Hoop Magazine, Issue 40

Indigenous cultures have been practicing community percussion for thousands of years. Now people all over the world are taking up drumming in astounding numbers. At a grass roots level, small community drum circles are springing up. While some drum circles are content to jam and make a lot of rhythmic noise, others prefer to explore shamanic drumming.

Shamanic drumming is a time-honored method of healing and helping others. Shamanic drum circles provide the opportunity for people of like mind to unite for the attainment of a shared objective. There is power in drumming alone, but that power recombines and multiplies on many simultaneous levels in a group of drummers. The drums draw individual energies together, unifying them into a consolidated force. Synchronized drumming is the most effective, so individuals should alternate the responsibility of setting the tempo and leading the group. The basic steps that I describe here I have found most effective.

1: Form a Circle

Simply join together, forming a circle. By creating a circle, you are structuring an energy pattern that will contain, focus, and amplify the power generated by drumming.

2: Cleanse the Space

Next, you should smudge the space and all participants. Smudging cleanses the mind and environment in preparation for spiritual or inner work. The sacred smoke dispels any stagnant or unwanted energy and opens the energy channels of your body. Sage, cedar, and sweetgrass are traditionally used for smudging, but any dried herb is acceptable. Light the herbs in a fire-resistant receptacle and then blow out the flames. Then use a feather or your hands to draw the smoke over your heart, throat, and face to purify the body, mind, and spirit. Next, smudge your drum by passing it through the smoke. The drummers can then smudge themselves and their drums by passing a smudge bowl clockwise around the circle. Conclude the smudging by thanking the plant whose body made the cleansing possible.

3: Call to the Directions

At this point, you may wish to invoke the powers of the Four Directions. This is an ancient shamanic rite practiced cross-culturally to access and honor the powers of creation. The facilitator can lead the group in this process. I like to have the participants stand and face each Direction in unison. Rotate clockwise, facing first the East, then South, then West, then North, inviting each Direction to participate and assist in the ceremony. If you wish, you can include Father Sky above and Mother Earth below as the Fifth and Sixth Directions.

4: Form Your Intent

Having invoked the Four Directions, it is important to form the group’s collective intention—what you desire or expect to accomplish. Intent is a kind of decision making that directs the focus of our attention. It is through our attention that we influence and direct the aspects of our experience and the world around us.

5: Prayer Round

The next step is to commence the first or prayer round of drumming. All participants should focus their attention on the group intention or goal during this round of drumming. It is the responsibility of the facilitator to set the tempo. A steady, metronome-like pattern with precisely regular intervals, at around three beats per second, is the most effective. This rapid ‘eagle-beat’ creates the sensation of inner movement, which, if you allow it, will carry you along. It is projective in nature and carries your intention, prayers, and awareness into the spirit world that underlies and sustains our physical reality.

6: Finding Unison

The time-frame for this varies from ceremony to ceremony. It is best to trust your intuition in this process. When leading a group, I move the beater around the drumhead until I find the sweet spot and my drum begins to sing and hum. Eventually, I can hear the sound of my drum moving around the circle, resonating through each person’s drum. The drums begin to sing in unison and the experience is indescribable. I sense that each person is connected to the spirit world. I try to hold this energy dynamic for as long as possible. This climactic phase eventually wanes and the drums start doing their own thing again. This is usually the point where I signal the end of the first round of drumming with four thundering beats. 

7: Healing Round

Once the group intention has been introduced, commence the second or healing round by drumming the pulsating lub-dub, lub-dub of a heartbeat rhythm. Stroke a steady heartbeat rhythm at around two beats per second. This magnetic pulse draws power from the spirit world into the drum circle. Each participant should clear his or her mind of everything. You must surrender all attachment to the desired outcome to achieve success. It is best to close your eyes and focus on the sound of the drums. Let the drums do the healing. The drums will shape available energy into a powerful vortex that will spiral out into the fibers of Mother Earth’s web. When you feel the power ebbing, signal the end of the healing round with four booming beats.

8: Giving Thanks

Commence the final or thank you round of drumming with the even cadence of the eagle-beat. Sustain a tempo of three beats per second for one to five minutes. Participants should give thanks for the needs met and the needs they are asking to be met.

9: Closing the Circle

Finally, signal the end of the drumming with four resounding beats. It is important to conclude the drumming circle by rotating counterclockwise, thanking each of the Directions for their participation and assistance. This counterclockwise movement will close the energy vortex and signal that the sacred time of focus is ended.

I have found these basic steps to be very effective in a myriad of situations. Feel free, however, to adapt them to serve your own needs. Rhythm is a very personal thing. Experiment with different tempos and rhythms. My intention is to provide a foundation upon which the reader can then build.

Michael Drake is a nationally recognized writer, rhythmist, and shamanist. He is the author of The Shamanic Drum: A Guide to Sacred Drumming and I Ching: The Tao of Drumming. Michael's journey into rhythm began under the tutelage of Mongolian shaman Jade Wah'oo Grigori. For the past 20 years he has been facilitating drum circles and workshops nationwide. To learn more, visit http://ShamanicDrumming.com

Waking the Drum
© 2006 by Sarangerel Odigon, Sacred Hoop Magazine, Issue 53

The Drum (hese hengereg) is the most well-known tool of a shaman, for its sound drives the shamanic journey¹ and its rhythms represent the hoof beats of the shaman’s magical mount.

Siberian drums tend to be relatively large, twelve to twenty inches in diameter on average with the drumhead decorated both inside and outside in a way that has spiritual significance for the shaman. It is customary among Mongolian and Siberian shamans to attach bells to the inside of the drum so that the drum can be shaken as well as struck.

Shamans recognize certain parts of the drum as being the top, bottom, left, and right sides.  Ribbons and hadags² are tied to the top, left, and right sides of the drum to represent the crown and ears of the drum.

The drumstick, or orba, is also a significant tool. In fact, it has certain independent uses. A Siberian or Mongolian drumstick is usually rather spoon-shaped. It is six inches to a foot long, with a distinct front and back side. Fur or soft leather covers the striking side; while the back side has rings attached that jingle with the motion of the drumstick. Usually the rings are strung on a wire, but they may be stapled to the drumstick in a way that allows them to jingle against each other so the drumstick can also function as a type of rattle. The drumstick is also usually decorated with streamers to match the drum.

AWAKENING OF THE DRUM RITUAL (HESE AMILUULAH]

I present this ritual here as a good example of how shamans connect with the spirits of their instruments so that they can be used more effectively. Many of you are probably using, or will be using drums in your shamanic work, so this should be especially relevant for you. Once you become familiar with this procedure, you can adapt it easily for the awakening (amiluulah) of other shamanic implements, such as rattles, staffs, and ritual weapons. Remember, the chief aim of awakening rituals is for the shaman to connect with the ezen³ of the object being awakened so that it will become a helper spirit.

Before you awaken the drum, spend some time meditating on it and where it came from. What is the head made out of? Is it artificial, or is it skin? If it is skin, what kind is it? What kind of wood is it made out of? Do you know where it was made? If the drum has a head or rim made of plastic, consider how plastic comes from petroleum, which is the essence of many animals and plants that lived in ancient times. After all, unless your drum is made out of metal, its parts all come from things that were alive at one time.

An important part of this ceremony will be the visualization of the living things from which the drum was made, so thinking about it beforehand will make this part of the awakening of the drum much easier. As I mentioned above, the ezen of the drum enters at the time of its making. It is especially magical if it happens that you made the drum yourself, for the ezen would have passed through your hands into the drum as you made it: both the time of creation and the time of awakening are one, even if they seem separated in our perception of linear time.  In Siberia it is traditional for a drum to be given to a shaman rather than for a shaman to buy it, although there are exceptions. A drum is usually given to a shaman by clients or family members in honour of, and gratitude for the work he is doing. Indeed, a drum that is gifted is a great blessing, for it is a sign that the spirits have selected a specific drum for a shaman and brought it into his possession.

It is not unusual for a shaman to have multiple drums; after all, with the passage of time, drums become worn out and need to be replaced with something that has a better sound and a tighter head.  If you bought your drum, this does not lessen the effectiveness and power of this ritual; outside Siberia shamans tend to serve much smaller groups of people and are not often compensated for their work with shamanic instruments, as is the custom among Buryat shamanists. Also, it is customary to paint the head after the awakening of the drum, but if your drum has already been painted, do not worry about it.  Another interesting custom is to have children play with the drum before its awakening. The spirit of the drum seems to enjoy being played with by people other than the shaman before the awakening ritual. When I do the drum awakening in workshops, I fulfill this custom by allowing the participants to pass their drums around the ritual circle. Everyone drums on each of the drums a little before passing it on to the next person. It is fun, and the joy of the drum spirits in being handled in this way is great - the energy is palpable as the drums go around the circle. The playing with the drum or drums is the first part of the ritual. If you have children, let them play with the drum a little, then let others who will be in the ritual circle play.  Apparently the happiness that comes out of play is stimulating to drum spirits. Incidentally, this ritual action is not done in the awakening of other shamanic instruments; although it could probably be done with rattles or bells (it would be unthinkable, after all, to have a child play with ritual weapons!).

THE AWAKENING CEREMONY

To prepare for this ceremony, meditate on the drum. Have someone else play the drum before you do the journey.

Needless to say, this should be done in a ritual space indoors or outdoors - I sometimes do this ceremony by a campfire.

Once you have made invocations to the spirits you normally honour in your work, be sure to make an invocation to the drum spirit and ask it to come to you and become your ally. Now, if you have not had the drum played in advance, have somebody else play your drum before it becomes bonded with you.

When you awaken the drum you should play alone, or if you are doing this with other people, you set the speed and rhythm of the drumming. As you become more focused, ask the drum spirit to show you the place where the animals who provided the skins lived, what they looked like, how old they were when they were taken. Ask the drum spirit to show you the tree from which its wood was cut. If you have plastic parts to your drum, ask the drum spirit to show you what kinds of animals provided the essence for the chemicals that the plastic is made of. If the drum has metal parts, imagine the place from which the metal was mined and smelted. Close your eyes. Imagine yourself on a mountaintop, waiting for the drum spirit to come to you.

Allow the rhythm of the drum to become as natural as your breath, your heartbeat. Allow the drum spirit to merge with you so that the speed and rhythm of your drumming will be controlled by it as you become ongod orood⁴.

Do not be surprised by the appearance of the spirit of the drum. Perhaps it will appear as a heroic steed, but remember, the shamanic mount can manifest itself as any kind of natural or fantastic creature. Let it show you the places where its components came from, what forest the wood came from, what kinds of animals gave themselves to the making of the drum.

You may even have a vision of when the drum was being made and the spirit entered into it. The spirit may teach you some special ways you can use the drum for your shamanic work that you did not know before - your drum spirit and your udha⁵ together are instructing you in powerful ancient shamanic knowledge when this happens!

As you continue to drum, you will become more ecstatic and the spirits will create new rhythms and perhaps cause you to sing. You are now stepping into a higher level of shamanic consciousness and skill. At some point in your journey, you - like other shamans of the past - will realize that all your helper spirits and power animals are traveling at your side and rejoicing that you have merged with the spirit of the drum. Now you have obtained the power to do much greater things than you were able to do before. You will not realize the full magnitude of this change until a few days or even a couple of weeks afterward.

This kind of initiatory ceremony called shanar (best translated as increase in ability’) and it is a time of great celebration.

When this is performed as a ritual with many participants, the ceremony is followed by a festive meal in which the shaman or shamans are honoured and the people rejoice that the spirits have brought the blessing of greater power to the shamans for the benefit of the community and of mankind.

NOTES:

1: A shamanic journey is an altered state of consciousness where the shaman’s spirit leaves their body in order to fly to other worlds in the shaman’s cosmology. 
2: Hadags are silk offering scarves.
3: Ezen are the spirits of a place or of an object.
4: Ongod orood is an altered state of consciousness where a shaman’s spirit helper takes possession of a shaman’s body.
5: The udha are shamans’ chief helper spirits who will generally assist shamans as well as teaching and instructing them.

Sarangerel Odigon was an American of Mongolian descent. As an adult she returned to live in the place of her ancestors and studied Mongolian shamanism for many years. She was the author of two books on Tengerism (Mongolian shamanism). She traveled across the globe passing on the teachings of her people to all who wanted to learn them. Sadly, in 2006 she passed into spirit.

A tribute page can be found on the Circle of Tengerism website, http://www.tengerism.org/Sarangerel.html

Sarangerel loved all Mongols no matter what country they lived in. One of her causes was to bring awareness of the plight of the Hazara Mongols under the reign of the Taliban in Afghanistan. About 20% of the population of Afghanistan is Hazara Mongol. They have suffered greatly under the Taliban, being tortured and murdered for who they are. Sarangerel thought that this was not only a Mongol tragedy, but a human one that needed to be addressed. For more information on the Hazara people and their plight, please visit http://www.hazara.net

Jaguar Medicine

Copyright © 2007 by Alberto Villoldo, PhD

It was late in the spring of 1979, and I was an eager young man with a fresh PhD looking for an unexplored niche in anthropology; I had already spent nearly six years traveling to the Peruvian Andes and Amazon. During these years, I came across the opportunity to study with many shamans and healers. Many of them were masters who worked with the ayahuasca vine, a plant with hallucinogenic qualities that is used ritualistically in their culture, which fascinated me. I remember observing one of these shamans, don Ramon, during his nighttime healing ceremonies, as he would load his pipe with jungle tobacco and turn to one of his patients and “sing his jaguar down from the tree.” I asked him what he meant and he explained that like many people, the patient lived in constant fear, and that this fear was the result of a trauma experienced early in life that had not healed. He said, “This man’s soul is like a terrified cat who escaped danger and quickly clambered up a tree, where it remains, hissing at anyone who comes near. The cat must come down, relax, and resume walking on the terra firma of the rainforest, or there will be no healing of the illness this fear has engendered in him.”

As he worked with his patients, don Ramon would speak to them softly, reassuring them that their family was safe, that they were safe. Sometimes, he would massage a patient’s belly, explaining to that “here is where the jaguar resides within each of us.” I told him that in the west, we call the primitive, fearful response to trauma the “fight-or-flight” response, because it causes a creature to run away from danger or lash out in self-protection. The old shaman nodded, and said, “Yes, but when the danger has gone, an animal no longer holds on to its fear, while people will often remain in this state for many years.”

The more I thought about it, the more excited I became about the potential of don Ramon’s jaguar medicine. His explanation made total sense. Resetting a fight-or-flight response could free a patient from the devastating physiological effects of stress. While the fight-or-flight response can save our life in an emergency, we know that it is damaging to remain in that state for an extended period. During fight-or-flight the body produces and releases cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine, hormones that shut down noncritical functions in favor of high energy bursts, enhanced alertness, quickened reflexes, and faster blood clotting, all of which are needed in times of danger.

The danger is that our physiological response to chronic stress is the same as during instances of danger. Our fight-or-flight hormones continue to wash through our system, and we soon have an oversupply of cortisol and adrenaline. Excess levels of cortisol break down tissues in virtually every corner of the body, accelerating the aging process. High cortisol levels weaken ligaments, muscle, blood vessels, and bone and can cause elevated blood sugar levels and high blood pressure, eventually leading to easy bruising and thin, nearly transparent skin that we associate with the elderly. Abnormal function of the fight-or-flight system has also been correlated with inflammatory diseases and deficient immune function. While in this state, the body suppresses the healing hormones we need to recover from stress. And while most animals have systems that allow them to shake off the fight-or-flight response as soon as danger has passed, we humans seem to have lost that ability.

I watched don Ramon and other shamans “bring the jaguar down from the tree,” during their healing rituals and saw the immediate difference in their patients, who were visibly more relaxed and energized. Later, the healers would employ certain core processes including what they called “extraction” and “soul retrieval.”

The extraction process draws out the “heavy” or noxious energies that have settled in the patient’s body or his “luminous energy field” (LEF): the energetic envelope, or information field, that surrounds the physical body. This is the detoxification stage of healing, and it sometimes also involves ingesting plants that induce vomiting or herbs that cleanse the GI tract. The shamans explained to me that these illness-causing, energies were often the result of envy or anger that had been directed at the patient by someone else. When lodged in the LEF or in the outer layers of the skin, these energies had to be sucked out of the patient. The shaman would place his mouth over the affected area of the body, suck audibly, then turn and spit out the invisible poisons. Sometimes, the shaman would even vomit fiercely as his physical body rejected the noxious energies he had removed from his patient. Other times, the shaman would using a stone or crystal to extract and contain them.

Many of the shamans I studied during my tenure in the Amazon, and later in the Andes, explained to me that the (LEF) contains a blueprint for how we will age, how we will heal, and how we might die. Encoded within this matrix are all the gifts and ailments we inherit from our parents, as well as data from all the traumas we have suffered in our lifetimes. Stories of betrayal, abandonment, and loss are stored in a holographic fashion in the tides and streams of life-force swirling about in the luminous field, creating dark, heavy spots among the whirls of lighter energy. If we have a family history for heart disease or breast cancer, this information is encoded in our LEF until we are healed of this legacy. In the Amazon, they refer to such legacies as “generational curses” handed down from parent to child to grandchild. The shamans explained to me that when a sorcerer wants to inflict harm on a victim, he merely needs to activate the codes in the LEF to manifest a generational disease in that person. Conversely, a healer could also trigger the gifts latent within a clients LEF. In effect, these shamans believe that the LEF provides instructions to our DNA to express certain genes.

For many years, I considered their stories about creating health or disease in others to be implausible, but then I wondered, if diet, exercise, meditation, and stress can inform gene expression, couldn’t intention do the same? What about the well documented power of prayer to heal? Could someone with a malevolent intention send that toxic desire to exploit another’s weaknesses, in the same way that a benevolent prayer could heal?

After the resetting the fight-or-flight system and the detoxifying the patient, the shaman practices what is called “soul-retrieval.” This process summons the parts of the self that the patient has lost as a result of previous traumas. Don Ramon believed that these events, which the shaman called susto or “fright,” may have split off parts of the patient’s soul when she was an infant, or even in utero. Jealous spouses or competitors could also have stolen these soul parts—the confident self, the trusting self, the self who loves freely and feels worthy of being loved in return—in the patient’s adulthood.

To retrieve these talents, possibilities, and potentials that have retreated to the hidden recesses of the patient’s psyche, the healer will enter a trance state and allow his consciousness to temporarily depart from his body and journey to the “lower world,” or what we might identify as the collective unconscious. There, the healer can discover and bring back those qualities of the personality that have been disowned, and that will allow a patient to embark upon their destiny. At this stage of the healing, the shaman will also prescribe certain herbs and foods that will help the body to rebuild and restore physical health.

Shamans say that the soul has such a longing for wholeness that it will recreate the conditions that caused the soul loss, because it hopes that another opportunity for healing will result in our integrating these fragmented aspects of the self. Unaware of their soul’s wounding, the person will change jobs but end up with a similar boss, move to another city and wonder at how she ended up with neighbors who are just like those she left behind, or divorce the abusive spouse and end up in an identical marriage. If the shaman can discover the source of the original wounding, he can heal it, and break the self-destructive patterns. He does this by recovering the quanta of life force that was lost and returning it to its rightful place in the patients LEF.

Shamanic medicine is not a panacea, and shamans themselves will go to the emergency room when they have an acute condition. Western medicine remains the best trauma medicine that we know. Yet shamanic healing, with its emphasis on treating the body, mind, and soul as inseparable and continually influencing each other, can offer us fresh perspectives on dealing with the chronic conditions that afflict so many.

Alberto Villoldo, PhD is a medical anthropologist who has spent the last 30 years investigating the healing practices of the shamans of the Amazon and the Andes. He is the founder of the Four Winds Society, an organization dedicated to the bridging of ancient shamanic traditions with modern medicine and psychology; and is the author of over 10 books, including Shaman, Healer, Sage; Mending the Past and Healing the Future with Soul Retrieval; The Four Insights and Yoga, Power and Spirit. His next book, Courageous Dreaming will be available in bookstores March 2008 and has already been chosen as a One Spirit selection of the month. The Four Winds Society, Healing the Light Body School provides a scientific framework through which it is possible to learn the ancient healing practices that can be "known but not told." For more information visit www.thefourwinds.com

Drum Therapy is Hard to Beat:

Kids in Special Education Flourish amid Power of Percussion

Copyright © 2007 by Maria Giordano, Staff Writer The Tennessean

Fairview, Tennessee

Peering over his wire-rimmed glasses, Eddie Tuduri gently coaxed a group of Fairview Middle School students to bang out their feelings on African-style drums.

At first, the students were reluctant to take out their emotions on the drums. After all, most kids aren't encouraged to make excessive noise in class. 

Nevertheless, Tuduri gave the drum a few whacks, and then the 10 special-education students each took a turn, showing what anger or nervousness might sound like.

It was only a matter of time before Tuduri had the students using the drums to pound out more than their feelings, including multiplication problems that made up complicated rhythms. They even chanted a little in Swahili.

"You can do anything you put your mind to," Tuduri told the students.

Tuduri should know. About 10 years ago, the California man was in a surfing accident that snapped his neck and left him a quadriplegic — a major life change for the well-known drummer who has toured with the likes of The Beach Boys and Engelbert Humperdinck.

Tuduri said his doctors told him he would never walk again, but during his recovery and rehabilitation, he slowly began to regain the use of his limbs. He started first tapping the side of his bed with drumsticks, and at times would have his whole ward joining in the percussion, he said. Today, Tuduri walks with a cane and still drums.

Beat sparks learning

There's more than one silver lining to this story. Tuduri's successful rehabilitation led him to recognize that others might benefit from his own style of healing. He saw that people — especially developmentally delayed individuals — responded almost immediately to the drumming. Today, his method of teaching percussion instruments reaches a range of people, from students with developmental delays to Alzheimer's patients and stroke victims. He calls his program The Rhythmic Arts Project, or TRAP.

Through the use of various drums and other instruments, Tuduri is somehow able to reach individuals many professionals cannot.

He says the action is instinctive, but the actual act of banging on drums helps to enhance basic life skills such as focus, eye contact, using memory and following instructions.

Although studies are under way to determine how this works, Tuduri said the physical action of looking at notes and banging them out helps to make connections with real-world actions.

"It empowers them," Tuduri said. "I'd like to give them skills for the typical world."

Fairview is first

Fairview Middle School is the first public school in the country to employ the TRAP method, Tuduri said. The Meyerson Foundation, which provides money for programs to assist children with developmental disabilities, funded the program, including the instruments.

Tuduri trained the school's special-education teachers last week, and local Nashville drum company the Pearl Corp. helped to provide the percussion instruments the students will use in class.

Mike Lawson, a music publisher and the parent of one of the students, had a hand in connecting TRAP with the Myerson Foundation. Lawson said that the foundation called him to help locate a place to start up the TRAP program and he knew exactly where to go.

It was music therapy that helped get his highly functioning autistic daughter, who was nonverbal until she was 3 years old, to speak, Lawson said. He thought the program would be perfect for Fiarview.

"I'm thrilled the school was receptive to the program," Lawson said. He wants to bring the TRAP program to other Williamson County schools.

Teacher Kathy Stevens says the school will use the method weekly, working with the school's music teacher and Fairview High School's band director.

"These kids are so nurturing to one another," Stevens said. "This will allow them to be a part of pep rallies and concerts. It will make them feel more a part."

Fairview Middle School's principal, Brian Bass, sat in on the class last week and said he was pleased at how the kinesthetic and auditory learning came together to make learning fun for the students, who laughed regularly and stayed engaged throughout the lesson.

"One thing that's hard to put down on paper is their expressions, and how proud they are of themselves," Bass said. "You can make it more challenging or bring it down. Every kid can be successful with this."

To learn more about visit The Rhythmic Arts Project visit:  http://www.traponline.com/

mailto:eddie@traponline.com

The Rhythmic Arts Project was founded in 1997 by Eddie Tuduri. The project is essentially an education program utilizing drums and percussion to address many basic life skills in the field of developmental disabilities. Though applications work very well in other health care situations, we have made significant progress in this population and are for all intent and purposes working most diligently in this area.

The project brings together percussionists and drummers and other volunteers in concert with administrators, activity directors and aids at various facilities, now growing in popularity throughout the United States. The Rhythmic Arts Project is meant to enhance existing therapeutic modalities. By integrating drums and percussion into proven methods of healing and teaching, this innovation has spawned a new and enjoyable learning curve. The application varies depending on the population served yet remains simple and basic in its presentation.

Eddie Tudurdi's professional drumming career began when he was only 14 and he landed his first record deal at 16.  He's recorded and toured with a host of famous talents including the Beach Boys.  In 1997, he broke his neck in a body surfing accident.  "Rhythm Therapy figured considerably in my recovery," he said.  He went on to found TRAP and sign on corporate sponsor Pearl Drums in Nashville.  Pearl's TRAP package includes 30 some professional quality percussion instruments at a fraction of its retail cost.

Shaman’s Drum Speaks

Copyright © 2009 by Rowland Anton Barkley

The drum is the principal vehicle the shaman rides across the dimensions.

There are many existing theories as to how the Shamanic Drum alters consciousness:

Association with the mother's heartbeat in the womb

This theory would suggest the instinctive mind has the archetype triggered of the journey in the womb towards life, and the lighted spaces within the Labyrinth in which we journey are morphologically similar to lifetimes and the learnings of each.

High component of Delta brain frequencies

The Delta brain frequencies are between ½ Hz to 4Hz, and commonly occur during deep hypnosis accompanied by strong visualizations, and various other deep states of consciousness, including Superlearning states, where music is played at 1Hz to enhance learning,. The rhythm of the shamanic drum is within this frequency, and a good shamanic drum also emits a high component of such frequencies. Such frequencies are not in the theoretical range of human hearing, but they do have many strong effects upon the human body.

Drowning out regular senses by overloading

The “rational” self is a web of almost unlimited fixed ideas that bear little relationship to present reality. So some means of drowning this out can be vital to explore different and more useful ideas. A monotonous drum beat can be very effective for this.

Resonance with electromagnetic pulses of the Earth

Each lightning strike reverberates around the Earth several times, and in every instant, lightning is always striking somewhere. This is a continual resonance, and a skilled Shamanic drummer will easily beat exactly in time to this rhythm.

These theories, however correct they all my be, leave out the Shaman's and the drum's realities: that the drum is alive, sentient, and is professional in carrying out his job in transporting the Shaman. The Shamanic drum maker builds not only a physical object, but a character web (morphogenetic or telesmatic field) that keeps the drum focused on it’s created purpose, and a drum spirit incarnates into a drum that matches that spirit’s life purpose.

Even if a particular drum was not fully alive as an individual consciousness, the principle of morphological resonance between the character of the drum and the intentionality of the drummer, is a much more significant factor than all merely mechanical factors. The fact that Shamanic drumming has already evoked ecstatic consciousness shifts for thousands of years, means that when a Master Shaman drums, all those who have drummed before him, stand behind and drum. Those thousands past, present and future drummers from across the ages, all focused into a present moment, can easily carry a roomful of trainees into trances in seconds.

Powerful drumming is best with a male/female pair of Shamans, each experiencing their drum as macrodimensional, and the room they are in as being contained microdimensionally within each of their drums. This begins the Shamanic Journey fourth-dimensionally, or with three drummers each with awake drums, starting in fifth dimension....

The first time I experienced the presence of a Stradivarius violin was entering an elevator. I saw a man with an oblong case, and even though I didn't know violin cases could be oblong, I went into awe, a state of absolutely stunned amazement at the power of his violin, hardly able to stand up near it. Getting upstairs, we went into the violin makers where I worked, and he took out a Stradivarius, now worth $6,000,000.

Intentionality of a master craftsman, and audiences over a period of centuries enhancing that energy, creates a powerful energetic aura around a master instrument.

I have had relatively conservative psychologists, with no knowledge of Shamanism, spontaneously go into "daydreaming" and imagining my drum talking with them, and explaining its job to them. The interesting part is how similar their "imagined" explanation was to how Samuel Oshodi, the drum's Nigerian maker described its function to me. This happened one time when it was officially an Ericksonian Hypnotherapy workshop, and I hadn't even played the drum. I guess she didn't want to be only an audience, so she thought she'd teach the students as well as me!

The drum comes alive as an individual soul as when the soul enters the child in the womb: when it starts drumming, kicking in its own rhythm. The soul incarnated in the drum during its making. Some students ask questions like "Do the straps connecting the skins represent the dimensions?" The consciousness of the drum is way beyond "representation". If while spinning the straps for the drum, one's consciousness is in nine dimensions, they don't represent those 9 dimensions, they are in 9 dimensions, and can carry people there.

For most Shamanic journey and training purposes, we only use 3 simple beats. A monotonous beat about 4 Hz for most journeys, a monotonous beat at around .9 Hz for some power journeys, and a heartbeat for more heart or Great Mother oriented Journeys.

For calling in certain Orishas or powers of nature there are also a variety of rhythms, each calling the power to us.

And then my drum responded:

"All the above theories about how I function are simultaneously true, yet all have the same logical flaw of most human perception: anthropomorphisation, thinking the world is about yourselves. The theories all say something that happens in your own biological makeup, dismissing non-human consciousness as irrelevant.

Contained within each of my molecules is a reflection of the Future Self of all in the room journeying upon my sounds. As my ecstasy rises, I leap open with joy into the next dimension and the next, yearning, calling, summoning your own power to your own body. I call your blockages and limitations to be sacrificed on the altar of Olokun, the most mysterious and deep dark and ancient Goddess, for I have the sacred task of revealing you to you! Oh how I love to play the drummer as the drummer plays me!

The air within me is tuned to the pulse of the universe, my wood to your bones, and my skins to the dance of life within your blood, and the cords holding my skins in perfect resonant tension sing within your Spiritual DNA Strands, that which links your consciousness between the dimensions."

To learn more about Rowland Barkley visit http://rowlandbarkley.com/ and http://www.tranceform.org/

10 Billion Beats

Copyright © 2009 by Carlisle Bergquist

The beat returns - Friday Sept. 17, 2010, 7:00 PM

Maybe it is ridiculous to think we can change the world. We know it is ridiculous not to try. Are we simply victims of fate, or are we creating a fate that will victimize us? This is a Global Experiment that will use drumming to focus a collective positive intention, then send it around the world in a continuous wave to improve our relationship with each other, and with a living planet upon which we live, breath, and have our being. 10 Billion Beats started in Sept. 2009. It grew and grew until nearly 200,000 people participated around the globe. In 2010 the grassroots movement will be even bigger and we invite you to be a part of it.

"It is quite true that in the history of human thinking the most fruitful developments frequently take place at those points where two different lines of thought meet..."

Werner Heisenberg

Sound - vibration - frequency - beat has for millennia been an avenue for outward creation and inner exploration. When we listen to the lilt of a mountain brook, or the rhythm of a human heart, sound provides us a pathway to the subtle energies in the deep reaches of our psyche. When we attune with the rhythm of those around us we join in the harmonious dance of life. Sound interconnects us with others and transports us to consciousness states where we encounter insight, healing, growth, and our highest creativity. So what might happen if we use the sound of drumming—like a physical prayer or meditation—to help balance our relationship as a human family and with the Earth itself?

The human heart beats billions of times in a life. The human brain has about 10 billion cells that connect our nervous system and exchange innumerable signals every moment to create our thoughts and direct life functions. While 10 billion seems like a huge number, to be human is to engage grand scale operations each time we simply take a breath. We have overlooked the magnitude of what it takes to be human and as we approach 10 billion humans on this earth, we have underestimated the effects of our existence on the planet. With, or without, our cooperation, nature will bring balance to the relationship.

This is an intention experiment.

It seems that somewhere deep within our collective psyche, for as long as humankind has been able to voice it, people have been predicting a world-ending catastrophe accompanied by a last minute rescue from some higher source. Gifted seers like early warning radar, have predicted that some enormous change will occur in this creation. Shamans have prophesied this "great turning" in indigenous villages, every religious tradition has recorded some description of it in their scripture, and like a weather-change many sentient beings that walk this planet sense something in their bones. 2012, Rapture, Earth Changes, Ascension, The End of Days, we don't know what is coming. For many it is a cause for alarm, for others a reason for joy. It is not our wish to challenge your religious beliefs or question that which brings you solace. Whatever the case turns out to be, in this coming period more will be asked of us. Whether it is in a New Heaven, on a New Earth, or walking more miles in the same pair of shoes, we should be asking, "How can we help create the world we all can live in, now, and come 2013?"

We will use positive intention to affect the uncertain times we sense and benefit every life on the planet.

The Theory

The connection between Mind, Body, and Spirit is probably familiar to anyone reading this page. Many research studies have demonstrated that prayer improves healing. Perhaps you know that in your own life. Other researchers have shown the benefits of meditation, and several studies have validated that a group meditation can affect change, even reducing the incidence of crime in several major cities. There are two key elements in these methods that greatly improve success.

1. One should achieve a deep, calm, state of awareness.  (trance-like)
2. It's most effective to focus the intention with the heart, on a purpose greater than one's self.

A prime principal of systems theory says that "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." This applies to all systems whether they are human organizations, computers, machines, living organisms, and a living Earth. This experiment will focus intention on the "whole" using sound to achieve a deep collective state of awareness.

Why 10 Billion

In The Global Brain, author and researcher Peter Russell shows how during the development of life on this planet a dramatic shift took place each time specific elements reached a critical mass. Amino acids formed from less complex molecules, proteins formed from amino acids, single cell life from that and complex life forms developed from them. This is not an attempt to argue for or against any creation theory. I see it as simply following the hand of the Divine in the process of creation. The key element here is that the critical mass—at which a new "whole" came into being—seemed to be about 10 billion. When the population density of any of these elements approached this critical mass, the whole became something more than the sum of its parts. Human life on Earth is rapidly approaching this critical population threshold! We are seeing a shift in the connection between people (as you using the internet right now demonstrates) and a shift in the spiritual, mental, and physical paradigms that have served us in the past. This intention experiment is to assist the emergence of a human family at peace with the Earth and itself.

All that is required from you is your participation.

To learn more about 10 billion beats visit: http://www.10billionbeats.com/intro.html

10 Billion Beats can be contacted using this email address: "contact(@)10billionbeats.com" Please remove the parentheses around "@" We are not posting a live email link to avoid getting "robomail."

To contact us by Mail:

10 Billion Beats
c/o Vantage Quest
901 W. South St.
Salina, KS, USA

Telephone: (785) 827-1835

FROM THE EDITOR

Greetings fellow drummers,

It’s hard to believe that nearly a year has passed since emailing my last newsletter. I apologize for my tardiness. A lot has happened in the last year. I moved from Mt. Angel to Salem, Oregon. I have been diligently working on some new projects. I am writing a new book on shamanic drumming and recording a companion CD, which I hope to complete early next year. I have also collected some great articles on shamanic drumming, which I am sharing in this newsletter.

I am pleased to announce the launch of ShamanicDrumming.com, a website devoted to shamanic drumming as a vehicle for healing, consciousness expansion, and community building. My new website has all the features of the old site plus new content. You can read informative articles on shamanic drumming, download free shamanic music, find a drum circle in your area, consult the I Ching, and much more. This website is my invitation to all who wish to experience the power of rhythm.

Michael Drake

Salem, Oregon

November 2009

____________________________________________________