I am excited when a student gets past the use of muscle and ego and gets to where the drum is making music. The muscle interferes with the melody of the drum. When the patient can get strong enough to keep a basic rhythm solid, then the healer can improvise on top of that stable groove, which opens up the flow of healing energy into both of them. The soloing does not work as a healing tool if it comes from ego and muscle. It must flow from the Gods. From God. ALL INDIGENOUS CULTURES UNDERSTAND THIS.
The Helmtone method of getting a patient into this musical creative mode using the drum is what I have been teaching. It makes an avenue for healing and abundance where there was only vacant space.
“I am probably hitting too hard” is a mantra that bears repeating every minute or so.
“I am probably speeding up” is also a mantra that could be repeating as often as possible.
I am grateful for the people who have come to me to heal using the drum. When I am sharing the groove with them, insights into my own condition along with their insights makes for a miraculous session, over and over again. I have recently come to understand such conditions as “Rhythmic dislocation” where the person cannot hold a stable groove. This has traditionally been diagnosed as someone “with no sense of rhythm” . That assumption could not be further from the truth. These people have an incredible sense of rhythm and they want to get to it but the trauma history gets in the way. Eliminate the trauma loops and they begin playing in the groove! Their lives improve. This has nothing to do with talent or music.
“I am probably hitting too hard” is a mantra that bears repeating every minute or so.
“I am probably speeding up” is also a mantra that could be repeating as often as possible.
Rhythmic Dissassociation is also a new and dynamic concept. Which comes part and parcel with the psychological dissassociation caused by abuse. These condItions can be seen at work. They become visible to the patient as they drum. And it then becomes a Behavorial Feedback tool . We can thank Elmer Green for creating the study of biofeedback, and what we have here is a new tool for modifying behavior and belief in a short time.
Today was a a breakthrough session with a patient of three months. This person has a life threatening illness. When they arrived at our door step at Seasons in Santa Monica, He could not hold a steady beat. His muscular spasms where a reaction to past trauma history, not music. Three months later, he held a complicated driving six beat trance groove steady and solid while I improvised healing energy over it, resembling “Los Munequitos” type of shamanic grooves. It is very fast and unexpected.He stayed steady and strong for a long time, then we ended with a triumphant “Big Ending”
This patient had done the work on themselves, and it showed in his drumming. He stayed steady and strong. What he needs to heal with. But his past was no longer impinging on his present. And as a reseult he could drum very well. At the beginning he could not drum at all with out getting very agitated. He enjoyed it but it was not in the groove of the group. Now he is quite capable of drumming on his own and in a group. The old habits are stil near though.
Remembering to hit the drum so softly that muscle is not activated is an important evolution FOR ALL DRUMMERS. Then the drummer can connect to the egoless source of healing power. This is quite a long journey for drummers because ego and drumming seem to go together. But that is a mundane level of drumming.
DRUMMING FOR THE SACRED HEALING DANCE. That means watch the world around you and how it responds to your drumming. The dancers will teach us how to drum. The patients will teach us how to heal with the drum. Hitting the drum so softly that only the melody is heard creates a release of ego and muscle. That then connects us to universal power that heals reality.
Go ahead. I dare you to go there.