Reiki and Drumming
by Michael Baird and Laurelle Shanti Gaia
In our beginning Reiki training many of us are taught that Reiki is a stress-reduction and relaxation technique. We learn that it is used in “hands-on” healing. We learn that Reiki can help to heal physical, mental, and emotional issues. Once we begin using Reiki regularly, we soon learn that the energy is truly a teacher. Some would say the Master teacher.
Our experience of Reiki is that it IS Divine healing Love. There is no time, place, or situation where Reiki is not appropriate, because Divine Love can only enhance our experiences.
Today Reiki is combined with western medical practices in surgical procedures and during cancer therapy. Reiki is often included in massage and bodywork sessions. Many chiropractors and dentists use Reiki, and the list goes on and on. Truly, Reiki can become a part of your daily activities or vocation.
When someone with a passion for drumming, like Michael, began to share his life with Laurelle, who has a passion for Reiki, it would seem that combining Reiki and drumming would have easily occurred to us. However, it didn’t happen quite that way. As Reiki often does, the energy guided us to what has unfolded into a powerful healing method, and much more.
At the International Reiki Retreat, Labor Day Weekend in 1999, Michael was invited to join two other drummers in providing healing drumming sessions for the retreat participants. From that one event grew the beginning of our experience with Reiki drumming. While drumming for those sessions, Michael was able to first experience healing drumming without Reiki and then during the second night’s drumming sessions combined healing drumming with Reiki.
He learned to first prepare himself and strengthen his light with Reiki before picking up the drum. Then he would prepare the drum by charging it as a Reiki healing instrument with the use of all the sacred Reiki symbols. Finally, as he drummed over each person he would visualize the energy of a Reiki symbol moving from his hands and through the drum to the person under the drum.
The intention was for Reiki’s energy to ride on the drum’s sound waves, and for Reiki to help the person under the drum heal in a way that was for the highest and greatest good for all. This allowed the infinite intelligence of Reiki to facilitate healing without the possibility of harm.
That weekend we learned the value of combining Reiki with drumming. We were reminded of the importance of combining Reiki’s Love in all we do.
Since that time, the Reiki energy, the spirit of many drums, the guides, angels, and spirit helpers have taught us much more about powerful new ways to incorporate Reiki with drumming and other forms of sound. We are learning how to facilitate deeper and more profound healing experiences.
The concept of sound and healing is not a new one. In the Reiki Chants booklet contained in his new kotodama CD with the same name, sound healing pioneer Jonathan Goldman states:
If we explore various spiritual paths on this planet, you will find a commonality in their understanding that the first basic creative force was sound. In the New Testament it is written: “In the Beginning was the Word!” The Old Testament tells us: “And the Lord said: ‘Let there be Light!’ . . . the act of sound creating light. In the Hopi traditions, the Spider Woman sings the song of creation over the inanimate forms on this planet, bringing life to them. From the Vedic tradition it is written: “In the Beginning was Brahman, with whom was the Word and the Word was Brahman.” The idea of sound as the principle creative energy is almost universal. Sound creates form.
If you are interested in exploring your ability to heal and manifest with sound, drumming is one good place to start. Absolutely everyone has the talent and ability to drum. Your beat may be different, but it is your very own unique beat. Your beat is neither wrong nor right. It is an expression of your being that is perfect in its wholeness and completion.
Like you, a drum is a sacred healing tool with a unique spirit. The spirit of your drum can often be sensed while it is being played. It is also possible to journey to meet the spirit of your drum. As you drum you may become aware of other sounds contained within the drumming, as if it is connecting to another dimension.
In shamanism, the drum is known as “the shaman’s horse,” as it allows the shaman to “ride” the sound waves created by the drum into another dimension to help a person heal. When combining Reiki with drumming, the Divine wisdom inherent in Reiki energy merges with the sound waves and carries the Reiki energy more deeply into the client at the same time it creates a safe and sacred environment for healing.
What Is Reiki Drumming?
Reiki drumming is a specialized method of healing that makes use of the sound waves from the drum to introduce Reiki energy more deeply into a client’s energy field to facilitate deep relaxation and stress relief. As stress is relieved, tensions in the physical body are often released as well. Biofeedback research indicates that even brief heartbeat drumming can double light meditative brainwaves (alpha) and reduce stress. We now know that stress depresses the immune system and has been linked to nearly all diseases.
Reiki drumming affects the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual bodies simultaneously, helping to bring them into harmony while raising the vibratory rate to levels that may allow the body to accelerate its innate healing abilities. Drumming reminds our body of its ideal vibratory rate, which is in harmony with the pulse of the earth and the Universal flow of creation.
Reiki drumming can enhance the power of distant Reiki, or help to send Reiki through time, as well as to strengthen the vibration of the peace ray on the planet, while assisting in harmonizing our human consciousness with the Earth.
We connect directly with the Heart and the Mind of the Divine when we access Reiki energy. Drumming is also a way to align with the Divine, as has been experienced since ancient times, through native spiritual and shamanic healing practices. When the two are combined, the result is an enhanced healing experience.
Swiss scientist Dr. Hans Jenny demonstrated how various substances such as sand, plastics, and liquid would take on a particular shape and form when various sound waves were passed through them. These experiments indicate that sound has the ability to affect and change matter.
In addition, sound can only be created by and travel through a material substance such as a solid, liquid, or gas, but cannot travel through a vacuum. Sound travels though different materials at different speeds, traveling through water at about 1500 meters per second, iron at about 5100 meters per second, and much slower through air at about 340 meters per second.
Striking any material will cause it to vibrate, and this can have an effect on nearby objects by creating a sympathetic response. When a drum is played, the drumhead will vibrate causing the nearby molecules of air to vibrate. The vibrating molecules of air will strike other nearby molecules of air and continue on. This is known as a sound wave. This wave will continue and pass through the client you are drumming for, causing the molecules composing their body to sympathetically respond with vibration. When done with a therapeutic intention, the vibration produced will be healthy and will displace any vibrations of disease, which may be present in the client.
The ability to feel Reiki is part of our Divine inheritance. After Reiki drumming many people experience an increased sensitivity to vibration and many who have not had the awareness of feeling Reiki’s energy are able to begin feeling it. We suspect there is a simple explanation for this. Could it be that after feeling the low frequencies of drumming mixed with what may be the high frequencies of Reiki the person has had a direct experience of what healing energy feels like? After having had such an experience are we then able to detect frequencies higher than the frequency of the drum’s sound and actually feel the healing energy of Reiki by itself? Based on our experiences the answer to both questions is yes.
Science has yet to develop devices to measure Reiki’s frequency, but we need to be patient. It was just a few decades ago that radio waves were just the idea of an eccentric thinker. With all of the amazing advancements of science we will likely one day soon have an electronic device that will measure what we all can already feel.
Medical Research
A medical research study indicates that group drumming enhances the functioning of the immune system. Published in the January 2001, issue of Larry Dossey’s Alternative Therapies, the ground-breaking study was performed by a team of MDs using control groups and blood tests.
Led by well-known researcher, author, and cancer expert Barry Bittman, MD, who is the CEO of Meadville Medical Center’s Mind-Body Wellness Center in Meadville, PA, the study shows that group drumming actually increases cancer-killing (NK) cells, which help the body combat not only cancer but also viruses including AIDS.
According to Dr. Bittman, “Group drumming tunes our biology, orchestrates our immunity, and enables healing to begin . . . When our hands connect with a drum that vibrates with our energy, vitality . . . and unity, we become whole again.” Dr. Bittman’s weekly radio program, Mind-Body Matters, is syndicated nationwide on NPR. For more on Dr. Bittman, visit www.mind-body.org/bittman.html
Drumming has also been used successfully with Alzheimer’s patients to focus attention, with war veterans to end trauma, with addicts in recovery from drug and alcohol abuse, and with prison and homeless populations to enhance self-esteem. Progressive corporations like Motorola, AT&T, and Levi-Strauss have drummed with middle management to promote team-spirit building.
Widely published research also indicates that playing musical instruments increases children’s learning abilities. This appears especially true of those instruments that can be played intuitively like the drum. Studies indicate that drumming enhances right-brain functions such as intuition and creativity.
James Gordon, MD, of the Center for Mind-Body Medicine in Washington D.C. states “Oncologists should be open to group drumming if their patients are interested in it. Drumming can put people in a state of relaxation. It was used as a healing technique 1,000 years ago. Why not now?” (MAMM Magazine, July/August, 2001)
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