welcome to new connection where you can tune in and grow i'm your host vicky thompson you may be familiar with new connection magazine for conscious living which has been enjoyed by readers in the pacific northwest for more than seventeen years now are excited to bring new connection to life in your home a new connection we welcome authors practitioners and visionaries to share new ideas for alternative health spirituality and personal growth today i'd like to welcome to new connection patrick pinson who is the owner  it's been a part of indigenous cultures for a long time what are drumming circles and what is the power of the drum well i would say the drama has been a part of indigenous people within your drumming circles are more relatively newer as we know and they have indigenous cultures they certainly have gatherings that drum for extended periods but the drum circle we do are more about creating that  place for people learn how to play like children so indigenous cultures do they use their drumming more as a part of a spiritual journey than we yes the drum that i may take the frame drum out of elk the navy people tell me that the spirits come in on the vibrations of the drum so the drum is used in practically all of their ceremonies and the sun dance and in the sweat lodges and they sing the songs and th ey say that the spirits come in on those vibrations so vibrational healing is very very ancient and many people have known that for much longer than quantum physics is not so in africa  they use drums for healing as well and we have some african drums that we condemn and we do the african drum is more of a male drum it's the african the jim bay this particular ground here is called that it's a very wonderful drum and it's that's right your heart it's one of the most popular drums in america because it not only balances but it has that vibration that people long for point people come in my store they never ask for the hopping a drum they want something they want and what happens is people say that when we relax spirit comes in when we're all stressed out our voice goes up here we want to relax that voice drops down so the drum we long for that deep vibration and yet we're so stressed to the vibration that we hear on t v is that hear your tone so you can say i love you in a certain way with a hard the british and the children will hear the words of the tone same with animals it's very true children are perceptive behind that because you can  from northern africa egypt and pakistan and mostly with the fingers i don't i don't claim to be a great player but they're play it's more that the the that dance between the masculine and feminine energies to the one in africa the women actually lead the drummers a lot of people i've been told this is that some people think that the women dance to the drum but actually the drummer drums to the dance so it's a beautiful inner kleinman of that masculine feminine energy which is which is very balancing the if if a woman goes to to africa they don't drum with the gym bay but over here in the united states there's a lot of women just brimming with the game but the the i'm not that familiar with some of the drums because the one that i make the cedar mountain drum was what i started my business with and then i was grown i've offered other drums from other cultures some of which i know more about than others like the celtic like the irish border on which is a frame you go to an artist you can hear the border on and the singers it's a but it's very similar to the native american drum all these frame drums are very similar just like the spirituality of the different cultures the wheels the medicine wheels you'll find those symbols and so the drums were made out of goat because that's what they had in the native americans would make drums out of deer and elk because that's basically the animals that they hunted in they killed this particular  believe it's a horse we yeah this is a horse drum that's hand painted by one of our artists roche perceive who's an apache lady who does over and been very wonderful artist but the horse is all these there's not one that's better than the other that's that's all very pretty one to put things in categories but the horse is a is a wonderful drum for for journeying and into trance we ride the time and so the horse the deer is more connected with the heart i've been told that the deer is the loss of circulation that giving and receiving are one like our br and so each one of these i've watched comanche medicine people work with drums and then they send these vibrations up and down the body and they will know where your energy is blocked by the dr to help us relief or to let go of some of these interjected values that we swallow as children that give us in the gesture and then we grow up saying i want to do this but i should do this because every think in here the children a very gullible and they swallow whole these values and so in order for the energy to come up to the heart we have to clear the belly which is l which is that low vibration so a lot of people that are working on healing abuse stuff is very powerful medicine about the spirit of the tree because there's would involved in the friends of the joy well i started a cedar mountain drums and and we make our drums out of alaskan yellow cedar which is the traditional sacred wood of the of the northwest coastal tribes cedar they've got many songs about the cedar tree you know about the healing tree they drink cedar key for what ails them they make the their canoes their masks their totems out of the wood cedar and they make drum hoops out of because it's a very long fiber and it's it bends really easily into a frame and it's it's an ideal healing energy for a drop for foundation of a drum so you have this intertwining of the of the energies of the animal and and there's the healing properties of the cedar that that go together to create this trinity between the wood the skin and the drummer and i teach people to not so much by the drum as a possession as to buy it to work with this part of their their play you give yourself permission to play the children do that freezy the adults kind of get all stressed out and they'll come in and do this business and not want to make any noise but it's been that the native drum many many people say it's the mother the mother earth i have a yak i'm all friend used to work at my store and he says we're all born with a drop of a boom boom boom and it's the first thing we hear when we come for spirit to form is the heart heart beat our heart beat our mothers heart beat and i say that this is the heartbeat of the mother earth so it is a feminine drum and it grounds us the earth is we call it mother earth we call it father sky so the flute is more of an air masculine energy but the drum is the foundation it's so when men drum it grounds us gets out of our heads when women they get them into their power which is the earth and it is the people have been abused they leave their body and so the drama is a very powerful way to to create that reentry into the body where we can be fully just started a children's drumming circle but my intention has always been to create a little ritual little ceremony and to make it safe for people to come and play because there's so many injuries to our spirit a play about being good doing it right and people say well i don't have any rhythm that we all have rhythm we all have the rhythm so we kind of make the circles a safe place to come and play like the children i say remember what you were like into a two year old or a three year old because run and play and giving yourself permission to play just for the joy of it and so we do have then passing a talking dick around so that each person each voice in the circle has an opportunity to say to speak from the heart the callers are placed the heart space and that format is pretty much the holy part of communication is the listening so that's a great way to set up a drum circle because what us tell him is that we each have our own unique rhythm and oftentimes we betray our own rhythm for someone else's rhythm and so the real magical drum circles come from that willingness to go into the chaos and to feel and oftentimes when we're searching for our rhythm we seem out of sync with everything and it's pretty lonely scary journey but if we just stay true to ourselves that natural law given trainmen that i've seen in twenty years of drumming circles where we all seek to be in harmony you know if we try to be in harmony that creates the barrier but if we all just on our own rhythm and be independent honoring ourselves and then we will honor the circle and most those ribbons will come together in a very beautiful way th very powerful the drum circle and you did an example of a drum circle for us that we'd like to go ahead and show now and to see the power to have a group where he's going to gather in harmony  so that was really amazing showing us how people can and train together and have that rhythm and harmony going in such a beautiful way well the i've learned so much from from the friends you know they have beautiful sayings that are so simple li i am the first and last of my nation that's so each one of us are independent of each one of us in the circle our whole complete and it's an independent entered dependent way of  rather than the codependent the way that we are raised in this that when you have a magical drum circle you have everyone honoring their rhythm and then you have this improvisation which is original music that happens in our little segment here we did some of that because ted and i are great friends and we've been drumming together for years and we play we don't have any agendas so when i play the flute music just comes it's not rehearsed never rehearsed anything but that's the most fun music that original music where there is no that you're creating it in the moment people walk away from some of these drum circle say and my gosh i wish that i had a tape recorder here that we power and drumming in recovery you've used it at prisons at hospitals with people who are recovering from alcoholism or other addictions and you call it a special process can you explain how drumming can help us to heal from addiction well that an article i think you read was called context recovery and it's an article i read or i wrote several years ago for professional counselors magazine because i have a master's in counseling and i was a drug and alcohol counselor for years and i also began to before i got into drum business i was in a play therapy business with your friend down in marin county california and i began to be intrigued by these this began to study with these pretty pioneering people who believe that active meditation is watching a tennis ball and beginning beginning as that ball comes here be able to tell your partner which way the seams are turning and you get totally absorbed in the into the into the watching into the moment you know like we hear be here now and so i began to ta these twelve steps of recovery into play and one aspect of play is drumming and drumming is it can be play you know the kids drum circles if you come to kids from circle you'll see what play is because there are teachers are fact before i ever got into this play therapy i watched children go to the playgrounds and watch them play and there they are very wonderful teachers in this in this art of play but addicts alcoholics  seek artificial means to to get high to achieve high states in these high states that come through substances are never lasting they always kind of turn the other way and then the more and more you seek that high and outside of yourself the more and more it becomes an addiction so i began to look at natural ways to be high and it sounds like drumming is a natural way although it isn't meant to be high it is just it's an authentic way to reach a high st beautiful way to go in that beautiful rhythm of it patrick it's just been so wonderful to spend the time with you learning about drumming and if people would like to learn more about drumming please go to our website at new connection journal dot com p next time a new connection where you can tune in and grow