and you know what time what time so much is going on so much is going on on the planet you know i mean this particular show although we don't normally mention the show as it was we try to keep them so that they're in a way they're infinitely accessible they're infinitely appropriate to any time because they're only about love and truth and connectedness and living on this planet joyously and collaborative and creatively but this particular time on earth is an interesting time we have cyclons in hurricanes and just natural disasters where so many of our brothers and sisters are experiencing such this location in such stress and such trauma to themselves and their loved ones and their environment and you know what is it for us to do now what is it for us who maybe are not experiencing that level of trauma i mean all of us have lives and all of us have ups and downs and dramas and things that are irritating or that you know our mortgages do or our bosses and being nice to us or you know we feel alone or we feel separate and when i was sitting here you know getting ready for this show and getting ready for his opening is there's a television show so there are cameras and you know extraordinary crew people around getting everything ready and the words that kept coming through me was it's time for a call for love a call to love a call for love a call to love for all of us to universally globally galactically however you can envision what is going on in this extraordinary experiment called life to come together to call for love to call to love and awaken to our true nature our true nature of one true nature of the energy of what we call on earth in certain places god or brahman or that that creator that we we as a species cannot be outside that energy so when in fact we are that energy and the goddess and i are one in the father and i are one and how can we again and again let our seeming separations or our seeming fears prevent us from getting food to people who are hungry how can it prevent us from getting water to those who don't have water clean water how can we let it prevent medicines to get to those who are injured and  and now is the time for us to come together joyously and lovingly collaborating and say enough of that and that our intention our desire our commitment our unrelenting effort energy will be to recognize that love that unconditional love that is the heart of and the root of every human being and every everything on this planet and the planet itself and in that in that intention that will start to change the world and that is so much of what's happening now even with the disasters in the disharmonies in the fears in the confusion the natural disasters so much love is starting to manifest so much collaboration is starting to be real on this planet so many new paradigms of of ways of acting out of love and truth and compassion are growing in exploding and coming together and tonight's guest just travels the world with that fi  ation christine stevens is a modern day trip with her and she just travels the world using drumming and music as a way to reach that unconditional love of a way to feel that unconditional love you know she's an internationally acclaimed speaker a music therapist she's the founder of the upbeats rum circles she's the author of the healing drum kit and the art and heart of drum circles but i mean the the basis of christine after spending just a few hours weather is to open the heart to heal the heart to to let us know that love and that oneness and her way is through the vibration of the drum and when you play the drums you'll know you'll know why that is and what a great gift that is for herself to be able to do that to have that is of just beautiful destiny and to be able to share that with the planet and we also have some beautiful video of christine with her drumming and drum circles and that you know she's part of that the art and heart of drum circle is a beautiful video that's available i think you know through sounds true and through amazon just available all over and if you want it you can get it it's a magnificent thing and it's also as most of you know we're in the middle of an international art project it came as a dream became is a vision to reach out to the world and a healing as an acupuncture as a healing of the heart of the planet to anybody who wants to join us anybody who's intention is pure and clean to produce a new original piece based on the theme bridging heaven earth and get it to us and w shown on the show and tonight we have two beautiful friends of bridging the lisa marie and laurie revard of produce extraordinary pieces different different mediums but that energy of love that energy of collaboration that energy of a new paradigm and anybody who wants to join us the art project is infinite it's inclusive and everybody who wants to be part of that healing join with us collaborate with us it's the time for that so as we normally do join me in a short meditation then we'll have christine's first the first part of christine's beautiful drumming video and then christine will be with us and we'll have art and you know it's an opportunity so let's call to love let's call for love and let's come together in that in that intention in that five gratian in that destiny in that in that path for all of us to come together and to not allow one more time the herds that go on now and has put let's put an end to it with the vibrational love so strong that nothing else can exist ok so join me in a short m ok so the first music video we're going to see says they said there are two parts of a beautiful video by christine the art in the heart of drum circles it's really beautiful just settle in let that take you and then we'll come back we'll be with christine and she'll play and she'll talk and she'll tell you you know how to how to do it how to come into that experience so enjoy hi i'm christine stevens and welcome to the art heart of drum circles i'm a board certified music therapist and a drum circle facilitator and music has always been an important part of my life today i hope to inspire you to be part of drum circles recreational drumming is something that's a really exciting growing fad that people are doing for their personal health and well being we call this the art heart of drum circles because there's really two main goals of every drum circle first we want to experience the music the art the artistic benefit of finding the rhythm of joining in the group and making music together and the second goal is the heart this is all the ways that music extends into our everyday lives the metaphor of the drum circle the feeling of reducing our stress the feeling of making music and expressing what sometimes words alone cannot say and we may not have thought of yourself as a drummer or a musician but actually i believe everyone is born a drummer we are all biologically wired for rhythm we have a heartbeat we walk to a rhythm we talk to rhythm we breathe we sleep and wake in fact we are walking talking to king talking poly rhythms drum circles just bring out what's innate in every one of us now drum circles are receiving a lot of interest today in the media in fact they are p s my generation magazine refers to drum circles as the fastest growing holistic health track and i think that's pretty incredible in a paper published in the year two thousand dr barry bittman was able to demonstrate that drum circles according to a specific one hour protocol could reduce the stress response on a biological level in an extension of that study dr bittman looked at employees who were stressed out and burned out he was able to show a significant change in the feeling amongst the team members by boosting morale reducing stress and actually saving the employer money so now it's time for us to get started because drum circles are really not about sitting and watching it's really about getting involved so let's get dr now we're going to cover some of the basics of playing the drums in a way that avoids injuries and gets the best sound on the instruments ok so the first thing is want to take off any rings or bracelets or watches the could injure so we have to pick them up away from our body or pick them up off the ground to get a good sound so let's all get our drums excellent you can use a stand to elevate the drum or you can use a waist strap to hold the drum up you can also use a john like this in this position which is traditional in the doing back kind of playing position so the first thing is we want to get a good sound on the drum by bouncing our hand shape and now we're going to again bounce our hands off the edge of the drum for the tone sound ready to go out and you notice how the hand is pretty straight rotating from the elbow not just from the wrist using our whole arm the last sound is called slap and this is curving the hand slightly curved coming in towards the body and balancing up off the drum for the highest pitch here we go ready  hi everybody welcome back so is a beautiful video so the picture you're seeing in between us is angels of the universe is beautiful piece a lisa marie a beautiful friend the bridging it was painted in fired in body by the chino well it's a great question because i like a lot of people thought i was rhythmically challenged and what i discovered was playing a drum you know technique with sticks and trying to follow a sheet of music was a challenge for me you know and a lot of people today actually live thinking that they're not musical or that they're not rhythmical and that's a lie i mean we are biologically wired for rhythm we all have a heartbeat we all are we are walking to a beat we're breathing our respiration rhythm we sleep and wake to a circadian cycle that's a rhythm so we are rhythm and it's simply about remembering that rhythm so i had an experience where after thinking in my head that i couldn't play very diddles and all these techniques i went to a drum circle and someone handed me a drum like this and all of a sudden i was putting my hands on the drum and i felt it fell right immediately oh i wasn't thinking all of a sudden you know music is so innate it is like trying to walk and thinking about each step you would trip so the most important thing for success in drumming has nothing to do with one ear the two in the three and accounting or reading music it has to do with connecting right here in our heart getting out of our heads being in the present moment and allowing the rhythm that only you can play every person has their own unique beat and allowing that to come forth through the drum and that's really why as a music therapist as a social worker i found the drum is the most immediate access point to the human spirit people that feel depressed despondent at the end of their rope people in a crisis can find hope and healing and reconnection through this music oh so so your feeling is that just by starting to do this the whole process brings you into the knowing that you you already have absolutely and that feels so good you know when people reconnect to their heart you see it their whole body relaxes i think we live with so much performance anxiety and so much self criticism in our heads and what we're interested in as you are is how do we raise this fibrilation this consciousness on the planet and what we're finding with a specific spiritually focus and intention focus drum circle is that people really in train they come together and it changes our relationships and we even have scientific research now to show that it changes our biology in fact dr barry bittman our research partner neurologist did a study looking at one hundred  twelve subjects they took blood samples before and after an hour of driving cording to a health promoting protocol and believe it or not it actually increased the natural killer cell activity the white blood cells in your immune system so i think there's a you accessible i've never met a person who can't do it and the exciting thing is this research demonstrates evidence what you know cultures have known for centuries i mean this is not new age drumming has been around for probably twenty thousand years i like to say it's been tested on human subjects for twenty thousand years with no side effects so what are we waiting for what are we waiting for you know we are already a drum each and every one of us have a heart beat all t so i'm looking forward to the day that i go into the pharmacy and at the desk they have a new a book and it tells me all the drum circles in my community and i can buy my drum at the pharmacy because this is vitamin d vitamin drum well and  little about that and how you know your travels around the world have you know been really you know opening you up and you could see it happening all over well i think any time you get away from america you travel to some of these countries have been in africa and in some incredible disaster areas such as ground zero in new orleans and doing that kind of work you start to realize how privileged we are in our life and that you know music in our culture in the west is like entertainment the talent people perform for us when you go to a place like africa you know there's and i was in south africa music is part like water i mean it just it's nutrition it's it's necessary and i think we're seeing that shift in the west now we need tools and strategies to help us reduce stress as we face the crisis the recession the problems in the world what i what i felt in iraq was really extraordinary i mean we had the first drum circle training in a war zone the first time in history that a relief organization asked for drumming for conflict resolution and what was amazing was that at i never thought i'd feel so at home in a place i was so afraid to go and i went there with a and constantine came also cause team came with me and we were able to take people who would be enemies that didn't even speak the same language these are the people living in northern iraq they're kurdish and they're arabs and after five days these people were so connected these thirty eight people we trained them how to lead drum circles and it transformed that community rippled into seven governances in northern iraq where they are now doing drum circles for healing while i think the amazing thing is that this is such a simple tool and it transcends words i always feel that when we speak to each other we use words to communicate thoughts when we drum together we use music to communicate energy and i couldn't understand when i came home how i felt so close to these people that i never technically spoke to them when it's because we energetically connected and conversed in probably the the language of the heart music yeah i mean once you start getting into where there are words and you get concepts and definitions and all this but you know with words with music or with art you know it just has that you know less using specific symbols but if it's just an explosion of color and all that it then it's like wow that's that's universal and the more we can get to that universal place and i think that's where you're really you know anything that hears just how can we open who had universal place again and again and again and again right and simply remember it it's interesting when you go to a disaster places i went to hurricane katrina for example and bring the drum you know there's all these people rebuilding the homes with hammers and nails and i always feel like the is the tool kit for rebuilding the human spirit there's so much depression we don't even hear the beginning of the suicide rates that happen when these kind of disasters occur and when you make music with people even i would walk into people's trailers and i'd say what's your favorite song what can i sing for you and you know it was the most requested song amazing grace i'm really not surprised that out of a really amazing grace and sometimes people i would be walking with my drum and sometimes they would reach out their hands in the two of us would play the drum together and those are those are moments that transcend the barriers of language or resistance and fear and all of a sudden without even worrying about it with evan consciously thinking about it people have fallen into a path of self expression so when you go to these places i mean do you leave drums behind in a way i mean yes absolutely no because through our wonderful sponsor remote john company and they make these wonderful  of recycled materials and they sent us to iraq with one hundred drums that we left there that's sound so i was going to say because it's like one of those things you know it's just saying no or you know come into this but how do you you know keep that momentum going you know keep drumming and keep opening the art and yes well in one of the things that i find as you as you brought up the heart is that this rhythm the heartbeat rhythm that we play  you know however you play that in iraq e they play a lot with their finger technique on th all cultures connect to that beat so i have been so lucky i mean here i am this white blonde chick from los angeles overeducated drummer and i have gone to africa and i've gone to brazil and iraq and all these places where i've been accepted by the people because they see that i'm connecting to their song you know i mean you know when we talk so much i mean that literally everyone wants to feel love and share absolutely no i mean all the concepts and all the ways that we separate out are so small compared to that experience of you know feeling the love and sharing it so any way that we can see you know really break through into that field of love  well i think as you said the word breakthrough i think about a moment that i saw a woman who was drumming at a drum circle mind she sat in the back row and she was very resistant you know this is the basic body it and then halfway through i noticed she had moved up to rose why do you and she was sitting in the center and i mean she had taken a stick and she was playing the biggest john in the circle and we found out later that she had been facing the challenge of cancer and she said for the first time she released her anger that she was so angry at her disease and that's what i find fascinating about music it's a language of healing it's a language of healing and it's accessible to all people that women didn't have a degree in music you know she never took a class and that's probably why she could really access it so there's been so many healing moments and so many personal victories that i've been able to see even just for the idea of empowerment so many women are coming to drum circles now and being called to the drum and i think it has to do with empowering our spirit there's no reason to stop i mean there's no barrier i would love to see drumming as you brought up love i've let i would love to see drumming in homes parents and children i worked for a while as a social worker reuniting children and parents that had been removed from the foster care system and they have this attachment disorder and when we would drum together it was the best therapy we could do you could see right away the patterns who wasn't listening who was dominating you know it just was revealed in the music and then we could change it into this beautiful rhythm all together so then it was all perry was it we've got it and it feels better for everybody including  for you know it to happen and yeah you get to participate in you know what i would you know the thing that was really clear to me is that when you're doing this your book you don't have a passing you know the future you are now and that's where life is and that's where the collaboration is that's where so the more we can use all the different tools to bring this into the moment i want a strong tool it is you know because first of all it's at five gratian i mean you know the salad is one thing in as vibration feels good it carry the energy of a of a church service which is very unifying but then as people leave we have this drum circle happening in this little tent and they come in and through this every sunday is it just about every third every third and third week of every month and what we find is there's an action taken you know transformation happens when we participate in it right so the job does nothing until you play it and so people come into this john tent and they carry the energy of a and there is such a spirit of celebration we just use the drum to anchor the energy of love the john the heartbeat you can also use the john to anchor the energy of celebration and joy and we definitely need some of that on the planet  can communicate  would there be a celebration be that is a great question because when we created the healing junket with sounds true people often ask me what rhythm is healing and the answer is it is a very individual decision so right now i started the new join me but to discover the healing be i like to ask the person to sit take a few deep breaths and then allow your hand to play something on your drum and the difference is allowing yourself versus trying right and with your eyes closed you can tap in more with your own spirit your own rhythm and that's the healing beat and it's very healing w others listen to the air rhythm and join in and support it so you would say they feel that the most healing rhythm is the most harmonious with the person and each person will have a different harmonious rhythm and each different moment right there is always  infinite right and what i want to do with the healing junket is have people learn new rhythms you know there's twenty five rhythm cards learn new rhythm so you expand your vocabulary once you have had to learn technique a little bit  showing right you want to have a little bit of a language you know in la la la la la you have a little bit of a voice on the drum it's pretty simple there's really just three basic sounds and once you've mastered that which takes about one minute then you know because  if you've been doing this since you were on the pots and pans in your mother's kitchen right and so it's just transferring that on to the drum once you have that vocabulary you can tune into your own but then that is healing for you with people normally go to that or would they be resistance to get there i mean would it take some time would it take some feeling free you're comfortable or safe i mean how do you the key is feeling free the biggest problem we guy oh my god right so you see on our video what we're doing is we always get people to laugh we get people to lighten up we get people to close their eyes they become less self conscious and then usually what happens is those healing rhythms just emerge and we will talk about i mean you you do this individually as well as well as drum circles so that could be let's talk about this and let's see the second video with christine the art and heart of drum circles it's beautiful you saw the first part and i will be back with christine drones and just have some fun so enjoy now let's take a look at some different musical forms you can use when you're facilitating your drum circles the former really creates shape in the music of what can otherwise be a kind of chaotic jamming experience and when you create that shape it's like a circle like a story it has a beginning a middle and an end so let's take a look at some different forms as you can see layering in begins with one person starting the beat and then add in people one by one  and the drum circle you can just reverse and use layering this way you and your circle the way you began creating a beautiful book and to your as you can see you can build back to the groove by layering in one person at a time maybe is another very effective form to organize the drum circle we're all familiar with this form in music we listen to our favorite songs we have the first chorus and verse that repeats section it will be an opening rumb when you're ready to wrap it up return to the a section and use your closing rumble this gives the participants a sense of satisfaction and a feeling of accomplishment in being part of a complete musical  experience hi everybody welcome back so i was a beautiful video of the art and heart of drum circles by christine so the picture you're seeing in between us now this unbelievably extraordinary picture is lucy revard a friend of bridging is from canada she's really helping us get a bridging facebook presence of people can go to facebook and you know see all the shows and she's just a really beautiful being so it's an acrylic on canvas it's called heal the world and it's just an extraordinary piece so again anybody's interest in the art project you know have to be a professional or it's just the intention of love the intention of collaboration a new original piece based on the thing bridging heaven and earth as well so we were talking in the break about like how do you see drumming i'm you know that we talk that you know your intention is to heal the heart and go to the root to you know wherever you go that there are going to be issues and problems and things happening but how do you get to the root of the problem the heart of the problem that disconnect about that well i think that's such a great question because ultimately we we have we see a lot of ideas that are sold in the marketplace that sort of put a band aid on things and we want lasting change you wan transformation and what i find is bringing music into these places you tap the heart immediately when i ask people have you ever gotten goosebumps from hearing music what do you think people say  this universally yes andrew has an overlong cried because you heard a certain song just at the moment you needed to hear it you know and there's great stories of people driving in their car in their having a crisis and then that song comes on the radio that reminds them of someone that passed and they just know their presence is there and i think that's how we heal the heart we help people remember the heart first of all we remind through the music through the freeing feeling and often people cry because they've been reunited it's actually called the united reunion grief there's a psychological term for this and so there's tears happening on the planet because we are all reuniting with the soulful level of lifestyle and i think the next thing is how do we share our hearts and that's healing the community so healing happens individually and collectively and as i was telling you in the break i mean if it plays in iraq and i feel like this can happen anywhere this needs to happen you know that it was with some holocaust survivors you just yes i just took drumming to the holocaust survivors and you know it's not to say it was a drum circle because it wasn't a recreational drum circle we're getting to the point where we can't just say drum circle like yoga there's an adjective what kind of yoga do you do well i do this or i do that well we brought a healing health rhythms drum circle to the holocaust survivors and it was a remarkable experience and it is really where healing takes place is from the heart through spirit through community a researcher once asked the question what it what is needed for healing to happen and they found it was two things number one a sense of control and a sense of support so what i do with the drama is help people find their beat you know we suggest a rhythm and then we always say now make up your own you know get into it close your eyes and see what shows up and there's a sense of so support so i think that there's many healing elements imbedded in the drama it's also good exercise you know i mean there's a whole obesity problem in america right now and when we drive we're actually using our upper body we're burning calories so i've seen people in rehabilitation in wheelchairs it's the only exercise they can achieve you know is to drum and what a fun way to get a workout so it's really beautiful that drumming can exist in a paradigm of joy of creation of creativity and still have all these great health benefits for individuals and for groups only talking earlier there's no right rhythm there's no right or only even though there are certain techniques that everyone has a particular harmonious be at that moment so it's sagal right well a great exercise that anyone can do is when you come home from a difficult day at work or wherever you've been just let yourself sit down with a drum and tap out how you feel and through the ice a principle we always start where the person is and then module eight that so i let people start you know i am pissed i had a horrible day you know i don't think of any better way of saying the drill in perhaps and you say it you release it and then that can be transformed to the next rhythm that emerges the idea was that we put together with the healing drum kit and maybe we can try some of that technique even here at the show it brings in heaven and earth is to really give people some sample rhythms and to correlate in tension and what i find personally in my work with people is the drum is an amplifier it helps us manifest our intentions so i want to take you know heaven and earth and make it into a rhythm and make it into a song and i want to sing it because when i come from that vibration of love and beauty and creativity i feel that it amplifies that intention so i think people that want to change their life take the sentence that an affirmation of mine or whatever you want to call it make that sentence for yourself sing in the shower dr sounds true was really remarkable that they put this together it's the first drum ever sold in grocery stores well and it's sold borders books in the religion section well so basically what i have here is three different types of rhythms the rhythms of life spirit and the world because rhythm begin this in our bodies rhythms of heartbeat breathing laughing skipping dancing and resting the rhythms of spirit which has to do with emotional states transformation empowerment release relaxation and rhythms from the world because it's really beautiful how many rhythm cultures there are all over the planet so people can learn you know take a much sooner rhythms of the buddhist tradition in japan they can learn i you a middle eastern belly dancing rhythm it's great to learn those rhythms it's beautiful that these cultures are sharing those and we live in this time where this this planet is a drug you know and we're connecting in these rumba is a group of music and dance styles born out of a mix of african dancing in spanish poetry and song so it's a bridge from the united and it's one variation it's popular for dancing so imagine yourself on a hot drum a pillow however right in every card we start with the intention intention is to connect with this powerful latin spanish african bridge rhythm that's the intention the second thing is how you hold your dr and i was picking an angel card just on my way out the door i thought i'm just going to see you know what angel is coming with me to this class and i couldn't separate these two into cards and i said geez i'm trying why are these stuck together and it was and healing well and i said ok i get the message you know we think healing has to be this heavy we have a life has to be a learning that's right or growth has to be right and no it's not really like that play and there's a reason we say we play music you know we talk about you know play work you know to do something or you know it's childlike you know not childish but childlike so and i think when you visit other countries to work song people play rhythms while they're working because it transforms work into play you know it transforms work into music so the rhythm of playfulness is an invitation to be like a child being on pots and pans while laughing with joy there's no right or wrong just the adventure of exploring so the key again is the intention first of all step one is what's intention is for playfulness so you can think about something in your life and anybody who's watching this can do this is while that feels heavy that feel stuck that you need to bring some light and freedom into it and secondly it's how you hold the drama in this card says you should hold the drum upside down backwards or whatever oh or what if this is what i play for i so just so you can play the drum s ok and that's why it was fun when i studied people and i found that it takes about three minutes to really fall into a rhythm so sometimes we give up on ourselves and it's good to let it go for a little while so i want to do one more rhythm this is a rhythm that i'm going to pick because we're on the show that's about bridging heaven and earth and i think what you've taught me today alan and really right and what i love about that is you're helping us remember that what we look at and what we listen to is really the environment we want to create for our own transformation right so paying attention to that but what i've learned from you today amongst many other things is that the heart is part heart so that it vibration comes through a drum this way so for example i study with the lakota people they hold the drone like this if they're sending the energy to the beloved because the ration goes down if i'm making a prayer to the above i hold that you're on this way why wouldn't you hold it that way you could see that t this is just a gentle loving algorithm and you can feel it over your body right and you don't want to play the drama of the very center that's called the dead center because it cancels the vibrations you want to play just off center and then i'd like to say let's have a test ok this is another rhythm you i think we should toast the connection bring thank you for bringing the drum here to the awareness of people here and i think we should toast this future that we're birthing through these rhythms today  so all part of humanity's history and it's time to remember that you know it's time to remember you know i think a lot of what's happening is as all the remembrances happening and all the you know we're talking early the new  and they're making a lot more available and instantaneously all over the world so once is this thing gets added in this you know all the pieces get put together i mean everybody all over the planet with an internet connection will be able to hear it vibrate with it and see it so amazingly you know if we're going to the end of this particular so you know really again it's a call to love it's a cold for love if you want any information about christine the d v d the drum kit anything just call me allen eight o five six eight seven two zero five three that's allan you know five six eight seven two zero five three you know we need to come together as as brothers and sisters in this love for this l