Christine Stevens – Awaken Your Healing Rhythms

The drum, one of the most ancient instruments known to humankind, has global roots in the sacred connection to nature, the inner world, and the Divine. You’ll discover how to reconnect with this lineage, and shift your drumming from performance into transformance — remembering rhythm as a sacred healing tool.

Whether we find ourselves integrating higher frequencies and seeking the grounded energy of rhythm, or releasing past emotional energies to be fully present in the now, we’re reclaiming the drum as our partner in transformation.

In this module, you’ll:

• Learn a welcome chant and technique to bless your drum
• Learn 7 healing sounds on the hand drum — and a rhythm pattern to weave the sounds together
• Discover the archetypal meaning of a drum — from its design to its messages for you
• Learn the healing rhythm of release to let go of barriers to embodying your true essence
• Drum rhythmic affirmations to connect with the ancient lineage of healing rhythms
• Experience a daily practice that greets the day with rhythm

There are three keys to rhythmic healing that date back thousands of years. These elements appear in spiritual traditions as time-tested tools that reconnect us with ourselves, our community, nature, and the sacred creative energy in the Field.

These tools help us learn rhythms that can anchor our intentions and provide openings for our own personal rhythms to emerge, as we branch out and travel from the universal We consciousness to our own individual expressions.

You’ll:

• Discover the tantric and Native American Lakota roots of shamanic drumming
• Practice the 3 keys to healing rhythms: Position of Body (Asana), Sound of Expression (Mudra), and Energy of Intention (Rasa)
• Discover how to embody your personal power through rhythms on 2 different hand drums
• Learn The Tree Method of Healing Rhythms — from the root rhythm to branching out
• Discover how to bring your intentions to fruition using the Medicine Wheel of Percussion, and its four directions of sound, to support your personal journey

Modern science has now documented the healing benefits of drumming in the growing field of psychoneuroimmunology. Benefits include boosted immune system function, increased cytokine activity and neural plasticity, and reduced inflammation, depression, burnout, anxiety, and stress.

From science to spirituality, the drum becomes a tool to access your personal joy as you learn healing rhythms and become empowered to compose your own. You’ll learn these for yourself, but also as a tool for working with clients, groups, and communities.

You’ll:

• Discover 3 ways to play the Heartbeat Rhythm Anchor to invoke heart-centered consciousness
• Learn the 4 healing rhythms of transformation, laughing, vitality, and resting
• Create, practice, and share your own healing rhythms, incorporating a personal intention for your healing journey
• Ask yourself, “What does happiness sound like?” and “What is your personal rhythm of radiant aliveness?”

When we close our eyes and use creative visualization, science shows us that our nervous systems respond as if the images are real. We can literally flood our mind with our own virtual reality — and in this module, we’ll accompany this phenomenon with the rhythms of the drum.

From the story of the earliest shamans who journeyed through drumming into the Upper and Lower worlds to the modern science of using guided imagery to help heal health issues, you’ll learn how to accompany yourself or others through rhythmic healing.

You’ll:

• Experience 2 guided-imagery journeys, filmed live in beautiful natural settings
• Discover rhythmic tools for an inner journey into the heartbeat
• Practice guided-imagery drumming to remember and reclaim the ancient drummer within you

As empathic, creative souls, we are often impacted by challenging energies in the world around us — and on our own personal path, we encounter pain, trauma, or grief.

In this module, you’ll explore how you express, release, and learn from these experiences, without holding the emotions they trigger in your body. From the ancient mythology of the hero’s journey to the modern science of brain research, you’ll use drumming to face, heal, and transform these emotional states.

You’ll:

• Learn a practice of shadow drumming as a tool of emotional expression, healing trauma, and releasing pain
• Discover the ancient myth of Inanna as a guide to healing rhythms that can bring you into the breath of life and the water of life through sound
• Learn to modulate your emotions, using tempo and volume to find “middle spaces” between emotional patterns of flood or ignore

Drumming is well established as a tool for healing, spiritual awakening, connecting with nature, and community celebration. Around the world, “rhythmic cultures” radiate vibrant aliveness, preserved in a time of technology and addiction to electronics and screens.

We can tap into this ancient root of rhythm to celebrate, dance, mourn, and connect with our global community. You’ll learn specific world rhythms and expand your focus from Me to We. You’ll discover what ancient cultures knew are inherent in these potent rhythms — an easily accessible means for remembering and activating your rhythmic DNA and joining the Rhythmic Symphony of Transformation.

During this session, you’ll:

• Learn 5 world rhythms: Aztec, Brazilian, Japanese, Afro-Cuban, and Middle Eastern beats
• Be guided by an all-star drum ensemble, filmed live at The Shift Network media center, featuring guest percussionists Kim Atkinson, the founder of Pulse Wave and master drummer… and Patricia Hatfield, the founder of Harmony Drum Circles and facilitator of healing drum programs
• Discover the medicine of ensemble rhythms and activate your global groove

In the sacred Indian language of Sanskrit, the term sva rasa means energy or essence. In the field of sound and rhythm, we enter the inner discovery of our essence, our rhythmic signature, that grounds and anchors our truth. It is a nameless name.

We are all unique beings, unique as each drum, each soul. Through a guided practice of deep listening, you’ll claim a beat that is your own unique centering beat, which can ignite your own true essence.

You’ll:

• Be inspired by Christine’s story of rhythmic awakening and personal rhythmic discovery
• Learn a practice to channel your unique signature rhythm using the 4 elements of rhythm — and listen to what it’s saying to you
• Review your rhythmic signature, your daily practice, and your healing rhythms for your life — and perhaps for your work
• Cultivate a sense of closure by drumming the Sanskrit chant, May All Beings Be Happy and Free, as an offering of sound healing to the world

You’ll receive Christine’s complete album Drumming Up Spirit, which is a multicultural prayer through drumming and chant. The tracks will take you on a journey with spiritual chants and rhythms for devotional drumming, uplifting spirit, sacred singing, and community drum circles.

An equinox is commonly regarded as the instant of time when the plane (extended indefinitely in all directions) of Earth’s equator passes through the center of the sun. This occurs twice each year: around March 20 and September 23. In other words, it is the moment at which the center of the visible sun is directly above the equator.

In this video teaching based upon Christine’s Healing Drum Learning Program from Sounds True, you’ll learn four healing rhythms in a guided practice for body, mind, and spirit. No prior music experience is necessary. These rhythms can also be used for drum circles, classrooms, and yoga studios.