Christine Stevens – Drumming & Sound Healing

Modern science is demonstrating what Indigenous cultures practiced and knew; that sound is an essential tool for cultivating emotional release, relationship building, healing, and spirituality.

In this opening session, you’ll experience sounds aligned with the music medicine wheel and become aware of your own inner tuning with the four elements of rhythm, melody, harmony and silence — correlated with body, mind, heart, and soul.

The wheel is an ancient form of wholeness that appears as the mandala for Tibetan Buddhism, the medicine wheel for First Nations People, and the Celtic Tree of Life for Druidic cultures. We will experience the four elements of sound and how they correlate with nature’s elements — Earth (rhythm), Water (harmony), Fire (melody), and Air (silence).

In this session, you’ll:

• Experience a sound bath for purification, release, and healing
• Learn leading-edge science that documents how sound impacts the brain, the immune system, and the brain’s pleasure system
• Feel how rhythm, flute, silence and song offer self-healing
• Identify the instrument that is most resonant to your needs
• Discover your personal medicinal music — and awaken your own inner music

We are incubated in rhythm. Your mother’s heartbeat was your first concert in the womb. Rhythm reaches the inner heartbeat that is the drum within us all, a sound felt and heard from a time before birth. Rhythm is everyone’s homeland. Your body is wired for rhythm. You are a walking, talking, ticking, tocking polyrhythm. Rhythm calls the body to dance and the tribe to gather. The unstoppable drum plays, and the dance goes on.

The drum shows up when people are transforming because drumming is an evolutionary driver. The Hindu deity Shiva, lord of the dance, holds a drum. Scientific studies have shown that the impact of just one hour of drumming on the immune system can even reverse stress-related genomic codes.

In this session, you’ll:

• Learn a drum massage for full-body healing
• Explore the principle of entrainment — and how it operates in your body and sonic field
• Learn to create rhythm using drums and body percussion
• Explore the intersection of rhythm and silence for expansion and meditation
• Invoke the element of Earth to stay in rhythm with the natural cycles

The Lakota Nation carries a musical creation story that highlights the spiritual journey of melody. They say “First Born emerged from quivering mud to the rhythm of his own heart. Afterwards, man learned to use this rhythm for making songs. Certain ones discovered the true power in song; the power for making spiritual contact.”

From Krishna’s flute to the Native American flute, the magnetic energy of a serenade calls a longing heart into the chamber of the Beloved.

Like power animals, we all have power songs that strengthen, transform and inspire us. We are moved by melodies that pluck our heartstrings. We all have an innate songwriting instinct — childhood development studies show that all children make up songs around age two, without ever being taught. And in the principle of sonic alchemy, we can transmute emotions and literally take a sad song and make it better.

In this session, you’ll:

• Experience a personal power song practice
• Awaken your voice through the 4 keys of song
• Discover the true nature of the pentatonic scale, where there are no wrong notes
• Design your own way of greeting the day to anchor gratitude, peace, and harmony
• Discover the bhakti of call-and-response chanting in kirtan style
• Learn to turn a favorite poem into song in the Radiance Sutra Jam style

Life wants to harmonize! Just as melody helps us find our individual voice, harmony helps us discover the power of togetherness — from me to we. We are all wired for resonance in the principle of sympathetic vibration, in which a guitar string on one instrument resonates an unstruck note on another instrument.

Science is now finding how “mirror neurons” demonstrate how much we are wired for connection. Worldwide studies of choral singers demonstrate that they experience greater health, better mood states, and a sense of belonging from singing together on a regular basis, which is something being embraced in the UK Ministry of Health’s “social prescribing.”

The Hindu deity Saraswati, goddess of audible arts, comes from a river and embodies the divine element of harmony and water. We literally flow together into duets with nature and friends as we experience the music bridge, transcending language barriers and leading to the heightened spiritual state of unity consciousness.

In this session, you’ll:

• Discover what instruments reach your soul — and give you “soul bumps” like goose bumps
• Learn a practice to harmonize with nature
• Learn a practice to be in harmony with all of your relations
• Experience the music bridge
• Experience the thumb piano and strumstick — easy instruments of harmony
• Create a global ensemble for transformation using zoom

It is said that before there is sound, there is silence. The Lakota Nation have a word for the silence that originates all sound: skan-skan wakan. The musical term “rest” is a metaphor for the powerful practice of resting, making space between the notes of your life. Silence gives music space to breathe, and gives listeners time to digest, upload, and integrate beauty.

The four types of musical silence help us track the space between sound and incorporate the principle of resting for integration and meditation. Ironically, a listening study showed that the space between music offered the most impact in terms of heart measures of relaxation. The Buddha best represents the element of stillness and air — the breath that creates meditation and mindfulness.

In this session, you’ll:

• Learn how to play a singing bowl
• Be given tips on practicing silence
• Experience a guided meditation on listening to Nature and the element of air
• Discover tools for cultivating inner silence — the neuroscience of quietude

St. Francis of Assisi said, “Make me an instrument.” Now that we’ve experienced the four elements of sound healing, we’ll step into the medicine wheel mandala for our personal healing and embodiment — becoming music. What is your pitch, your tempo, your vibration, your timbre? What is the music you are here to play? Your inner music is a place of rejuvenation, a “muse” of inspiration, helping you discover the creative force within you.

Scientific studies demonstrate two key principles for activating your inner music, based on MRI brain studies of jazz musicians. The first is permission, not perfection. The second is creativity; not complexity. We will explore the principle of resonance and how to bring your core into attunement — body, mind, heart, and soul.

In this session, you’ll:

• Experience the healing benefits of the 4 elements of music within your inner world
• Join a toning practice with the seed syllable OHM, the roar of joy that set the world in motion
• Understand how to use the wheel for personal healing
• Experience how it feels to sit with your own rhythm, melody, harmony, and silence
• Discover the sounds of the inner realms
• Be inspired to make your own personal sound-healing practice

Music is the global language, a tool for planetary transformation ushering in a time of harmony in our new co-created world. Richard Rudd’s “Gene Keys” predicts three stages of humanity’s awakening sequence; from the Harmonic Convergence in the ’80s, to the second stage of the Melodic Resonance in 2012, to the upcoming stage known as the Rhythmic Symphony.

In the movie 10 Questions for the Dalai Lama, His Holiness is asked what we can do to create peace. With a huge smile on his face, the Dalai Lama says, “more music festivals.”

In this session, you’ll:

• Discover the balance of inner and outer music
• Establish your practice of becoming shamans of a new consciousness
• Explore a menu of musical service ideas — knowing what is yours to do
• Understand how to become the highest practitioners of sound healing
• Discover ceremonies, songs, and rhythms for nature and the planet

Learn cutting-edge science from the fields of neuroscience and psychoimmunology that support the ancient use of sound healing and music-making. Join internationally acclaimed author and music therapist Christine Stevens in this video teaching for spirituality, radiant health, and wholeness.

Awaken Your Inner Music is a guided audio practice in the four healing elements of music for self-tuning and sound healing. No prior musical experience necessary. You can tap along, dance, move, breathe, and rest.

This audio track includes 4 components:

• Rhythm for the body featuring frame drum meditation
• Melody for the heart featuring Native American flute
• Harmony for the soul featuring strumstick and voice
• Silence for the mind featuring singing bowls, chimes, and quietude

This excerpt sets the tone of an ancient philosophy of healing sound, brought forward into today’s holistic health needs. Be inspired with the roots of sound healing and the growing trend of science documenting what ancient culture have always known, that sound is a speedy, effective, non-invasive, sacred tool of self-care and healing.

Your bonus ebook excerpt includes:

• Chapter 1: Sound Check
• Chapter 2: The Medicine of Music

Seven 90-Minute Recorded Class Sessions With Christine Stevens

Experience a rare opportunity to learn from author, speaker, drummer, and music therapist Christine Stevens — from the comfort of your own home. Each class session includes a video teaching and guides you to discover specific skills and abilities to experience sonic alchemy as you receive and create sound’s healing vibrations.

Seven PDF Transcripts of Class Sessions

In addition to the high-quality videos and MP3 audios, you’ll also receive the entire class transcription in PDF format. You can then review, print, and highlight the most important insights and practices you were given.

Exercises and Questions for Each Lesson

Between class sessions, you’ll have the option of completing related exercises, practicing new tools, and answering questions to accelerate your learning and integrate each lesson.

The Drumming & Sound Healing Bonus Collection

• 4 Keys to Music for Wellness
  Video Teaching From Christine Stevens
• Awaken Your Inner Music
  Guided Audio Practice From Christine Stevens
• Music Medicine
  Ebook Excerpt by Christine Stevens, From Sounds True, 2012

About Author:

Christine Stevens is an internationally acclaimed speaker, author, drummer, and music therapist. Holding master’s degrees in both social work and music therapy, Christine inspires people all over the world with her message that music promotes holistic health