In this video, I play a claypot Udu drum to calm your nervous system. The sound of this drum is much sharper than the soft, rounded tone of the Gonga drum that I most often play, but the rhythms will still calm you.
A recent article in Nature suggests that when someone is experiencing a dissociative state (also known as an Out-of-body experience) the rhythm deep inside their brain is a 3 beat-per-second rhythm. Mind you, the article is based upon a single human subject with a seizure disorder whose brain stimulation implant induced the 3 beat-per-second rhythm at the beginning of the subject’s epileptic seizure. The beginning of a seizure commonly contains an aura— a host of symptoms that can include out-of-body sensations, dizziness, and hallucinations, among other physical symptoms.
But what if a 3-beats-per second tempo could be beneficial for meditation? This is a much slower tempo than the traditional 4 beat-per-second shamanic rhythm used to achieve an altered state of consciousness. In this video, we do an experiment so you can see if a 3 beat-per-second rhythm allows you to achieve a dissociative state or out-of-body experience.
Keep in mind that brainwave entrainment to such a deep state can take time to achieve. Download the track below and try it a few times to see if you are able to have a more profound experience over time.
3 Beat-per-second drumming for an out-of-body experience.
Does this describe you or your child? In this video, I show you how I calm a sensitive sensory system using muted tones and variable drumming rhythms at about 8 beats-per-second.
Download an MP3 of a longer drumming-only file of the performance above. Play this track at a low volume for episodic support.
Conduct an experiment to see if you prefer alpha or theta tempo drumming for your meditations. In this video, I play my gonga drum at 8 beats-per-second to drive your brain into the low end of the alpha state. Then I play rhythms at 5 1/2 beats-per-second to facilitate low-mid theta.
In this video, I play my Gonga drum at about 8 beats per second to focus your brain. Though these rhythms use the same tempo as the Calm for Anxiety rhythms from a recent video, their complex structure will focus your nervous system – a sharp contrast from the musically variable rhythms needed to calm anxiety.
In this video, I play my Gonga drum at about 7 beats-per-second to lift your mood. I draw from ancient drumming rhythms based on ceremonial archetypes used around the world.
This is a classic REI track. It is played at roughly 8 bps (beats per second) and will sink you into an alpha state of consciousness, a relaxed-alert state. Not entirely in 4/4 time, the shifting rhythms and varying time signatures are an intrinsic component of REI content.
In this video, I show beginning drummers how to play a rhythm for calm based on the transcript of my video “Jeff Strong Calms Anxiety with Complex Drumming”. I break down the first rhythm from the transcript (below) to small sections and have you play along with me.
In this video, I walk you through a transcript of the rhythms I played for my video “Jeff Strong Calms Anxiety with Complex Drumming”. I describe my thought process for the composition and explain why the rhythms are not in 4/4 time.
