In this video, I play a 20″ deerskin frame drum with a soft beater at 3.5 beats per second for 20 minutes to facilitate a traditional shamanic journey.
In this video, I play my Gonga drum at 7 beats-per-second to create calm. This tempo results in a more meditative calm than the regular 8 beats-per-second pace I use for my clinical REI music.
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.
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.
