This guide will teach you how to perform your own drumming ceremony. Traditionally, drumming ceremonies are meant to facilitate a kind of journey within yourself in order to know yourself more deeply, on a subconscious level.
A few notes before you begin:
- Before listening to the drumming ceremony, I recommend that you set an intention. If you are new to this practice, you might ask to meet a spiritual guide or an animal totem as your intention. Those that have done this practice many times may request to meet with that same guide to help with a current life challenge.
- You should be prepared after you take this journey to create something. This can be writing in a journal, drawing, painting, or any other expressive art that you prefer. Early in my own personal practice, I used the concept of a mandala, which is something that Carl Jung used in his practice, as what I chose to create in order to tap into unconscious content that could then be interpreted with a guide.
- I would also recommend consulting the Medicine ANIMAL CARD BOOK AND DECK before your journey. Perhaps pull a card before listening to the drumming ceremony. This book is a great resource and I have used it for the majority of my career as a transpersonal psychologist.
What will the drumming journey be like?
The journey itself is not unlike sleep and you may see visuals like you would in a dream. Also, you may not. Whatever your learning style may be—visual, auditory, kinesthetic—that is likely how you will experience guidance during the journey. In my early training, I was very kinesthetic and did not see any visions or hear any auditory guidance, but I absolutely felt guided and helped by the process. It is helpful not to have expectations and just embrace the process. Enjoy the journey, not the destination.
There will be no singing or talking during the journey, just drumming. Participating in the drumming journey is a practice of leaving the construct of time and space in order to tap into something that is what the shamanic practitioner would call non-ordinary reality. The way that we enter into non-ordinary reality is through the beat of the drum.
What you will notice in the drumming journey that I have created for you is that the rhythm I make will start out much like a heartbeat and then the drumming will build in speed and will seem to sound offbeat. This is intentional. It is designed to allow the mental process to relax.
One of the goals of this practice is to not think clearly but to receive intuitive information. I have created the sacred space for the drumming journey you will be listening to:
When I created the journey, I did so while holding the intention that what is only for your highest and best good will be received.
How to take your drumming journey:
- Now that you are ready to take the journey, find a comfortable seat or lie down. Most of the time when I do journeys, I encourage people to lie down. This facilitates that dream-like state.
- Follow along with the drumming journey by listening. You can use your own drum if you choose to and play at the same time I am, but I prefer to listen to someone drumming, and I hope you will give that a try so that you can deepen into the experience. A rattle can also be used. If you prefer the sound of a rattle over a drum you can use that. This specific journey will last 20 minutes, and it will begin with four beats of the drum that will call you into the relaxed state to prepare you to take your journey.
- Visualize your journey. As you begin to listen to the sound of the drum, I recommend imagining that you are sitting or standing next to a very large tree, knowing that the roots of this tree reach far into the earth. Imagine that you are traveling through the tree trunk and roots to the underworld, which is where the animal totems live.
In the shamanic tradition, there are three realms that can be traveled to: the lower world, the upper world and the middle world. The middle world is where we live in our day-to-day consciousness. The lower world and upper world match the ideas that there is a subconsciousness and a super-consciousness.
You may recognize this as a Freudian concept. In transpersonal theory, it is called pre-personal, personal, and transpersonal. The basic understanding of these realms of consciousness is that we are made up of a subconscious or unconscious. This is not your everyday thinking (consciousness), but it does drive your conscious behavior. Your subconscious can be things that you have experienced in the past that are not in your conscious awareness. In my work with clients, we often explore past lives, and it can be that as well. Bringing content from the subconscious into conscious awareness can often bring about positive change. The super-consciousness is what we typically think of as spiritual, beyond the construct of the physical self, or transpersonal. All of these realms of consciousness that are not physical are non-physical, or in other words, meta-physical.
- Connect with an animal totem and let the journey guide you. As you enter the lower world, I encourage you to connect with an animal totem or to feel the presence of a helper. Allow the drumbeat to redirect conscious thought into your imagination, or creative thought. Enjoy this process of letting go and follow the beat of the drum. The drum will call you back when it is time to return to ordinary consciousness. The disharmonious beat will stop and there will be four beats of the drum that will encourage you to come back from where you have journeyed in your own time.
- Receive your guidance. After this, the drum will beat for approximately five more minutes, and that will allow you time to integrate the information you have received. If you feel as though you did not receive any information, trust me…you did. Everyone receives guidance on their own time. This information can show up in your dreams later, or even in your waking time as synchronicity in the following days.
Create, or share your experience with others. Now is the time to journal or create art that you are drawn to create that speaks to the experience you had on your journey. Oftentimes, I have done this journey as a group, and the individual group members will share what they experienced during their journey. You might do this with some friends or fellow travelers where you take the drumming journey together at an agreed upon time over Zoom and then discuss it when you are done. Again, journeying is like dreaming, and what you experience during your journey may help another, and someone else’s journey may help you.
