Mickey Hart Senate Speech

RHYTHM AS A TOOL FOR HEALING AND HEALTH IN THE AGING PROCESS

Good morning. Thank you for inviting me to speak to you on an issue of great
importance to me. This is the issue of how drumming, the rhythmic manipulation of sound, can be used for healing and health. I also would like to express my support for the concept of preventive, rather than crisis medicine,and specifically the role of music therapy as a means of maintaining mental, spiritual and physical health in people of all ages.

I am a professional percussionist. For over 40 years I have lived and played
with rhythm; as an entertainer, as an author, and, always, as a student. Over the
last ten years, I have spent much of my time exploring rhythm and it's affect on
the human body. Why is it so powerful and attractive? I have written on this
subject in my books Drumming at the Edge of Magic and Planet Drum which try
to address these questions. And yet I know that I have barely scratched the
surface, particularly regarding the healing properties of rhythm and music.

Everything that exists in time has a rhythm and a pattern. Our bodies are
multi-dimensional rhythm machines with everything pulsing in synchrony, from
the digesting activity of our intestines to the firing of neurons in the brain.
Within the body the main beat is laid down by the cardiovascular system, the
heart and the lungs. The heart beats between sixty and eighty times per minute
and the lungs fill and empty at about a quarter of that speed, all of which occurs
at an unconscious level. As we age, however, these rhythms can fall out of
synch. And then, suddenly, there is no more important or crucial issue than
regaining that lost rhythm.

What is true for our own bodies is true almost everywhere we look. We are
embedded within a rhythmical universe. Everywhere we see rhythm, patterns
moving through time. It is there in the cycles of the seasons, in the migration of
the birds and animals, in the fruiting and withering of plants, and in the birth,
maturation and death of ourselves. Rhythm is at the very center of our lives. By
acknowledging this fact and acting on it, our potential for preventing illness and
maintaining mental, physical and spiritual well-being is far greater.

As a species, we love to play with rhythm. We deal with it every second of our
lives, right to the end. When the rhythms stop, so do we. And this is where
music becomes important. According to the late ethnomusicologist John
Blacking, music is a mirror that reflects a culture's deepest social and biological
rhythms. It is an externalization of the pulses that remain hidden beneath the
busy-ness of daily life. Blacking believed that a large part of music's power and
pleasure comes from it's ability to reconnect us with the deeper rhythms that we
are not conscious of. And it is the connection with these rhythms that gives
music the power to heal.

Music as humanly organized sound or vibration has played a pivotal role in the
development of our species, beginning with toolmaking. The tool record- all
those delicately chipped arrowheads and choppers- is a dramatic illustration of
our battle to master the subtle body rhythms that any advanced civilization
requires to survive. In order to create the tools that allowed us to move forward
as a species, we learned to scrape, strike, rub, shake and swing in rhythm.
From there, we gathered in groups to sing our songs, to tell our stories, to
dance our dances, all in rhythm. We found that by gathering together in this
way, it reinforced our sense of community and family. The natural extension
was the use of rhythm, and specifically percussion instruments, in healing
ceremonies by traditional medical practitioners.

As modern technology takes us further and further from our natural rhythms,
the use of percussion for healing has greater potential than ever. Today, without
thoroughly understanding it, thousands of people across the country have turned
to drumming as a form of practice like prayer, meditation or the martial arts. It is
a practice that is widely acknowledged to help focus attention and to help people
break free of the boredom and stress of daily life. More importantly, drumming
is a way of approaching and playing with the deeper mysteries of rhythm.

Typically, people gather to drum in drum "circles" with others from the
surrounding community. The drum circle offers equality because there is no
head or tail. It includes people of all ages. The main objective is to share rhythm
and get in tune with each other and themselves. To form a group consciousness.
To entrain and resonate. By entrainment, I mean that a new voice, a collective
voice, emerges from the group as they drum together.

The drummers each bring their own instruments and drum together for about a
half hour. Afterward there is a discussion of issues of importance to the group.
The drumming helps to facilitate this discussion because as they drum the group
forms a common bond. From groups of women drummers, to twelve step
groups like alchoholics anonymous to gatherings of men who are part of the
ever-growing men's movement, drumming is used to open up channels of
communication and foster community and family. While some drum groups
form around a particular issue, others have no agenda whatsoever, except to
allow the members an opportunity to come together, play their instruments and
share rhythm.

Older Americans are largely unfamiliar with this movement and yet these are the
people who could benefit the most. The formation of drum circles among the
elderly should be an integral part of any music therapy program. There is a large
and enthusiastic group of drummers who could be called upon to lead
workshops and make instructional videos to be distributed among the older
population now isolated in nursing homes and retirement communities. It would
be emphasized that the object is not public performance. Because, when we
speak of this type of drumming, we are speaking of a deeper realm in which
there is no better or worse, no modern or primitive, no distinctions at all, but
rather an almost organic compulsion to translate the emotional fact of being alive
into sound, into rhythm, into something you can dance to. Through drum
circles, the aging population could tap into this realm, into these rhythms. The
benefits would be wide-ranging.

First, there would be an immediate reduction in feelings of lonliness and
alienation through interaction with each other and heightened contact with the
outside world. While today many older people spend hours each day sitting in
front of the television, drumming is an activity which would allow them direct
exposure to younger people from the outside community. Whereas verbal
communication can often be difficult among the generations, and in the sickly,
in the drum circle non-verbal communication is the means of relating. Natural
by-products of this are increased self-esteem and the resulting sense of
empowerment, creativity and enhanced ability to focus the mind. Not to mention
just plain fun. This leads to a reduction in stress, while involving the body in a
non-jarring, safe form of exercise that invigorates, energizes and centers.

There is no question of the substantial benefits which could be derived from
increased funding for the study and research of music therapy. This funding is
critical to explore the most effective ways to utilize the techniques described here
and by the other speakers. Billions of dollars are spent each year for crisis care,
while little energy is spent trying to figure out how to avoid the crisis to begin
with. A shift from crisis to preventive medicine needs to occur. The introduction
of drum circles and percussion instruments into the older American population is
a new medicine for a new culture. It was a good idea 10,000 years ago, and it is
a good idea today.