Why does drumming reduce stress?

Stress.…. That’s a word that hides a lot of different states of mind and situations… You can be stressed because of the deadline at work, or waiting to hear back from a job interview, or because your child has an undiagnosed health condition… or because…. well…. you don’t exactly know why, but you feel stressed out pretty much all the time. Your body is tensed, sometimes it can lead to a deeper physical issue, leading you to look for stress management solutions and stress-relief methods. In my case, I know I have a lot of tensions in my shoulders on an “ongoing basis”, but when I am really stressed out, I feel it on my sternum, as a heavy weight that never lifts. When it wasn’t lifting away even during the weekends (way back in 2020, when I had a corporate job!) I felt something was decidely wrong with me and I took action. Sadly I didn’t know about drumming back then…. But frist, let’s go back to the mechanism of stress. Well they are complex and I am not going to go into too much details. I am just going to highlight the different states our brains can be in. The brain waves – the different frequencies within the brain- can be measured by an electroencephalograph. A frequency is the number of times a wave repeats itself within a second. It can be compared to the radio frequencies we tune in to listen to music or radio programs. The brainwaves have usually been described in terms of frequency bands: 

• Gamma (greater than 30Hz) – acute mental activity, analysis, maths, planning, altertness
• Beta (13-30Hz) – thinking, aware of self & surroundings, active but not agitated, our usual state in daily life
• Alpha (8-12 Hz) – sense of calmness, relaxed, meditative state
• Theta (4-8 Hz) – between wakefulness and sleep, daydreaming, intuitive state, normal in awake state in children under 13 year-old
• Delta (less than 4 Hz) – deep dreamless sleep, or trance states

When stress kicks in, we go into “alertness and agitated state”, i.e. high brain frequencies, and find it hard to “relax” into lower brain frequencies. Enter sound healing. Repetitive drumming beats, at a certain rythm (4 beats per second) brings the brain into theta state, inducing a state where it’s not uncommon to get visions, messages or very clear intuitive messages. It feels very grounding as well. Stress HAS to be relased – at least momentarily, as the brain’s waves synchronise with the drum beats and go down in frequency. That’s why drumming or listening to drumming at certain pace is such a powerful stress-release method. It hacks the brain in a nice way and leaves you feeling peaceful and relaxed. Let me know if that’s something you ever experienced in your life?