Speaker 1: 0:05

Christine, thank you for joining me on. We Woke Up Like this. I am so excited to talk to you today about awakening and drumming and rhythm and music and everything that is totally in your wheelhouse and zone of genius.

Speaker 2: 0:20

Thank you for having me. I'm excited too because you are, you know, you bring this spiritual perspective and sound and music. And you, from the minute I met you and you were like, oh, by the way, yeah, I go to sacred sites and sing music. I was't know why.

Speaker 1: 0:35

I have never been there and my instructions are to just go completely on intuition and see what happens. So we will see. But yes, I am, and I still love to. It's definitely, hands down, one of my favorite things to go and do. So yeah, thank you.

Speaker 1: 1:00

Well, I wanted to start this conversation off, because I have my notebook here dated 14th 2023. I went and did a first time that I wanted to go really learn drumming, being so called to the drum and I went and learned from you in Sedona and this is something I wrote down that you said, which, of course, it's hilarious given what you just said. That, of course, it's hilarious given what you just said, that, of course, this is what I wrote down. And I said sound this is what you said. Sound is a spiritual path and it's one of the oldest spiritual drumming enlivens the cells of the body and one hour of drumming changes your cellular biology and I really loved that. So would you care to elaborate on that, christine?

Speaker 2: 1:43

Well, this moment, this day that we're having this conversation for your series. I woke up like this is the day of Hazrat Atni Khan's Urz, and he is the author of the Music of Life, a Sufi master who came to the West and wrote so exquisitely about the spiritual path through sound, through music. And the other thing I would say is absolutely beautiful that in your sharing you just combine the sacred and the science. So we have all this history. Yesterday was Saraswati Day, the goddess of the audible arts, and I've always been a spiritual seeker, a spiritual person. I spent a lot of years at Agape. We were part of the drum ministry there. I've spent a lot of years with the Lakota learning to sing and be in ceremonies, with prayer songs in Sweat Lodge and Yipi ceremonies and doing a humblage of Vision Quest. So in all of that, then here came the science, with Dr Barry Bittman and my time at Remo to, I mean, pretty stunning result to discover that blood samples before and after an hour of group drumming with non-drummers Okay, these were people in Pennsylvania who were just paid to come to this study and in that hour we were able to, with a specific protocol, modulate biology in a direction against stress to reduce stress on a cellular biology. So that's very wasn't part of that study, but Dr Barry Bittman did that with Remo and published that in 2000 in the Journal of Alternative Medicine and that study really launched a series of other follow-up studies on burnout and nurses and continuing to find more and more data that supports the use of the drum, which is really old.

Speaker 2: 3:44

I mean, the shamans carry the drums and I was just looking for my drum and I was thinking about how Babatunde Oetunji, the Nigerian drum master, said that when there is a drum in every home, the planet will be at peace and people will be happy. I'm just going to turn on my original sound so I can just play this for you. It sounds really good being here in the desert and I bought this drum before I knew I was a drummer because I was told I didn't have rhythm in college in music therapy and I found this drum and I just bought it and maybe people listening have experienced that moment of buying an instrument even without knowing. But I really believe in all the instruments. The drum shows up when people are transforming and I've seen it over and over again people that are in transitions, post-menopausal women, women who are just claiming their voice, all people, not just women, men, just people, all people just coming and finding this simplicity. I can play and really the spiritual path is the same. You know the spiritual path is I have to participate in it. You know I'm I'm not one of those people that just reads the prayer book. I want to be part of the discovery, the experiencing of the path and witnessing my own transformation.

Speaker 2: 5:15

And what I love is carrying the drum, as you do in the sacred sites. I carry it into nature, I take it with me on a hike, I take it with me to sit in the morning, to stand in the morning and face east and play it. So simple, so simple. These are really ancient practices and you don't have to be Lakota to do this, you don't. You know this is human. My teachers, I'm always asking permission to Uncle Manny Eagle, elk Council, pipe Sandoval, who's my adopted uncle and is Navajo, and I ask people a lot of times is it okay, do I have permission? Of course, you're human. You should get up and face east and play your drum, and I think it's really how we wake up, like this is just this journey of why is it that music and musical instruments and sound healing are showing up for people like you that are at a certain frequency, or maybe we would say awakening in the awakening process.

Speaker 2: 6:17

Why does it show up for them? Because at some point, on the edge of words, come sound and at some point we move beyond the language realm. This whatever, three-dimensional, five-dimensional, I don't know. You would know, but in that time of sound, sound is cosmic. Sound is Everything from the big bang to the stars as they shine. So we feel that at the edge of what I can say to the divine, comes sound, comes chant, comes the voice, and these are our biological instruments. We don't have to go to college for them. Sadly, we're told we don't have it, which is a big lie. Everyone who has a heartbeat has rhythm. Everyone who can talk can sing. No, we're told we don't have it, which is a big lie. Everyone who has a heartbeat has rhythm. Everyone who can talk can sing. Now, everyone who can walk can dance. There's a higher level of being human and that's where these arts come in.

Speaker 1: 7:14

And you this is the spiritual path and this is. This is what I love about the drum especially, and I was very surprised when the drum called me because it was something that I kind of had a resistance toward, in feeling like it was a you know, in my ignorance and before in my my mental ignorance. I should say that I was very much wrapped up in my head and trying to explain everything purely through science. I was one of those very 3d materialism If it can't be explained, it doesn't exist kind of people which is really kind of silly and ridiculous, considering I've had nothing but a lifetime of mystical experiences. So I think something with me was trying to explain them. But it wasn't until the drum called me and I remember picking up my first drum and I was kind of surprised that I wanted it and I could feel it wanted me and I had no idea how to play it. But I knew that I wanted to learn.

Speaker 1: 8:13

And when I started, just a simple Buffalo drum with a simple creating, a simple rhythm and using my own voice, exactly what you just said, christine, that out beyond that realm of language in the left hemisphere of the brain where I'm trying to explain and be rational and be logical. All of a sudden, the both hemispheres, which you can explain this. I'm sure something happened where both hemispheres started communicating. And I went to this place beyond words, and sounds just started coming out of my mouth that were not a song, it was just. It was more like this deep trusting of this energy that wanted to just arise up and out of my body, set to the rhythm of this drum, and that was really what facilitated.

Speaker 1: 8:54

Honestly, that's really what facilitated. Number one, my deep healing. And number two, opened up my whole body, wholehearted yes to having a spiritual awakening, because I think I was a little bit resistant to it, yeah. So what do you think is happening, or what do you know is happening inside of the brain and the body? And I know that you also have a study that just recently came out about drumming and how powerful is, not only from the mystical point of view and putting us in trance states. But then there's all of the science and so much data behind what's happening.

Speaker 2: 9:27

Yes, well, the study which was done during COVID was looking at reducing pain, stress and anxiety in a 30-minute Zoom sound healing session, and I did this. I performed the sessions and I had two other colleagues that did this for a year. We had a free online sound healing clinic during COVID and we treated people that had COVID or had long haul or lost someone from COVID or had burnout from the workload of COVID. I remember a minister who was just exhausted from doing all these zoom memorials, for example. So we, we had this program. It was very life-changing for me. It grew my compassion, it grew my skills I would say my shamanic sound skills really grew and it made me very convinced that zoom works for healing sessions and that we don't actually need an hour. I I mean a lot can happen in 30 minutes with sound. Especially, what I learned is that eight minutes is key. So I used to say four minutes minimum, you know, to get someone to entrain. But then I noticed that in eight minutes of playing one instrument like the flute or the drum meditatively, people really shifted and people that couldn't find a sense of peace recalibrated back to that energy of I'm breathing better. You know it's a respiratory condition, covid. So that was a great study.

Speaker 2: 10:52

What I think is happening also because I really love this teacher, joan Borschenko, dr Joan Borschenko, she gave a talk in Santa Fe at a conference I was speaking at. It was on spirituality and alcohol and drug and alcohol abuse conference, recovery and spirituality. So she puts up this slide and I mean this blew my socks off. It was like okay, there's two networks of the brain the default network, which is the ego, the past that the, you know, the self-absorbed, ruminating should I have was it the right thing to come and be at this interview today was did I look okay? Did I set up the right? You know, that's that egoic default meaning that's our natural. However, there is then a different network network. Network meaning different activation, more prefrontal areas of the brain on PET scans, and that area is called the experiencing network and this comes from all the Jack Canfield mindful studies and getting brain scans on people that are med present. We're present for the moment Time. An indicator that you're in that network is time feels larger and sometimes you lose time. You're in a flow state and she puts up this slide of tools to get you into this state, which is definitely what I feel humanity's awakening journey is is making that the default right to be less self-absorbed, to be compassionate. So she puts up a slide. You know well, here's some tools to get in this network helping others, being in nature, playing music, and she's she wrote the forward to my book music medicine. We're caught, we're close friends and colleagues and she says you know, like Christine's work, and I'm just in the back row, just you know, yes.

Speaker 2: 12:46

And I went back to my hotel room after that talk and I just cried and I was like flooded with insight because I've traveled. I mean I get emotional saying this now. I mean I've been in Bali, I've been Japan, I've been in places of sacred. Sound is part of lifestyle, ceremonial cultures, you know. And I thought our culture is just amplifying the default network, social media, you know all the self-absorbed thinking, the what do I get? I want me, me, me. And I thought, oh, oh, my god, my culture has socialized me into the default network. I'm not in India, I'm not living in an ashram, so how do I create that network in myself? So you just ask yourself, what in that list do you love? And when I combine music and nature, I get the double aspect of putting myself into that experience.

Speaker 2: 13:43

When I ran the sound healing clinic, I was caring for others during that pandemic and that created that networking of experiencing network.

Speaker 2: 13:55

And once you start noticing this, you will really see the difference. And how do we ever articulate that? Maybe at the end of singing in a sacred space there's a silence that's very reverberant and powerful. That's what's happening. You've just shifted your brain. Your chemistry of your brain is amplifying the present moment. You're experiencing this experience. This is the enlightened brain and we have this in us. We have that network, we have all the systems. It's just a different pathway. Oh, instead of lighting up this part, let's light up this part. Move to the more prefrontal cortex, get that illumination going in my thinking, because the brain is powerful, our minds are powerful.

Speaker 2: 14:38

You know they say it's a great servant and a terrible master. You know they say it's a great servant and a terrible master. So when I notice that when I play music, it definitely takes me there, and especially improvisation. I think that's a big part of what I want to say today is how important it is to be able to let go of what you know and the notes on the page and just like I just picked up the drum and it you know it's improvisation, because it surprises you. I feel like playing that today. What a surprise. Or, you know, I need some energy. You know there's nothing that modulates your mood and your energy like the drum.

Speaker 1: 15:18

Wow, so much you just said there. This is why I I this is why I'm doing this series, that's why I'm doing these talks to help to awaken, to help to awaken people, to help them activate within themselves their own awakening capacity, and that we are wired to awaken. But we've just been operating from this conditioned self where we're constantly in fight or flight, freeze, fawn, whichever one it is that you default to, or combination thereof, and I have found that, working with sound and for me, being an extreme trauma survivor that sound, working with sound and especially with my own voice, I can tell you in the beginning, when I started doing this, christine, I hated my voice. I would say that I hate my voice. I can't even imagine saying such a thing now. But three, this was just three years ago we're talking about, or maybe four years ago it wasn't that long ago that I felt like that. It was such a embodied belief.

Speaker 1: 16:12

I hate my voice and when I started using my voice it, it calmed, it healed my nervous system, so that my mind and I'd already been a meditator. But then I think that what happened was that that calming of the nervous system then activated that experience portal within my mind, and I love that you call it that and I'm wondering if that's the real name of it, like that's exactly what it is. My studio here is. So I say the protocol is saved and it's sound art, voice embodiment exercises, which movement, just intuitive and drumming, and all of it from a place of non-performing and all of it from a place of just really dropping deeply into yourself and trusting that flow. So I'm curious from you when you're doing your, when you're playing your flute and you're I mean, you're such a beautiful flutist as well so when you're playing and you're doing a sound healing, are your sound healings completely intuitively guided? Do you just step into that flow within yourself and trust?

Speaker 2: 17:24

versus improvisational. That's a more I don't know feminine or something about that. It's more mystical to say intuitive maybe, but I really like that languaging of it. You know this language of the brain systems and the mind and the two networks. It's very standardized. You can Google it and read about it and you know, I was just glad to have received that from Joan that day. I still have that slide on the desktop because I mean it was like eight years ago, six years ago, but it was such a stunning aha for me because I do like when science helps you understand the spiritual path in that way and you can also.

Speaker 2: 17:57

The other tip about that is you can really tell when you're falling into the default. And I know when I'm in it and I'm ruminating and I can't sleep and I keep thinking about the past and should I have what I could have? And that's when you can intervene. That's when the music comes in, like the other day I was in one of those ruminations and I went to dance church and I was just what a mood change two hours later. I was like what problem? So you know, stepping into that intervention, one of the things that creates a lot of that ruminating, default network thinking is being alone, so getting out into a social situation, you know, I mean, I am a social worker and the. The whole thing about socializing and they call it your social capital is the more groups you belong to, the happier people are. We're sort of in the west, a little bit more individuality based, but as I travel and I get into these more group mind cultures, like especially japan, very we oriented, place right, the we versus the me, and then you find this feels safer, I feel happier. Somehow I'm not alone. It's all a balance. But it's funny when I hear you say this list it's beautiful, I think about how how simple this is and you compare this to maybe another spiritual path of like heavy dogma and read, memorize and this and that and the other thing, and this is really a path of beauty, of song, of sacred sound. So when I play this this is my branch flute that I use the most for the sound healings that I do live and online, and it's made from a birch tree from Stephen Rensick in Canada and what I do is I have a formula. Of course it's intuitively guided, but generally speaking the healing arc starts here, it travels and it comes back home. So I try to kind of take that into my phrases, to start to travel and come back home. It's called the healing arc. I learned that with Sylvia Nakach when we used to teach together at Shambhala. She's got a great book, free your Voice, and she would teach us that in so many medicine songs she studied she's a world traveler too would have that arc.

Speaker 2: 20:18

The second thing I do is I do a lot of long tones. I really find that I think if you can focus your mind on one note, it just gives the mind the duration right. So the drum is percussive but the flute is a breath instrument, that longing note, and then bring it back down. And I've had to really learn to let there be space between these phrases. And I watched the person on the screen. I could, you know, I could see them take a deep breath and I would wait for their next inhale to play. I mean it's kind of fun that way. And the other thing I do sometimes is I use a name or a mantra. So if I'm doing healing work I might even use your name or just the word healing. Healing is in the now. I mean you're you could give me. Why don't we play a game you give me an affirmation and I or a word or two or something, and I'll show you how I would put that into the flute.

Speaker 1: 21:56

Oh, beautiful, okay, majesty for your own self. Your own, okay, majesty Four. Your own self, your own self-sovereignty, your own self-majesty. Not from an ego point of view, but from your inner spaciousness of self-love.

Speaker 2: 22:30

I love that Majesty I am. I am the majesty of my soul. See, in my mind is I am the majesty of my soul. So I could just play that. It's always good to repeat something, because that's aesthetics, that's beauty when we hear it two, three times. So that's another thing if I I love that now you sing that phrase to me so beautiful.

Speaker 1: 23:14

I closed my eyes and received that. I am the majesty of my soul. My soul, I am the majesty of my soul. I love that. I mean, and that was just such a simple, intuitively guided practice that we just did. That was not any planning whatsoever, and I could feel that so deeply in my body. It's just so beautiful and so powerful. Sound is so powerful and when I wanted to talk to you, we were talking about it's like oh, I really want to have you on this on the podcast, just because, number one, your energy is just so beautiful. You're such an authentic spirit that comes through you and also your wealth of knowledge, and I think it's that same combination of the science and the spiritual that intermingle together. And I really appreciate it because we are wired to awaken, we are wired for sound and inside of our body is an acoustic chambers. Can you tell us how that works?

Speaker 2: 24:30

body is an acoustic chamber. Can you tell us how that works? Well, I really believe that rhythm is the medicine for the body, you know. So when the drum beats, you can't even help but tap along. You know, and I developed this rhythm diagnostic, which is really fun, where I drum and people hold perfectly still and in that moment you feel where the drum is speaking to your body and it's because our bodies are wired for that rhythm and we're so rhythmically deprived. Man, you know, just hearing a drum beat, people go, oh, it's tribal, like, yeah, I want to just sit by a fire and play my drum all day. You know, it's an amazing, restorative, soul retrieving experience.

Speaker 2: 25:10

So the shamans would say, if you were ill, they would ask you when is the last time you drummed? When is the last time you danced? When is the last time you sang? Right, it's like, well, what are you doing in your life? That's creating this milieu, that's welcoming illness. So the best thing I can do is be responsible for that milieu. So that's creating this milieu, that's welcoming illness. So the best thing I can do is be responsible for that milieu. So that's what I feel about the body. That inner chamber is the feeling of being drummed in the body. So easy, so simple pull, it doesn't take big motion, you're just rocking. You know swaying. It's like being in rhythm and I think what pertains to your work and your beautiful title here we Woke Up Like this is the idea that we are evolving.

Speaker 2: 26:26

We probably came to this school called Earth to learn to continue our evolution, so the drum is an evolutionary driver. It's probably what created one theory is that from the apes, the chimpanzees to the humans was beating together in time, moving together in time. So how we can feel that in our own bodies. I'm excited that I have a new drum class this year at Shift Network that is dedicated to rhythms for awakening, because there are patterns.

Speaker 2: 26:58

You know the drum has this deep bass and the higher pitch on the side and there are patterns. Like we want to hear that bass. You know there's patterns. Or if we're in Cuba, where we're not gonna feel that grounded based, you know where things are reversed in the Latin American world. So I've been collecting these rhythms around the world and in running Global Rhythm Sangha, and I really love knowing these rhythms and I want this to be in people's vocabularies. I want people to know how to speak drum, which is the unspoken, but it is a language, so I just think it feels good when you drum. It feels good in your body, as many people said to us when we studied them in COVID in our project. People with long haul that could hardly move said they could feel their cells waking up.

Speaker 1: 28:01

Wow, it's so incredible and it's such a powerful instrument. It's such a powerful tool for awakening and I'm so excited that you're creating this class on the shift network. It's so important I'm going to put a link to it below for people to sign up, because drumming is one of the most. Like you said, it's a simple path. This is. There are simpler ways and, and you know, they do all lead to the same place on the mountain. So it's like well, how do you want to get there? How do you want to get to the place on the mountain that you want to get to? You can take the hard road, if that's what calls you, or you can take a more fun, more simple, language free path, and for me that is really what worked and it certainly has helped me to calm that, that default mode that's constantly overthinking, busy mind thinking, thinking. Christine, how long have you been playing the drum?

Speaker 2: 28:54

I started studying hand percussion after I graduated from Michigan State. I must have been about 21 or so, and that's when I first put my hand on a drum, and that's when the drum that you found, that you showed us that you still have.

Speaker 2: 29:10

Yeah, well, that was a different drum. I was just playing congas at a party, at a drum circle event, and I just went what is this? I had this huge belief that I couldn't play percussion, that I had no rhythm. I really believed that, and so, all of a sudden, three hours went by, like 10 minutes, and I just experienced this incredible connection and love for every person in the room that I'd never met, total strangers, and I just said what is this?

Speaker 1: 29:38

I want to study this, and you also mentioned your rhythm sangha, which I am a member of and I love it. So tell everybody what your rhythm sangha is, that you do.

Speaker 2: 29:46

Well, I started this project six years ago and it's called Global Rhythm Sangha. Sangha is a Sanskrit word for the sacred community and we have people from seven countries. We have a group of people that gather online once a month and we learn a different cultural rhythm every month from a cultural master. So there's no appropriation. We get to meet the teachers on Zoom. You know, I just realized that I had really a blessed decade of my life living in upstate New York at the time where I studied with all these master drummers I mean djembe teachers, west African teachers, you know, africans, egyptians. I met people from the cultures and then I would go to Seattle World Rhythm Festival and study there Same kind of thing. And I thought, now that we have Zoom, can't we create this online? So it's really fun.

Speaker 2: 30:33

I handpick and curate the teachers and bring people together pretty affordably once a month to learn the rhythm and we have a practice call and I'm so glad you're in our community and I really I'm learning from running the program.

Speaker 2: 30:47

I mean, I walk around practicing the rhythms each month and, like this month we're going to learn IU but transfer them from the Middle East and Iran and you know, just so fun to learn them and practice them and then you expand. It's like you know you're learning, kind of like learning a song. But I really have been interested in patterns because patterns like we have sacred geometry, right Patterns everything is a pattern. Everything is math really, essentially and I'm not an astrophysicist or anything and I can't even really understand that field very well. But what I do know from being a botanist is that the perfection of everything has symmetry and that is something that happens in a rhythm mantra and it just repeats and repeats, and repeats. And we do that to get out of the default network. We do spiritual practice to be in the spiritual network, to be in the experiencing network of our brains.

Speaker 1: 31:42

I love that and it's, you know, when we take that practice work that we're doing and I don't even call it practicing because it's like it's my sacred time, it's my, it's my church to go to my church of music every day, my church of sound, and I find that now, when I'm out in real life, like this is what the practice is for is that we can now tap into that self more than the default network when we are out in the world. Do you find that to be true for you also?

Speaker 2: 32:08

Yes, I think the first thing that happens is I become much more of a witness of observing which one I'm in and what triggered me to go there. And I just had a breakthrough. I was performing at a Sufi event a couple of weeks ago with my band and I had my harmonium and we were singing. And I had a breakthrough because, as a performer, it's easy to fall into the ego network because everyone's looking at you and you have that. You know, am I good enough? Do I look right? How's my sound? And all of a sudden, I didn't care about any of that and I experienced this transcendence of the typical mind of the performer and I realized how challenging that is when you are a performer and it's easy to fall into that. Everyone's loving me, right? What a trap. And so because you're just going to get off that stage. So I realized how important it was to transform beyond that and transcend that and just be of service. It isn't really what else are we here to do and just be of service. It isn't really what else are we here to do? We're here to be of service and to feed people, and I feel like sound. Is that nutrition? It's that. It is what feeds people. It feeds me, the other thing that happens. So I notice it in my witness, I'm more and more clear about it, I'm more and more confident that my practices are working because of how I see my day go by and I noticed the music of life which is like so cool. Like the wind just blew when I was walking over here and I've really heard the note of it.

Speaker 2: 33:39

Wow, I think we have to become good listeners as well. There's a lot of urban noise, you know noise pollution, but there's also when you get away from that and you go out in the desert's also when you get away from that and you go out in the desert and you just even in a backyard and you just kind of listen to a bird in the morning. What a thrill. I mean, the whole world is really the natural world is really symphonic and it's beautiful and it's that's where I go. That's what I do to rejuvenate myself is just sit and listen to that natural world. It might be the river flowing by at the Snake River, or snow melting, or you know these beautiful sounds, or even the quiet after the snow and you're on skis and it's just so quiet in the woods. You know, these are things that are so simple and it's just here. We are always trying to teach anything complicated.

Speaker 1: 34:31

I know we're always bathed. If we're paying attention and we're in nature, we're always bathed in this beautiful sound bath that's coming in, and I've had those same experiences of just closing my eyes and listening to the sound of wind rustling through the pine trees and the birds chirping in the distance and somebody cracking on the pines as they're walking, and just those beautiful. They bring you very present, and I feel like that's what all of these experiences are for is to bring us back to presence, because we can only listen right now. And speaking of yeah, speaking of you know how, you know you're operating in the world, though in that your experiences are working, your practices are working because of how you're showing up in the world, and thank you for sharing that awareness of being on stage and catching yourself in that.

Speaker 1: 35:19

I do that too. I mean, we're human, of course we do, and it's like, oh yeah, let me step back into service and out of my worry about how I'm being perceived, and step back into being of service, letting my heart be of service. I know that you have done some really powerful healing and peace work with the drum around the world, with different groups of people. How does the drum unite people and bring peace. That you have seen in your experience.

Speaker 2: 35:47

I think basically it is this common language of the heartbeat of humans. You know, and it doesn't matter if you sing in one scale and you know there's a lot of differences in the global perspective of ethnomusicology. You know very different scales in Iraq than America, or Native American, or you know South American, latin American rhythms, very syncopated, right. But when you get to the drum beat, you know everybody's really can be on the same harmony. You know it can really create that harmony. That's a gift of the drum is that we don't have to tune our instruments to each other. You know, am I in the same key as you? I don't think so. You know you're out of key. We can't play together. But in the drumming it doesn't matter what language. I worked with these in this war zone in Iraq and the people that spoke Arabic or Kurdish or Aramaic or Yazidis, and everybody could speak drum, and actually they were amazed and I also said doom, taka, taka, doom, and they were like wait, that's what we say. Yeah, you know. So I remember one time calling a young man who was in that project and I had a cell phone. That second year I went back to Iraq and I called him. He lived in Halabja and when he answered the phone he said taka taka doom, taka taka, doom, doom. And I said doom doom, taka taka tak. And we just had a conversation like that and I thought, yeah, because when I didn't have a translator we could, absolutely couldn't talk to each other. I mean, like, really, I have I know like three words in Kurdish right, so it wasn't easy.

Speaker 2: 37:23

So I think the thing that's happening now is more and more conflict. You know, I was at the Rotary World Peace Conference a few years ago. People are tracking this global conflict and all the massive numbers of refugees, the human migrations that are happening and the climate change, and it's a very challenging time on the planet. And I'm not a kumbaya person, I'm not like, oh, if we just drum together, there'll be peace. I actually think the path to peace is very individual. I think we have to do our practice and anchor it and at the same time, it really is beautiful to watch a transformation from enemies and I saw this in the war zone from total enemies. That's hatred, and we're talking about years of hatred. You know, going back the ancestors who fought each other, so there's a whole genealogy of war going there To suddenly jamming together and when you play the same music together, you can't help but feel a connection to another person.

Speaker 2: 38:19

It happens through entrainment. It's a human. There's a woman who did a study on that and found that actually, when we beat together, we pulse together. Whether it's dancing or drumming, whatever it is movement together, shared muscular bonding is the language in science. It creates more compassion and kindness, and those have got to be important for changing humanity. Kindness and compassion. The Dalai Lama says my true religion is kindness.

Speaker 2: 38:44

So in our global rhythm sangha, I always feel that that's what happens. Is we meet that person from a different country that might even not even speak our language, and sometimes they don't, and we're trying to learn their rhythms. You know, and something changes and you hear about the news in iran and you feel different because you just met, you know, uh, someone from iran in my class and you're like, oh well, I feel different about that. So it's a matter of, as you asked me about the, the drum for bringing people together, I really didn't think it could work as well as it did. Even I was surprised and I think it is like, potentially, as you say, we're here, we're wired for awakening. I think we're really wired for peace and and there's a desire. When you drum together, you don't want to mess up the beat, you don't want to fight through your drum, you want harmony. Right, it's like being in harmony. So it's a challenging time right now, and it's important to stay present with our own joy and happiness, which is our birthright as well, and finding what works for you.

Speaker 2: 39:51

The tip I have today is something that I did eight years ago that was life-changing for me. I did 40 days of silence and in that 40 days I realized a very small list I wrote it on a sticky note of five or six things that made me so happy that all they took was time. The cost of these things was just my time and I carried that list. It hasn't really changed much. I mean, it was just funny that that that's my list. And talking to you today, I had the insight that maybe that's my list of what creates my network change.

Speaker 2: 40:30

You know, playing music, being in nature, having alone time. Every week I take, every week I take four hours to be alone in nature. I call it my nature, darshan time, and so you've come up with your formula and I've come up with my formula, and it's very individual, so you have to try things. We can't tell you we can say sing drum, you have to try things. We can't tell you we can say sing drum, you have to try things. You even tried something that you had a resistance to with the drum. I mean, that's one of my friends Kendra always says I knew it had big medicine for me because I was so afraid to play it. Exactly, yeah.

Speaker 1: 41:02

Now I know that. Now I know that if I feel a super resistance in my body to something, I'm like, oh, that's the thing I need to go do Because it's my ego, I already know it's that ego that knows it's like, oh no, this is going to shake things up too much. We don't want her to do that. And Christine I just love so much and I really hope that listeners, you take away the message of the path of peace is wired within us. Our paths of kindness are wired within us. The path to joy, the path to presence, where everything is just manageable in the present moment, is available to us and defined what works for you.

Speaker 1: 41:38

Christine has her list of things and it's and you're exactly right too. That's the other thing that's really surprising is that once you find those, find out what the truth of that is 40 days of silence Wow, that's remarkable. I could see how that would distill down to an essence of like here's the five things I really need. That's very powerful and I really sincerely hope that everybody listening find that thing, go try something. Go sign up for Christine's drumming class, her drumming for awakening on the shift network.

Speaker 1: 42:09

I already can tell you right now just from knowing Christine and working with Christine, how incredibly amazing of a human being she is. There's so many people out there that are offering these things go for a walk, go to nature, go to the water, whatever it is that we feel, because right now yeah, it is there's so much tumultuous world events going on right now that it can be very overwhelming. And it is a, it's a, and at the same time, it is an individual responsibility that we individually contribute to the collective. And so when we take responsibility for our part in that, imagine the transformation that can happen with a world full of people taking responsibility for their inner joy, their inner awakening, their inner peace, their inner bliss, their inner kindness, their inner helping. You see somebody in need and you help, and it's not that hard.

Speaker 2: 43:00

No, I love visualizing that. I really love feeling that I see the singing together is important, the drumming together is important. It's how we evolved, so let's keep evolving, let's keep evolving.

Speaker 1: 43:12

Yeah, we don't want to devolve, we want to keep evolving. Christine, do you have any final words of wisdom and then share where people can find you and how they can sign up for everything and anything that you have going on?

Speaker 2: 43:23

I would say that my final word is just so much gratitude for you inviting me and the work it takes that you're producing this and having these deep conversations and you're sharing yourself so beautifully. I really value having met you. What was the year we met One of your years ago? I mean you've really changed in those years.

Speaker 2: 43:44

You've stepped through a lot of challenges public speaking, singing, teaching, putting yourself on the internet. You've stepped through a lot of things that would maybe shut people down and you're a great example of no, I'm going to face those challenges, I'm going to step through those challenges, but you know you have you've done a great job of being a model of stepping out and stepping through and I do believe that the music that you've explored and singing in the frame, drum and singing and that has given you that you know deepest, probably inner transformation, because we know that when we create that music, we are that music. You know I think that's the evolution is, oh, I am an instrument. You know St Francis said it I'm an instrument of peace. So just tuning into that and enjoying your human experience, I mean if we woke up like this, wake up Every day, we wake up Every day, we wake up, enjoy it yeah, enjoy.

Speaker 1: 44:43

And you never know how many days you have on your pearl. I was envisioning days of my life as being like pearls on a necklace, that at the end of the day I'm like I get to string another pearl on my necklace and I really do look at it like that and like I don't know how many more I have. I hope there's hundreds, but I don't know. And so I wake up every day and really say, what can I do? How can I squeeze the juice out of this day and just live this day, even when things are sucky, that there's still something I could find joy in that day. So, and thank you, I really appreciate what you said, christine. Where can people find you and your beautiful work?

Speaker 2: 45:16

Yeah, I have some great free things on my website upbeat drum circles, or you be drum circlescom, and that's where you'll find my free four rhythms of life and three tips for playing the flute, for sound healing a lot of good free gifts. So come, join my global community and be part of this aspect of you know the sound healing world, which is really growing and it's easy to play, so don't let anything, I agree.

Speaker 1: 45:47

Thank you so much for joining me today. I so appreciate your time. Namaste, namaste.