I Love Drum Circle!!

The heartbeat of the drum.

The connections.

The synchronicity.

The movement of the energy.

For these reasons and more, I have fallen in love with participating in drum circles.

I attended my first drum circle in January of 2017. Prior to this, I had always been interested in trying it out and had even considered starting my own drum circle. However, that thought never got farther than an idea in my head. In comes the Raising of the Ancestors Drum Circle hosted by Mike Bales at the Intuitive Mind Center in University Place, WA as the perfect opportunity for me to see what drum circles were all about. I was so excited when I learned about this new drum circle forming, and couldn’t wait for the first gathering.

The day was here, my first ever drum circle. There was already a small crowd gathered when I arrived. As more people showed up, we kept enlarging our circle of chairs. There were all kinds of drums–frame drums, djembes, tambourines, a grandfather drum, and more. I brought my frame drum that I had made the previous summer. After a brief introduction, we began banging away. It started out as incoherent noise, but amazingly after a few minutes a song began to emerge. Having never had any musical instruction of any kind before, I was completely taken aback. How was this happening? We were playing a song!! A song that had never been played before and never will be played again, but a song nonetheless. That’s all it took: one song and I was hooked.

I arrived home that evening, so inspired I just had to somehow get what I saw energetically out of my head and onto a canvas. How do you paint energy? I didn’t know, so I asked my Ancestors to help me. The painting below is what I saw during the drum circle. Each circle of color represents a drummer, and the lines between them represent the connections to the other drummers. Some of the connections were from the drumming only, some were from family relationships or friendships. Whatever the origin of the connection, it was all amplified by the beat of the drums.

Every time I go, I am blown away. Always there are different people, different drums, and different songs. Like magic, the group syncs up and creates a beautiful, transformative piece of music. Never has the group discussed who will hold what beat, yet each time we begin Spirit works through each soul to coax out a sound and we create a delightful song. I love watching the energy flow while we are all drumming away. The bond created when someone else matches my beat feels like our souls are hugging. Catching another drummer’s eye and sharing a moment of beauty together touches my heart. Watching the energy swirling and auras colliding in a web of connection inspires me to make deeper connections in my daily life. Nowhere else have I had these types of experiences.

Like I said, I love Drum Circle.

~Kalli

For more information on Raising of the Ancestors Drum Circle, check out http://raisingoftheancestors.org/ or follow them on Facebook.