Healing Power of the Drum

—Dan Cavicchio, author of Gardens From The Sand and founder of SpiritSite.com.
"Robert Lawrence Friedman demonstrates that drumming can have a profound effect on one's emotional and spiritual well-being. A wonderful book."


Book Description
The Healing Power of the Drum is an authoritative yet easy to read book that shows how everyone can achieve health benefits from the increasingly popular activity of hand drumming. The raison d'etre for the book is to raise awareness of the hand drum from merely a musical instrument to a tool that can be used by individuals to attain psychological, physiological and spiritual well-being. The book explores the drum from a multidimensional perspective, explaining the drum's ability to release anger, create joy, alter brain rhythms, induce trance, and create empowerment. Research and anecdotal reports provide validation of the benefits of personal drumming. The Healing Power of the Drum provides a springboard for readers to use the drum in exciting and innovative ways to enhance their own wellness. The book reflects the very qualities of drumming. It is easy to read and non-technical, fun, and yet it provides depth, meaning and purpose for the reader. As the drum provides seemingly limitless ranges of emotions from deep relaxation to extraordinary aliveness, the book accordingly explores the vast range of experiences offered by drumming, from its ability to create euphoria to its deep and sacred power to heal. Contributors of world renown include: Dr. Michael Thaut, Director, Center for Biomedical Research and Music, Colorado State University. Dr. Kenneth Aigen, Co-Director of Research for the Nordoff-Robbins Center for Music Therapy at New York University. Dr. Connie Tomaino, Director of the Department of Music Therapy, Institute for Music and Neurologic Function, affiliated with Albert Einstein Medical Hospital, Bronx, New York. Barry Bernstein, Music Therapist. Christine Stevens, Music Therapist. Jim Greiner, Latin Percussion™ artist and drum facilitator, who shares some of the most eloquent stories of the hand drumming experience ever written. Heather MacTavish, founder of New Rhythms Foundation, who discusses how hand drumming helped her survive and heal from Parkinson's disease. Arthur Hull, leading drum circle facilitator.


From the Publisher
Drums and their rhythms have brought joy and self-expression to mankind since the dawn of time. In The Healing Power of the Drum psychotherapist and drum facilitator Robert Lawrence Friedman weaves an extraordinary tapestry of personal experience, fascinating anecdotes and compelling research, demonstrating the hand drum's capacity to provide significant health benefits for everyone. This breakthrough book examines the use of hand drums in treating at-risk adolescents, stressed-out employees, Vietnam veterans, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Multiple Sclerosis and more. Find joy and self-expression in the Healing Power of the Drum.


About the Author
Robert Lawrence Friedman, MA, Remo Artist, drumming facilitator, psychotherapist, Certified Psychosynthesis Practitioner, is affiliated with the St. Mary's Hospital Complementary Therapy Department in New Jersey. He has provided his programs to major corporations, hospitals, nursing homes, detention enters and conferences and has appeared on numerous radio and television shows.


Excerpted from The Healing Power of the Drum by Robert Lawrence Friedman. Copyright © 2000. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
The Corporate Tribal Meeting While leading my first drummng workshop at a Fortune 500 corporation in New York, I witnessed for the first time the extraordinary power of rhythm to transform and heal. Fifteen employees were playing hand drums in a semicircle when, without warning, a middle-aged vice president suddenly and spontaneously leapt from his seat. With absolute glee he jumped and danced like a gazelle from one end of the boardroom to the other. The usually sterile room was suddenly transformed into a glorious bridge between the contemporary and the ancient, when celebrations always led to dance. The others remained transfixed in their own rhythms, as if this were a daily occurrence in corporate America. As the program ended, the participants described their own sense of joy and amazement at their ability to release their stress and pent-up frustrations into their taut-skinned drums. The drum's ability to provide significant healing only became apparent when I received a call a few days later from the dancing executive. He informed me that his intense chronic back problem of many years had completely disappeared during the workshop. Six months later in a follow-up call, I learned that his back pain had not returned. What medications and modern science could not cure, this ancient healing tool had. Perhaps we will never know what specifically caused this executive's back pain to disappear, yet it was clear that dancing to his rhythm and acting on his joy had miraculously altered his body and set in motion a physiological change that allowed him to be pain-free for the first time in a decade. This executive's experience became just one of many instances when I had the privilege of watching an individual's ailment naturally disappear through the healing power of the drum.


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Robert Lawrence Friedman's book takes us on a journey to explore the most neglected, yet original and powerful elements of our being—the rhythm of our soul.  — (Shi-Hong Loh, MD, Director of Complementary Therapy Program, St. Mary's Hospital, New Jersey)


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