Groove Therapy Drumming to Transform Mental Wellness
as a budding at the musicologist
i had the joy of participating in both
african drum ensemble and gospel choir
simultaneously
as i participated in those groups
whether i was drumming or
singing the directors were driving us
toward
one aesthetic the relationship between
the voices of the ensemble we commonly
call
groove i was so uplifted by those
experiences that i gathered a team of
musicologists and musicians together
to involve youth in my community in
drumming together
over the course of the summer 131 youth
and their families came out to the park
to drum with us
and we saw them light up with energy
and esteem the bio-psychosocial effects
i saw from drumming that summer
changed me so much that i changed
careers
and now i practice drumming as a
psychiatric
mental health nurse practitioner student
in addiction recovery
at the ohio state university’s wexner
medical center
i want to talk to you today about the
musical meanings
and neuroscience research behind why
drumming
is strong medicine learning-based
intervention
and social support group all in one
and the need for mental health care
could not be more clear
in the u.s one in five of us struggle to
maintain
our mental wellness and despite more
than 600 million prescriptions
written to improve mental health mental
health struggles struggles are still the
number one cause of disability in the
u.s
what’s more across the workforce mental
health crises
cost more than 2 billion dollars in lost
employee productivity every year in 2013
the director of the national institute
of mental health stated
that mental disorders are biological
disorders
involving brain circuits that implicate
specific domains of cognition
emotion and behavior the good news is
that our brains are
constantly growing and changing it’s an
innate
trait we have called neuroplasticity
neuroplasticity means that our minds
flex and mold to their environment and
experiences
wouldn’t it be great if beating on a
drum could create an environment and
experience where your brain could grow
into more healthy function
the future of mental health care could
look less like
dragging up your old junk with a
counselor or suffering
the adverse side effects of psychotropic
medications
and more like gaining physical
cognitive and relational resilience
through drumming together
it might surprise you as much as it
surprised me to learn
that drumming is strong medicine in her
book
donna jackson nakazawa writes about how
inflammation causes
the tiny brain cell microglia the pacman
of the brain
to chomp down on brain circuits and how
that contributes to the signs and
symptoms
of mental illness less
brain inflammation could mean less brain
damage
and better mental health in just
10 sessions of drumming together weekly
we can see blood levels drop in
our stress hormone cortisol and
increase blood levels of the molecule
il4
the anti-inflammatory cytokine and
also drumming increases our so-called
happy hormones
of dopamine and serotonin
combined these effects can be seen with
a 38 decrease in the symptoms
of depression
i want to just give a little demo
about how this could look in a drum
group
i want you to take your one mallet and
say and play with me
fa owns bu
now take this mallet and say and play
with me
fa the
at this point you may wonder if there is
any point at all in what i’m asking you
to do
but now say and play with me father owns
a buick
father owns a buick father owns a buick
father owns a buick you see it wasn’t
until those parts came into relationship
with one another in a groove
that they seemed to have any purpose at
all and we’re very much the same
the ability to see how we fit into the
bigger picture
or what we contribute to something
greater than ourselves
is something cognitive scientists call
purpose in life studies
neuropsychiatrist adam kaplan
has summarized the positive effects of a
strong sense of purpose in life
he’s shown that we lower cortisol
we increase anti-inflammatory cytokines
and increase serotonin and dopamine
the bio-identical benefits of drumming
together
traditionally cultures around the world
have known and practiced the protective
and restorative benefits of drumming
and here in the u.s we don’t have any
lack of groove
but we’re usually consumers of it and
not creators of it
when i was in high school dancing to
whitney houston hits i couldn’t have
imagined
how i would be using groove based music
today
in my drum groups we interpret
the rhythm of lyrics into drum parts
and we focus on the relationship between
those parts
in a learning based intervention i call
groove
therapy we tend to
gauge our mental wellness in terms of
purpose
insight communication love and belonging
confidence creativity and security
cognitive scientists tend to measure the
effectiveness of learning-based
interventions in terms of attention
language social skills learning and
memory
executive function and perceptual motor
ability
we’ve already talked about how the
relationship
in parts of a groove symbolize our
purpose in life
relationships have a tendency to give us
that kind of insight right
but groove based music and the
interlocking parts and the rhythmic
density of them
can also show us what to pay attention
to in the music
so when other parts interlock with our
own
they become the trail blazes that
keep us on track in our musical
adventure
learning-based interventions are
notoriously
difficult to change language and speech
so much so that an otherwise
learning effective learning-based
intervention doesn’t need
any change in speech and language to be
validated
creating drum songs from our musical
treasure trove holds the potential to
stimulate the language centers of the
brain
music has a particular ability
to stimulate those language centers we
even see activation of speech
through music in alzheimer’s patients
just focusing on words causes the
centers of our brain the motor centers
of our brain to fire just as if we are
saying those words
so drumming together familiar lyrics
can stimulate the motor and language
centers of our brain
and potentially protect and restore
speech communication
drumming together in groove based music
also increases
and changes the love and belonging
chemistry of our brains in a study of
foster youth
groove based drumming was shown to
increase oxytocin
are bonding and belonging hormone
this is a effect similar to what we get
from cuddling
and surprisingly groove based music had
groove based drumming in particular had
twice the effect on boys as it does on
girls
and playing short repetitive phrases in
a groove
sets up a learning and memory challenge
that inherently
favors neuroplasticity if in a drum
group someone over here is playing on
the hand drum
oh this is an example from whitney
houston which we can use i want to dance
with somebody
if someone over here is playing on the
hand drum don’t you want to dance don’t
you want to dance don’t you want to
dance and someone over here is playing
on the bell
i need a man who take a chance i need a
man who take a
chance when the participants of that
ensemble
change up their parts and their
instruments they’re moving between one
part
of the groove and another part that sets
up this kind of inherent learning
situation or learning as we go
that improves positive emotions and
leads to resilience and grit
so playing the repetitive short phrases
of a groove
is a lot like running the hurdles as
you’re making forward progress
you’re also learning and fine-tuning
or adjusting so that sense of resilience
gives us the grit to jump the next
hurdle
the energy that’s created by playing
in groove based ensembles also can
affect
executive function in the prefrontal
cortex of the brain
reduced activity in the prefrontal
cortex
decreased activity in the prefrontal
cortex of the brain
and decreased volume are associated with
the
diagnosis of add and adhd and
schizophrenia again i’ll give you an
example of how this could look in a
whitney houston song
as whitney’s singing you hear the bass
go
don’t and whitney’s lyric don’t you want
to say you want to dance don’t you want
to dance
and all the other musicians combining in
the groove they wind up with
greater and greater energy until
whitney’s voice
kind of pulls into the stratosphere with
that creative melisma
and the whole song comes back out of
orbit to land safely on planet earth
and underneath whitney’s fantastic vocal
voyage
the pul the pulse tends to take on a
life of its own
those musicians who are playing the
pulse
move into a sense of flow in their
perceptual motor ability
flow occurs when your brain has a mental
challenge
and it feels confident in meeting the
challenge as it gets
real-time feedback and is motivated to
keep
acting being in a sense of flow
brings your brain into a state of calm
and alpha wave activity and also
releases
the neurotransmitters
and endorphin those are natural
painkillers
not only is drumming together a great
learning based
activity it’s also inherently a social
support group did you know our brains
learn just by watching
you’ve experienced that phenomenon from
the first time baby you saw someone
smile
our mirror neurons learn by watching
when you look across a drum group and
see someone
moving in synchrony to you yourself
you downshift your fight or flight
response
or fight or flight is essential in
recovery from ptsd
and anxiety i want to take you back to
my first forays into groove therapy as i
was
prototyping this whole learning-based
intervention
in drumming i felt drawn to invite
an acquaintance who was a peer addiction
recovery counselor
as we finished up our session and
noticed she was sitting alone in stunned
silence and i checked in with her
thinking she might be experienced some
type of adverse effect from what we had
done together
but she looked up at me through tearful
eyes and said
this is the first time in my life i can
remember
having absolutely no pain
i thank you for having me talk about
this today because
drumming is an amazingly accessible
activity
for one thing everybody can move or be
moved to rhythm drumming is
very appealing across a wide spectrum of
gender socioeconomic status ethnicity
and age there’s absolutely no experience
needed to drum together in fact the
recreational component of it
is its particular strength and there’s
also
no equipment requirement you can drum on
a bucket
a cereal box a popcorn bowl and where
safety is a concern
even body percussion is a perfect
option
i want to see a movement
of integrative mental health care that
continues to practice
and measure the therapeutic benefits of
drumming together
i hope you leave here today seeing
groove based music in a totally
different way
and i hope you drum and dance to welcome
all the goodness of groove to your mind
i also want to see artists and producers
allow their music to be reinterpreted in
drum songs
to release its protective and
restorative potential
i’ve heard musicians say they believe
their music can
change the world and heal it this is our
chance
thank you