By L. Crow

By L. CROW
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
CANFIELD -- The drums come in many shapes, sizes, and colors. Some have exotic names such as djembe or dun dun, and others are instruments that are shaken, rattled, scraped or tapped.
They are part of a drumming circle, which anyone can join. It doesn't matter if you have a tin ear and no sense of rhythm. As long as you can tap, you can benefit from the power of the pulse, say Dan and Pam Susany.
The Susanys lead the drumming circle at Treat Yourself Center for Holistic Health here. They have been drumming for nine years, studying with American and African teachers, and have been at Treat Yourself for about a year.
"Drumming gets you out of your thinking mind and into your body," Dan said. "You can't think and drum, and we think too much. Drumming relaxes you if you are stressed out."
He says people will come to the drumming circle exhausted and anxious, and leave feeling calm and energized.
Alzheimer's, stroke
But drumming can have more than a calming effect. Dan and Pam regularly take their drumming to nursing homes, often working with Alzheimer's disease or stroke patients. Pam points out that simple rhythms are used in these cases.
The only requirement to drumming is the ability to hold a stick, but even that isn't always necessary.
Pam tells of a woman named Betty, in advanced stages of Alzheimer's disease, who could not hold a stick, and could only speak gibberish. But Pam did notice that when the drumming started, she began to tap her feet and smile.
Pam says, "I went over to her and took her hands and began to dance with her. After a while, I said, 'Betty, are you getting tired?' And she answered clearly, 'Yes, I want to sit down.' It wasn't until a minute later that it struck me she had actually spoken a sentence."
She goes on to tell of another client named Al, who had just been admitted to a nursing home physically frail with slight dementia, who was helped by the drumming circle.
"He had totally withdrawn from others during the first week, speaking only to the nurses and doctors," Pam says.
"He sat outside the drum circle, but we put a drum and sticks in front of him. When the drumming started, he began to sing 'My Old Kentucky Home' and other old-time songs. The drumming circle immediately connects people. No matter what their ability, they can join in."
The Susanys hope that nursing home activity directors will begin to make drumming part of their regular group therapy.
Healing effects
But drumming also may have more widespread healing effects. REMO, a well-known maker of drums, also publishes research done on the many health benefits of drumming.
Christine Stevens, a board-certified music therapist who has facilitated drum circles internationally and worked with the students at Columbine High School, and at ground zero in New York City, wrote an article in March 2003 on the effects drumming has on oncology patients.
She says that after drumming, participants showed a significant increase of natural killer cells that seek out and destroy cancer cells. She says the drumming also, for the first time in many cases, helped patients forget about their cancer and feel good again.
In an article by Dr. Connie Tomaino, she found that drumming was able to help Parkinson's disease patients with freezing -- a condition in which the body is unable to move no matter what the patient does to initiate movement. In one case, a young man would listen to a cassette of drum music when he had to cross busy streets, so he didn't freeze in rush-hour traffic.
XL. Crow is a practitioner of holistic healing. She may be reached at laughingcrow@neo.rr.com.