The next drumming circle is January 3, 2012

May the Magic of this holiday time inspire Peace and Love!
Santa is a shaman flying with his reindeer!! Many happy blessings to you all!


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Correction for the Winter Solstice Gathering

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Hi All,
We are gathering at 6 pm on the 20th, with ceremony beginning at 6:30pm. What to bring: a veggie already prepared to put in a stone soup, dish to pass (a food or drink item that represents the sun energy), a tea candle and extras if you have them. We will celebrate with food and drink following the ceremony.
See you then,
Happy Solstice!!

Pat



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Gift Certificates Available for the Winter Holidays!

Surprise a loved one with the gift of shamanic healing.
Gift certificates available for healing sessions, drum making, or intro to shamanism workshops.

Call or email for requests.





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Winter Solstice Gathering

Please join our drumming circle for a Winter Solstice Celebration, December 20, 2011 starting at 6pm. We will begin with a dish to pass followed by a ceremony to honor the Solstice and the return of the light. Bring food or drink for the meal, a story, poem, or joke to share in circle and of course your drums and rattles.

Call 279-0444 for directions or more information.


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There will be no drumming circle this coming Tuesday, November 22

THE ART OF BLESSING THE DAY

This is the blessing for rain after drought:
Come down, wash the air so it shimmers,
a perfumed shawl of lavender chiffon.
Let the parched leaves suckle and swell.
Enter my skin, wash me for the little
chrysalis of sleep rocked in your plashing.
In the morning the world is peeled to shining.

This is the blessing for sun after long rain:
Now everything shakes itself free and rises.
The trees are bright as pushcart ices.
Every last lily opens its satin thighs.
The bees dance and roll in pollen
and the cardinal at the top of the pine
sings at full throttle, fountaining.

This is the blessing for a ripe peach:
This is luck made round. Frost can nip
the blossom, kill the bee. It can drop,
a hard green useless nut. Brown fungus,
the burrowing worm that coils in rot can
blemish it and wind crush it on the ground.
Yet this peach fills my mouth with juicy sun.

This is the blessing for the first garden tomato:
Those green boxes of tasteless acid the store
sells in January, those red things with the savor
of wet chalk, they mock your fragrant name.
How fat and sweet you are weighing down my palm,
warm as the flank of a cow in the sun.
You are the savor of summer in a thin red skin.

This is the blessing for a political victory:
Although I shall not forget that things
work in increments and epicycles and sometime
leaps that half the time fall back down,
let's not relinquish dancing while the music
fits into our hips and bounces our heels.
We must never forget, pleasure is real as pain.

The blessing for the return of a favorite cat,
the blessing for love returned, for friends'
return, for money received unexpected,
the blessing for the rising of the bread,
the sun, the oppressed. I am not sentimental
about old men mumbling the Hebrew by rote
with no more feeling than one says gesundheit.

But the discipline of blessings is to taste
each moment, the bitter, the sour, the sweet
and the salty, and be glad for what does not
hurt. The art is in compressing attention
to each little and big blossom of the tree

of life, to let the tongue sing each fruit,
its savor, its aroma and its use.

Attention is love, what we must give
children, mothers, fathers, pets,
our friends, the news, the woes of others.
What we want to change we curse and then
pick up a tool. Bless whatever you can
with eyes and hands and tongue. If you
can't bless it, get ready to make it new.

Excerpted from The Art of Blessing the Day by Marge Piercy. Copyright� 1999 by Marge Piercy. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Photo credit: Debbi Milligan.



Visit Marge Piercy's Web site: http://www.capecod.net/~tmpiercy/

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Group drumming and the Immune System

Hi All,
This article validates what we already experience and know from our weekly drum circle. Please join us this Tuesday, September 13, 2011 for a special drum healing for me before my surgery next week.
Many blessings,
Pat



New Medical Study: Group Drumming Boosts Immune System


A brand new medical research study indicates that group drumming boosts the immune system. Published in the January, 2001, issue of Alternative Therapies, the groundbreaking study was performed at Meadville Medical Center's Mind-Body Wellness Center, Meadville, PA, by a team of MDs using control groups and blood tests.

Led by well-known researcher, author and cancer expert Barry Bittman, MD, CEO of Meadville Medical Center's Mind-Body Wellness Center, the study showed that group drumming actually increases cancer-killing (NK) cells which help the body combat not only cancer but other viruses, including AIDS. In their findings titled Composite Effects of Group Drumming Music Therapy on Modulation of Neuroendocrine-Immune Parameters in Normal Subjects, they found that one group drumming method in particular correlated with increase in NK cell activity, Lymphokine-Activated Killer (LAK) cell activity and chemical changes that together signal a strengthening of the body's natural immune response and a direct connection between the external senses and the natural immune system. (For details of this research study see http://www.amc-music.com/drumstudy.) According to Dr. Bittman, "Group drumming tunes our biology, orchestrates our immunity, and enables healing to begin... When our hands connect with a drum that vibrates with energy, vitality... and unity, we become whole again." Dr. Bittman's weekly radio program, Mind-Body Matters, is syndicated nationwide on NPR. For more on Dr. Bittman: http://www.mind-body.org/bittman.htm.

This new medical research follows recent biofeedback research showing that even brief heartbeat drumming can double alpha (a light meditative brainwave) and reduce stress. We now know that stress depresses the immune system and has been linked to nearly all diseases. Drumming has also been used successfully with Alzheimer's patients to focus attention, with war veterans to end trauma, with addicts in recovery from drug and alcohol abuse, and with prison and homeless populations to enhance self-esteem. Progressive corporations like Motorola, AT&T and Levi-Strauss have drummed with middle management to promote team spirit building. Widely published research also indicates that playing musical instruments increase children's learning abilities. This appears especially true of those instruments that can be played intuitively, like the drum. Qualitative studies have shown that drumming enhances right-brain functions such as intuition and creativity.

"The beauty of drumming as opposed to other activities is that you can take it anywhere, teach it in only a few minutes and offer it to groups of ill and well people alike," Bittman says. "Composite drumming enables people to enjoy myriad psychological and physical benefits. While immersed in this form of music making, their tension is rapidly transformed into a joyful, moving and enlivening experience. I believe group drumming should become an integral component of whole person care."

"The drum is the Great Spirit's favorite instrument That's why we were all given a heartbeat..."
- Mano, Navajo Elder



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Flower Power in July

This is a photograph from the second apprenticeship gathering last weekend. Flower essences being solarized in the labyrinth!


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