Christine Stevens - Music Medicine: The Science and Spirit of Healing Yourself with Sound

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To listen to a podcast interview with Sounds True publisher Tami Simon and author Christine Stevens, please visit SoundsTrue.com/MusicMedicinePodcast.

Christine Stevens, MSW, MT-BC, is a music therapist and author of The Healing Drum Kit and The Art and Heart of Drum Circles. The founder of UpBeat Drum Circles and wellness consultant to Remo Drum Companys HealthRHYTHMS, she has worked with many Fortune 500 companies, Katrina survivors, students at Grond Zero, and led the first drum-circle training in Iraq. Christine lives in Encinitas, California. For more information on Christine and her work, see .

I thank the muse that illuminated this understanding and inspired this project.

Thanks to the team that worked to create this book: my agent, David Nelson, and editor, Florence Wetzel; Jeff Newman, my personal editor, who held space as we corralled ideas; and my content editor, Christoffer de Graal of Moving Sound in the United Kingdom, whose artistic heart brought depth and the distillation of key concepts in the dance of words that is this book. I also thank research assistant Becky Human, editor Jean OSullivan, graphics guru Drai Turner, and my assistant Agate Dawson. Thanks to all the Sounds True artists who allowed their recordings to be part of the playlists for each chapter. Thanks to the first cohort in the inaugural four-week Music Medicine course, which helped me shape the books material as they grew into an ensemble of rhythm, song, harmony, and silence. And to the Sonic Beauty Circle, which has gathered at my home for a decade of ceremony and healing.

I am grateful for the Iraq drum-circle team: Z. Melinda Witter, Lydia Shaswar, Noaman, Mohammed, Kurdistan Save the Children, Jihad, Raz, Briyar, The Illuminators, Constantine Alatzas, Mark Montgyierd, and Craig Woodson. It was Marks original medicine wheel diagram of our drum protocol that began to illuminate the connections that created this book. Thanks to our sponsorsNational Association of Music Merchants (NAMM), Remo Drum Company, Rex Foundation, Mickey Hart, Kieron Sweeney, Musical Missions of Peace, and the Ocean of Gratitude Cruise.

Thanks to my council of cultural music experts, including Mark MaKais Lakota music, Richard Rudiss Tibetan sound healing, Kim Atkinsons Afro-Brazilian ceremonial drumming, Gayan Gregory Longs Sufi and Buddhist understanding, Anton Mizuraks wisdom of India and Tibet, Stephanie Buffingtons tribal music tours, Cameron Powers and Kristina Sophias tarab of the Arab world, Michael Bourdets DJ song support, and Kimber Godseys mystery voice. I felt your support and wisdom pulsing through me with each beat of the keypad.

I thank Kathy Hull, who spent a whole year guiding me through the medicine wheel based upon Angeles Arriens book The Four-Fold Way. And the uncanny coincidence that it was her brother, Arthur Hull, who taught me drum circles and the great mantra, 12make up your own! Woven together, their synergistic teachings brought the spirit and sound to life in musics medicine wheel.

I thank the spiritual guidance of Connor Sauer, founder of Long Dance; Uncle Manny Eagle Elk Council Pipe Sandoval and Uncle Peter Catches Zintkala Oyate of the Lakota Nation; Michael Bernard Beckwith, founder of Agape International Spiritual Center; Lorin Roche, meditation coach and translator of The Radiance Sutras; Berenice Andrews, teacher of the shamanic path; and Don Campbell, author and path-setter of sound and music healing. I am grateful for key resources on the spirituality of music written by Hazrat Inayat Khan, Sri Chinmoy, and Paramahansa Yogananda. I thank my soul sister, Tina Landrum, for our rhythms of friendship and poetry, and Dan Cartamil, for our joyous musical sharing and soul-filled harmonies.

Im grateful for the mentoring and dedication to excellent scientific contributions of Barry Bittman, MD, of the Yamaha Music and Wellness Institute. Dr. Bittman has been an inspiration of collaboration, focus, and dedication in his pioneering research in mind-body medicine and music. I thank Michael Thaut, PhD, at Colorado State University for the scientific foundation to build models of evidence-based music therapy.

I thank my family: My sister, Joy, whose dance, rhythm, and song bring joy to my heart. My dad, brother Owen, and all my muse-filled nieces and nephewsEllie, Philip, Keira, Max, and Caden, who get to play music together in our three-generation family drum circles.

Lastly, I thank all the locations that hosted me while I wrote this book: Mays Hollow in Encinitas, Paula Jeans dome in Joshua Tree, The Old Bear Bed and Breakfast at Mount Pinos in Los Padres National Forest, Coyote Canteen in Frazier Park, Stevenson Ranch, and the Remo Recreational Music Center in North Hollywood.

H ave you ever gotten goose bumps from a powerful piece of music? Have you ever been moved to tears by the words of a song that express how you feel? Have you ever had a song magically play on the radio just when you need it most?

If you answered yes to these questions, you are not alone. Daniel Levitin, author of This Is Your Brain on Music, calls our love of music a human obsession. But musics medicine is much deeper than that. You might say that we are music. Our heartbeat is a rhythm track pulsing through our veins; our voice is the melody that resonates as we speak; our health is the harmony of our body and mind; and our breath is the silence that allows our bodies to rest. In the words of George Leonard, aikido master and pioneer of the human potential movement, We do not make music; music makes us.

When you go to a doctors office, you get a checkup. In our journey of music for healing, we begin with a sound check, or a quick examination of the viruses that inhibit musics medicine in our lives. Ill show you how to tune out any doubts that you are musical, and Ill share scientific evidence that confirms how innate music is within us all.

How have we forgotten we are all musical? How have we become music listeners more than music makers, consumers more than creators? Its often one critical statement from some authority figure that silences us. We get told we cant carry a tune in a bucket or that we should just move our lips in the choir concert.

If youve ever heard such comments, you are in good company. Sir Paul McCartney failed choir auditions twice. Luciano Pavarotti was told he needed to change his sound to be more like the operatic greats. At the age of ten, George Gershwin was told it was too late to start studying music. Thank God they didnt stop making music. Instead they brought melodies to the hearts of music fans worldwide.