I am having some fun visiting here in Wettenbostel. The seminar house can be like a child’s dream filled with so many toys. Beautiful gardens, music, musical instraments, big welcoming rooms suitable for dancing, yoga. There are days I feel like a kid in a candy story deciding which personal delight to partake of next.
There is one room that is filled with many drums. A cornucopia of drums, spilled out all shapes and sizes. One day when I was cleaning the room preparing for a new seminar group, I took some time to organize them a bit, make them look a little more aesthetically pleasing. I looked at them curiously, but did no more than dust them off. I look at the drums and I think of movies like The Visitor and how there is something about them the calls to me. Like a little kid who wants to come out and sing.
Being in another country, another culture is kind of like walking around constantly surrounded by a different beat. Like swimming in a universe where everyone and everything is playing a rhythm, but its not quite like any rhythm you’ve ever known before. And then you listen,and aquaint yourself with it, and maybe not full on dance, but at least move a little or sway… and there in your listening and swaying something begins to move in a slightly different way than it moved before. Things start to shift, reorganize and unnoticed things start to get noticed. And the rhythm of the way things were and always had been is no longer so.
In the States, I sometimes played a Shamanic drum and have been around drums and drummers, folks that go to drumming circles and let it all loose…. but I have sort of kept my “loose” reserved, a little tucked in. I was talking with Dan, the other American visiting here, about drumming. “Maybe I could learn to play the drums?,” I said… Like something I’d study to get good enough to do.. And Dan said, “or perhaps you could just go up there and listen to the beat of your own spirit… and just play…”. “Hmmm I thought… this sounded like fun!”
So one day, when noone was around I snuck up to the room with the drums, not wanting anyone to hear me. I looked around to make sure I was alone…and…I started to play. Nothing dramatic or anything, just letting my hands move and feeling the vibrations under my hands and allowing myself to experience this… and move a little into instinct. I talked to my spirit and invited her to play. And…occasionally I would look around to make sure noone was there, that noone was LOOKING… but in playing there was… something rich in me…being found and played through the drums.
So I’ve been visiting those drums from time to time. Kind of nurturing my own inner beat. That still space within that wants to come out and play. And I’m noticing that there is something within me that is distinctly me… and distinctly connected to everything at the same time. It just needs to be fed and watered and noticed. It’s so great visiting with people who encourage you to play!
Gypsy Woman 