Medicine Drum Crafting
Do you hear the call to birth your own Medicine Drum?
For many of us, birthing a drum is something that we have experienced over lifetimes. It is a deep remembering of a skill that we carry in our very bones.
The drum is as old as human kind and has been used in all cultures.
It is a feminine symbol – a round container that vibrates life.
With its simple structure of animal skin stretched over a wooden hoop, the frame drum is considered to be the first drum ever invented. Its use has been intimately linked to ancient spiritual and religious ceremonies to communicate with the spirits of Nature, ancestors, and deities in order to understand the source of illnesses and mishappenings in the world - among other things - and heal them.
An Immersive Experience
Our Medicine Drum Crafting Workshops take place twice per year, in Mount Egerton, Victoria.
The biggest reason for this is that we offer these as residential workshops over 1.5 days. This means that we live in community, camp together on the land and really immerse ourselves in the energies of all that is unfolding throughout the weekend.
There is something magical about sleeping under the stars, only meters away from where our hides are soaking under the moonlight.
We offer one workshop in the Autumn, and another in the Spring, away from the stark cold of Winter and burning heat of Summer.
What to Expect
Arrive at 1pm on Saturday with an hour to set up camp and settle into the space before the workshop begins at 2pm. We will be gathering at the beautiful Mount Egerton Recreation Reserve, nestled at the edge of the forest on Wadawurrung Country. This location has plenty of room for camping and nature connection, plus a large indoor area heated with a wood stove and a communal kitchen, toilets & a shower.
The workshop will conclude at 5pm on Sunday, and you will leave with your completed Medicine Drum, plus instructions on drying and caring for your new sacred tool.
Our role is to act as your as your Shamanic Midwife, gently guiding you to trust your intuition and remember this ancient skill which you carry deep within your bones. Facilitating a transformative, shamanic experience where you connect not only with the animal of the hide, wood of the hoop, the seasons and cycles, and your own birth story... but also one where you produce a beautifully resonant, structurally sound Medicine Tool that you can take out into the world to facilitate healing and change.
This workshop includes everything you will need to birth your own Medicine Drum.:
✨ Wooden hoop and animal hide*
✨ Teaching around the origins of the Shamanic Drum and the lineage of this work
✨ All instructions, templates and tools required to create your medicine drum
✨ Camping Accommodation (Please BYO camping gear)
✨ Ceremony and ritual
✨ Shamanic Drum Journey to connect with the animal of your hide and the wood of your hoop
✨ Delicious and nourishing lunch is provided for Sunday
✨Naturopathically formulated herbal teas & yummy snacks
*The wood and hide will be different, depending on the season in which we are gathering and the availability of materials. If you have a longing to work with a particular medicine, please get in touch to discuss. Please note there may be an additional charge for materials.
The sacred relationship between the animal that the skin is from and the person, who will own the drum, begins as soon as you make the intention to create a drum, and will be reflected through the whole process.
You can trust that you will get the right skin for you and the final product that your drum becomes will be perfect for the work you will be doing with it.
An Animistic Approach
We will be working with your birth imprint in this workshop - the story of how you came to be in this world and how that shows up in creative process, and in your relationship to 'other'.
Birthing your own drum is a deep experience. By approaching the process with awareness and intention you will not only craft yourself a personalised shamanic tool, you will also have a shamanic experience, connecting with the animal of the hide you are using, the wood of the frame and observing the way you show up during the creative process.
More about the Medicine Drum
Drumming can be for healing (it actually boosts your immune system), for prayer, for celebration, for singing and for inducing altered states of consciousness for the purpose of shamanic journeying.
Using the drum during the labour of childbirth helps to reduce the intensity of contractions - the vibration dissipating pain and offering the woman a focal point that enables her to enter and alternate state of consciousness.
Beating the drum reunites us with the heartbeat of Mother Earth. The drum is as old as human kind and has been used in all cultures. The drum connects our spirit with the ancient knowledge of the Universe.
"One of the most powerful aspects of drumming and the reason people have done it since the beginning of being human is that it changes people's consciousness. Through rhythmic repetition of ritual sounds, the body, the brain and the nervous system are energised and transformed. When a group of people play a rhythm for an extended period of time, their brain waves become entrained to the rhythm and they have a shared brain wave state. The longer the drumming goes on, the more powerful the entertainment becomes. It's really the oldest holy communion"
~ Layne Redmond, When The Drummers Were Women
This relationship with rhythm and the drum began in the womb. Each cell of our body has been created with this pulse, this rhythm of sound, this beat of the drum.
The drum is a universal instrument, not owned by any culture. Played for thousands of years across all continents; by Celts in Europe, Native Americans in the USA, and all through Africa, South and Central America, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia. Each of us has the ancestral memory of long ago playing the drum. This cross-cultural instrument and Shamanic tool is the call of the heartbeat, the wild self, and the song of Mother Earth.
It's the sound of coming home.
