Transcript: Stronger Connections Mini-Session | Mindful Rhythm, Sound, and Movement for Self-Care

Laura Buckner:

Hello, everyone. We’re so glad that you’re here. Welcome to our wellness mini-session on Mindful Rhythm, Sound, and Movement for Self-Care. If you wish, you could take a moment to find something that can serve as a pleasant-sounding drum or shaker. We’ll be using that during the session. You could also just use your knees or body. That will work just fine as well.

I want to briefly share that this mini-session is hosted by the California Stronger Connections Technical Assistance Center. It’s a program of the California Department of Education, and this is just a small portion of our offerings to provide support to local educational agencies to foster safe, healthy, and supportive learning environments.

Our facilitators for this wellness mini-session today come from the Arts & Healing Initiative. Ping is the founder and director of the Arts & Healing Initiative, which transforms lives through the innate power of the arts, guided by mental health practices to foster healing, connection, and resilience for all. Ping has developed several resources, publications, and curriculum to support social and emotional learning, and to promote arts as a critical component for health and well-being. And she’s being supported by Christine, the community initiatives manager for the Arts & Healing Initiative.

Christine is a non-profit leader and a healing arts facilitator. She specializes in applied theater, somatic practices, and trauma-informed community-based arts initiatives. So we’re very glad to have both of them here with us today. We’re really excited about this session. And now I’m going to turn it over to Ping and Christine. Thanks so much, everyone.

Ping Ho:

Thank you so much. I’m going to open with my favorite instrument of all time, which is my 40-year-old bundt pan, and I will explain why in a moment.

I like to begin with this instrument to show you that you do not need fancy equipment in order to have a meaningful experience with sound. So today, we’ll be learning tools to center ourselves and for classroom centering as well. Let’s start with a self-hugging activity, which gives us the centering benefits of breathing, hugging, and crossing the midline. We’re going to extend our arms, and depending on your space, you might extend them sideways or above you. And this is to expand our breath, and then we’re going to land in hugging positions as we put on imaginary safety gear.

So we’re going to start by … And let me give you a quick pointer first. Elongating exhalation lowers our heart rate and blood pressure. So to slow down the exhalation, you can do so as if you’re blowing out a set of candles. And as we do this activity, notice what position feels most comforting for you.

So now let’s begin. Let’s inhale with arms up or out and exhale as we put on our safety helmet. Once your helmet is on, you might want to give it a gentle hug or squeeze. If this position doesn’t feel comfortable or you’d like to try a different one, you could also put your hand in front of your head and your other hand on the back of your neck. Feel free to explore as we do these activities to find a position that works for you.

Now we’re going to repeat again and inhale with our arms up. And now we’re going to put on our shoulder belt. Our arms will cross our chests, and we’re going to hug our upper torso. You can sway if you wish. You can squeeze.

And now we’re going to raise our arms again, inhaling. And as we exhale, we’re going to put on our lap belt. This time, our arms will cross our waist and hug our lower torso.

And take another deep breath while you’re holding. And finally, we’re going to inhale, and we’re going to exhale slowly as we cross our arms across our thighs and hug our knees. We’re putting on our knee pads now.

And come back to center and think about which position or positions felt most comfortable to you. And now I’m going to invite you to hold that position as we listen to the sound of chimes for about 30 seconds. Okay. So get into your favorite position. And here we go. Oops, having a technical issue. It got wrapped. Sorry about this. The chime tends to get wrapped around the inner peg. Oops.

Okay. Here we go. Ready? Begin.

Okay. Feel free to share in the chat bar how that experience was for you. And I will keep talking. So how does rhythm making calm the nervous system? So for starters, repetitive rhythm is calming. Also, active rhythm making engages the brain, which calms the lower part that’s actively protecting us from threat, and enables the upper part to function more optimally. This is the part that’s necessary for learning and constructive interaction with others.

In addition, playing rhythms or moving in sync with others is actually rewarding to the brain. It stimulates the same part of the brain that responds to a monetary reward. So we’re hard-wired to want to be in sync with each other. And studies have shown that we feel more connected to and compassionate towards others with whom we’ve had an in-sync experience, making us even more likely to stand up for them if they’re being treated unfairly.

So now we’re going to do some body percussion to prepare us for rhythm making, and this will bring additional centering benefits of both tapping and bilateral stimulation. So I’m going to be tapping my chest and snapping my fingers. Based on your experience of the self-hugging activity, you can decide where and how you wish to tap and whether or not you wish to cross your arms across the midline. There’s no right or wrong way to do this. Both Christine and I will be demonstrating different methods in case that’s helpful to you.

So we’ll start with a heartbeat. I think you’ll actually be able to hear my chest beating here. Remember to breathe as you do this activity. So I’m going to start with a heartbeat.

And let’s add a beat to this.

Let’s add two beats.

Three beats.

Four.

One more. And rest. So, again, feel free to share in the chat bar how that experience was for you. So now we’re going to engage in mindful rhythm making. For this activity, you may use the body as your instrument or something around you that can serve as a pleasant-sounding drum and/or shaker. So here are some objects that I have enjoyed using. This is an opened package of diapers, a decorative pillow, a supplement bottle filled with rice. And I often prefer just using a shaker for a more centering experience as I do mindful rhythm making.

So we are going to engage in rhythm making for four minutes to give us enough time to settle into the rhythm. So I’d like to remind you of several things. You have the option of closing your eyes or gazing softly at something below eye level. If you notice any mind chatter, like self-judgmental thoughts, just let it go. It may help to keep the heartbeat rhythm in your body. So example, in your head, I like to keep sway and keep it in my torso, keeping it in your foot, in your toes, or your heel. This can help us keep the basic beat as we do any improvising on top of it. I recommend also keeping your rhythm patterns simple for the more calming benefits.

And two main things to remember. If you forget everything else I just said, don’t think. So the key to the mindful aspects and benefits of rhythm making is don’t think. Trust your body because the body has rhythm. We all have a heartbeat. And the more cognitive we make the process, the more we interfere with the body’s natural sense of rhythm. The other key is to breathe. Just remember to keep breathing throughout the activity.

The other challenge I would like to throw forward is this is an opportunity for you to tune into your needs and practice self-care. It may not work for you when you first start, just like some of you may have had different experiences of the body percussion. And that is okay because all feelings are valid. Find a way to make this work for you. Change positions if you need to. Change instruments. Play more softly. Maybe turn down the volume on your computer. Move or walk around as you need. There is no wrong way to do this. And the goal of this session is to build strengths in self-care and tools.

So I’ll begin with a heartbeat rhythm on this drum. And I will gradually add in some additional sounds for a more grounded and fuller rhythmic experience. Here we go. All right, quick sound check. Christine, how’s that? Okay, here we go. And Christine’s going to cue me every minute to signal shifts in the sounds that I make, and also when we are finished. So here we go.

Christine Manley Martinez:

Ping, and everyone else is playing on their own along with you, is that right?

Ping Ho:

Yes. Thank you for that reminder. You’re playing in cyberspace. No one can hear you. You’re free to experiment as you need. Okay, here we go.

Four, three, two, one, and rest. Okay.

All right. Please go ahead and share in the chat bar how you feel now, what you discovered, and what, if anything, you did to make the experience work for you. We encourage you to share any uncomfortable feelings also because all feelings are valid. Research has shown that engaging in reflection increases the stress-reducing benefits of arts activities as diverse as drumming and writing. If you have a highly reserved group, you can engage reflection by using shakers to respond, like how many of you felt more calm, or relaxed, or present, or alert?

I can testify that the activities we did today really work to help the centering after a stressful event. I was in a meditation session at a retreat that was interrupted by an unexpected explosion in the room from a lighter that had been left on top of a wood-burning stove. Fortunately, no one was hurt, although everyone was shaken. So I led them through a similar process of what we did today to release the stress, and they all felt grounded and centered enough to continue with the day’s events. So we have an additional minute or so, minute and a half.

Christine, would you like to read out any of the comments that you have seen in the chat bar?

Christine Manley Martinez:

Yeah. Participants said that they had fun, walked around, they found it energizing, loved the rhythm. Someone asked if a scent could be added to enhance the experience.

Ping Ho:

Absolutely, yes.

Christine Manley Martinez:

And I’ve read that it made them feel grounded, tuned into their body, and it’s needed to focus. All my attention was staying with the beat, and sometimes I got off the beat, but it did not take long to get back onto the beat, and they really enjoyed it.

Ping Ho:

Thank you. Yes, this is a very focusing activity. Rebecca, thank you for the feedback of the gradual addition of beats. Something that I will notice since I have a couple of moments here is I was beating at a peppy heartbeat. Would anyone like to guess why?

I’ll give 10 seconds for any responses. Because generally, actually, rhythms at about 60 to 80 beats per minute harken to the womb, which is why they feel relaxing. I did a peppier heartbeat for two reasons. One is that I didn’t want to make you fall asleep and the other is because groups tend to speed up. So if you try to do this with your classroom, know that they will speed up. You might as well start more quickly, so you’re not speeding up in a minute.

So I’d like to pass this over to Laura now to make her wrap-up comments. Thank you.

Laura Buckner:

Yeah, thank you so much for a wonderful session and for sharing some really wonderful insights with us, Ping and Christine. What you’ll see on your screen right now is some information and resources from the Arts & Healing Initiative for additional workshops that utilize the arts to foster mental health and well-being. You can check out their free monthly HOPE Series. That’s the QR code that you see on your screen. There’s actually a session next Friday on managing anxiety through art by scanning. Oh, by scanning the QR code. You can go ahead and sign up for those sessions and learn more.

There’s also their contact information and their main website, so that you can see all of the different offerings available through the Arts & Healing Initiative. What you’ll see next on your screen is there should be a Zoom poll popping up. We’d love for you just to respond very briefly to these three questions. Let us know how we’re doing. We really do take your feedback into account while we’re planning these sessions.

Again, this was hosted by the Stronger Connections Technical Assistance Center, which is a program of the California Department of Education. We’re very, very grateful to be able to bring you these sessions. And you can learn more at the QR code that you see on your screen right here.

And finally, you can feel free to get in touch with our team here at WestEd who facilitates or who coordinates these sessions. And again, thank you so much to Ping and Christine for joining us today, for sharing a little bit about your work. And thank you, everybody, for taking just a bit of your afternoon to spend with us. Thank you very much.