⚡ Quick Answer
A steel tongue drum is a handheld percussion instrument made from a rounded steel shell cut with tongue-shaped slits that ring out warm, melodic tones when struck with mallets or fingers. Tuned to a musical scale, it is intuitive enough for total beginners and is widely used for relaxation, meditation, and sound healing — its sustained tones help ease the mind from alert Beta brain waves toward calmer states. Scroll down for how it works, its benefits, and how to choose one.
Steel Tongue Drums Effect On Beta And Theta Brain Patterns
Steel tongue drums are sound healing instruments that help move you from Beta brain waves (anxiety and fight-or-flight reflexes) to Alpha, Theta, and Delta brainwaves that are associated with relaxation and meditation.
Steel tongue drums nourish the forebrain, which governs 40% of our problem-solving and decision making skills. When we are in Beta, we lose blood flow to the forebrain, challenging the decision-making process. Steel tongue drums also assist with balancing the hemispheres of the brain. The left hemisphere or the analytical side, and the right hemisphere, our intuition.
How Steel Tongue Drums Work
Sound healing is a practice used by cultures such as the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, Native Americans, and even the United States military. It is used to help with mental issues, restore balance and happiness, and achieve peak performance. It is claimed that sound healing can assist with side effects stemming from depression, developmental disorders, anxiety, PTSD, and help manage physical and mental pain. For healthy individuals, managing one's sound environment can be a way to recover from daily stress and enhance productivity, communication, and a feeling of well-being.
Our physical and emotional - perhaps even spiritual states - can be conceived as a particular blend of frequencies, from our heartbeats and blood pressure, to the pace of our thoughts and movement. Due to a negative feedback loop, the human body and mind can sometimes maintain in a self reinforcing state of stress or imbalance. The common admonition to simply snap out of it is not usually helpful because of this loop. The human body and mind are extremely attuned to the environment, so a more helpful approach is to adjust the environment to help us feel the way we want. The basic principle of sound healing is to introduce a particular frequency and rhythm that we will adapt our internal frequencies, thus helping us overcome internal conflicts, blockages, and illness. This can be a sound or vibration, directly introduced into the body.
Steel Tongue Drums' History
A form of tongue drum has been around for a very long time if considering the wooden versions created by the Aztecs known as log drum or tone drums. Another similar instrument is the Slit Drum of African origin. These were the early predecessors to the modern-day steel tongue drums.
Are Steel Tongue Drums Hard To Play?
One of the great things about this invention is it does not require any particular skill to play it. Anyone who wants an easy to play intuitive instrument can learn to play a tongue drum. You do not need a musical background to get all the benefits from playing. There is no right or wrong way to play the tongue drum, just pick up your mallets and start by hitting the inside of the cutouts. The cutouts are in the shape of a tongue, hence the name, Tongue Drum. Almost immediately, you will feel your self getting sucked into the music and start to feel relaxed. Your mind goes into a meditative state where you can tune the world out for a while. You can also play with your fingers however, that takes a little more practice and some calluses. We carry finger sticks to save your hands from building up calluses. If you want to sound more enhanced, then stick with the mallets. They help in producing proper vibrations from the drum and musical scales.
Flower of Life Symbol
Each tongue drum Rare Earth Gallery sells is decorated with the Sacred Geometry Symbol, The Flower of Life. The meaning behind the flower of life symbol is that it is believed to represent the cycle of creation. It depicts how all life comes from on singular source, represented by the circle in the center of the pattern. There is believed to be a secret symbol hidden within the flower of life symbol, which is said to hold the most significant and sacred patterns of the universe. It is believed to be a sort of blueprint for all life, with the fundamental patterns for everything from atoms to planets and everything in between.
What is included with your steel tongue drum?
When you buy a steel tongue drum from Rare Earth Gallery, you get the steel tongue drum, mallets, and a purple, padded and lined backpack/ bag to protect your investment and safely enjoy your drum anywhere.
Ready to explore further? Browse our New Large Tongue Drums, pick up easy tongue drum sheet music, or read about chakra sound healing.
Since 2013, Rare Earth Gallery has been Arizona's most celebrated destination for natural art. Our award-winning Cave Creek gallery is home to tens of thousands of hand-selected crystals, minerals, meteorites, fossils, onyx sculptures, gemstone jewelry, and natural stone fountains — each piece chosen because nothing quite like it exists anywhere else. Visit the gallery or shop our website.
