Non-verbal communications comprise a critical aspect of customer relationships in the corporate and sales setting. How employees and superiors perceive each other is of critical importance. In addition, a healthy mental framework is critical in the workplace in order to achieve maximum productivity. For this reason, many companies today have onsite wellness and stress reduction programs to keep employees engaged and productive at work. The photo at left was taken during one of our drum circles as part of an employee wellness program at an Orange County area company.

    In sales settings, customer and co-worker connections can be even more critical. In a show room, for instance, a great amount of attention is paid to body language, as well as the verbal message. Both speaker & listener will pay significant attention to body language and vocal intonations, or what we term, "rhythmic code." It's a give and take. The following describes how a drum circle was used as non-verbal communications building tool in a customer sales setting in an auto dealership. This auto dealership, like many others do, had a policy detailing how sales staff are to take turns on new approaching customers. Here is how a drum circle was used to improve their customer/salesperson relations.

   Many customers reported being starred down by over-anxious sales staff, which made them uncomfortable and unwilling to hold substantive dialogue with sales staff. In one instance, a woman was seeking information on a car and reported she felt mugged. There was an exchange of body language, a brief verbal exchange, and the customer shared she felt the salesperson was groping her pocketbook with his eyes and body language. Even though the others were not helping her, their body language spoke similarly according to the woman. She reported she couldn't wait to see what she came to see - and get out.

   After the completion of six drum circle workshops, the sales staff became more aware of their body language and the team concept. They were more confident and exuded welcoming non-verbal communication, as well as the same in verbal interaction. Even when it was not their customer, they knew how their body language could support each sale - and how this process in turn helped their own sales.

   The above example illustrates the importance of proper body language in customer sales communications. As you play drum rhythms with your body, you learn to sharpen your non-verbal communication and team building skills. Your body transmits what you are thinking. And your body language in large part determines whether customers will like you, trust you, and buy from you - and how you will be received by co-workers.

Go to the full web page on Drum Circles for Employee Wellness & Workplace

   Group drumming is a platform where participants interact with the rhythms of your brain to engage their mind and body to reach its peak performance, and to better communicate with those around them. Group drumming is used today to improve non-verbal communications, personal confidence, cognitive function, mobility, and general wellness. The programs are applicable to corporate and sales organizations, families, individuals, sports organizations, and health and wellness centers.

    Widely termed drum circles, it is an age old practice offering new insights today into team building and communications, which can activate key rhythms of your brain. The rhythms of your brain are a collage of many different auditory, visual, and touch sensory patterns which hold the key to specific interactions between the brain and body. Some are learned, while others are innate. These patterns are widely how our minds communicate with our bodies, with others, and with the world around us. The more you know about these patterns, the more happy and healthy you will be in life.

   The science in support of these applications revolves around how we are designed with, and surrounded by, thousands of rhythmic processes tied into planet Earth. It should come as no surprise that our command of audible and inaudible rhythms determines our physical prowess, and in large part, our grasp of language.

    In their simplest form, rhythms are mathematical patterns. But to a pulsing heart, they are sophisticated codes of communication, thought, movement, and cues for voluntary action. Along with centers of our primal brain, and the body's sensory system to touch, time, and space, rhythmic patterns signal the brain when and how to initiate actions like walking, talking, and moving our extremities.

    Our awareness and attentiveness to rhythm also affords us a better understanding of time and space, and enables us to perform athletics and coordinated team sports such as football. This makes audible rhythms a perfect training and syncopation tool for team sports. Early humans heavily relied upon purposeful rhythmic hand, body, and audible gestures. Once humans began speaking and living communally, thought to be between 7000 and 25,000 BC, we slowly began loosing our innate skills at understanding body rhythm as language. This is likely why we are so fascinated with music and sports today.

   Group drumming, drum circles, or simply "drumming," refers to the modern practice of organized group play of (mostly) hand percussion instruments for the purpose of communal enjoyment, enhancing communications, health & wellness, and a wide array of other causes. Drumming is much more integrated into our modern living than you would expect.

    The role of rhythm in our daily lives changes as we age. As our necessary survival skills continues to evolve, there is continued optimizing of rhythm's role in our lives. Factors like age, health, neurological development, geography, and quality of life also impact our ability to optimize our understanding of "rhythm codes." These codes influence our physical health, bodily coordination, intellectual capacity (comprehension, voluntary thought, action), and inter-personal communication (i.e. work, community, family). It is critical that we maintain our rhythm skills to remain competitive, healthy, and properly connected to those around us. Regrettably, our increasing reliance on electronic communications and technology may NOT permit sufficient exposure to needed communication rhythms. While technology offers many advantages, it is yet to replace live human interaction. We still require human rhythm codes. They make up the subtle vibrations and sometimes overt body movements we glean from each other. Whether this could occur through remote and/or telepathic communications, is unclear - but certainly possible based on what we know about the universe.

    Using various drums and percussion instruments, Stephen demonstrates how the human body is a transceiver and receiver of rhythmic cues involved in every thought, action, and inter-personal communication. At right, Stephen leads a wellness drumming workshop for 70 participants at the Irvine Hilton Hotel in Irvine for the UCI Susan Samueli Integrative Center "Women's Wellness Day 2010. He implemented drum applications to participants improve rhythmic skill and attentiveness, business and personal communications, syncopation in sports, balance and coordination, and intellectual capacity. His presentations are a combination of lecture, instruction, and entertainment - depending on the audience. He appears at business expos, companies, sports team events, drum and music concerts, fundraising benefits, educational summits, and health and wellness expos.

    Humans and animals (to varying degrees) are effected by sound. Sound affects our brains & bodies in both positive and negative ways, depending on the type, loudness, and patterning. Sound (and music) has favorable health benefits as described in the earlier work with the "Mozart Effect." But sound can also have harmful effects, and in football, it is being used in harmful ways to disrupt on-field communications and the cognitive focus of players.

    The U.S. military for many years has used chants, drums, and recorded sounds during training to help syncopate on-field operations and communications. Football play is similar in that on-field timing, syncopation, and communication is critical for proper execution of play. The physiology of play & movement can be described in terms of "proprioception," or the memory of muscle movement. There are also cognitive factors to consider for play execution. And high decibel crowd noise during NFL games today is interfering with on-field communications and cognitive reasoning before and during the plays.

    Drum and drum circle workshop training has enumerable team building applications in college and NFL football. They include: assembling the best matched players on a squad, skills training, play preparation and syncopation, team communications, unity, proper psyche, and pregame preparation to mention a few. A drum circle workshop then offers four specific benefits: improving non-verbal communication, strengthen player intellect and sense of time and space (athleticism), strengthen player and coach attentiveness around them, and help build team unity and spirit. Football programs employ a variety of cadence training and off-field methods to achieve team syncopation. Undoubtedly, what sets each apart are their tools, preparation, and discipline.

   We offer an array of applications and programs for football, basketball, baseball, and other sports. We describe a method for how drum & percussion instruments can be utilized as non-audible timing & on-field communications tools in the absence of verbal communication, and how rhythmic progressions can be used to help overcome the cognitive & sensory challenges posed by high decibel crowd noise.

Visit full web page on Drum Circles for Football

Drum Circles with Basketball

We've had very favorable results in our drumming with basketball, and with basketball alone. As therapies, they aid movement disorders, mindfulness, and cognitive challenges. With basketball programs, the drumming drills and methods help ball handling, team rhythm, shooting, and on court communications. Drumming with basketball also makes for an excellent health & fitness program.

We authored a very in-depth blog on basketball and drumming for basketball in our June 4, 2015, blog, and we highly encourage you to read it if you have time. Stephen shares some mindfulness and personal healing moments, as well as his brain and body fitness drills in basketball. He has lived with the disorder, hydrocephalus, since 1992. The drumming with basketball web page is linked above, and the full basketball blog is linked below.

Basketball on DolleCommunications Blog

   Drum and rhythm training helps the individual to better use his/her body as an extension of cognitive thought to cue movement. By relieving some of the cognitive load on the brain, you effectively become smarter. Our drum circles facilitation methods teach participants to better conceptualize rhythmic patterns, and carry out progressions in extended formats, far more than one could count using the ordinary counting skill of the brain. This method awakens not so often areas of the "primal brain." Along with the body's sense of time and space, our brains track precise rhythmic patterns and communicate these signals to the appropriate limbs for "when and how" to walk, talk, and perform specific actions. You can move with significantly less dependence on voluntary thought by training movement with rhythm and beat. You've heard many stories of people who stuttered, yet could sing beautifully. Or could dance, but could barely walk. The secret is in the rhythm ability of the body to recognize drum beats.

   As we age, and similarly after brain injury or onset of certain neurological disorders, precise voluntary control of physical movement becomes compromised. A myriad of physical therapy and balance training methods are used to re-teach and strengthen key centers of the brain. In sports like football, quarterbacks must work tirelessly on hand, eye, and footwork syncopation to be deliver a football in split-second time. Similarly, the popular dance pad video game uses music and rhythm to improve foot coordination and balance.

   Some drum training methods can be done individually at home, others in group settings. The objective is to teach each participant to initiate actions like walking, talking, and eating with less voluntary thought -  moving to a rhythm, using time structure and awareness of the body. We often ask participants to select a fun rhythm they can effortlessly play or tap. The facilitator then selects the upbeat or downbeat to cue the desired activity. Cues can be carried out through "tapping" the hand or fingers for everyday activities. 

Stephen Dolle on Laguna Woods TV Channel 6 Dec. 2017: Interview on Drumming for the Brain

   We had helped an individual with balance and walking skills after a brain injury. He had difficulty navigating his way around a small living quarters. We taught rhythm patterns to match steps and turns he commonly made in his residence, teaching him to tap out the upbeats and downbeats on his thigh and hip - corresponding to turning, stepping, and bending to pick things up. This method engages the less voluntary action of the cerebellum (and body rhythm) to cue the legs and feet, with less of a physical challenge. Individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS), post TBI, or stroke who have a lot of difficulty standing and initiating walking can use this rhythm and cue method to better their mobility. Those with autism require more hands-on instruction and specific rhythms.

   A senior center had been conducting a weekly step class to help patrons maintain their walking and balance skills. They had been playing music of various beat patterns. We came in with a tan tan and large djembe drum, and taught them a simple step pattern to keep to a beat we created. Then we gave them a simple jingle to remember the rhythm - to practice and use as they walked about at their residence.

Go to full web page on Drumming for Wellness

    The drum circle sites pictured here reveal a few of the ways drumming can be applied to large groups of people. Pictured are an area amphitheatre, Aliso Beach State Park in Laguna Beach, the Grand Ballroom at the Hilton Hotel in Newport Beach, and a convention hall in Toronto.

    As humans, we have a multitude of brain wave patterns and physical body rhythms which we use in non-verbal communication, physical movement, and physical survival.  Our earlier ancestors were more in tune to these "rhythms" as they were far more involved in hunting and physical work and body communications than we are today. With the industrial revolution of the last 150 years bringing about major shifts in our use of physical labor and person to person body communications, people in the West are becoming increasingly distanced from our more "rhythmic" beginnings.

    In its place, we are substituting sports and music to satisfy our many rhythmic needs and interests. And there is a distinction between "rhythmic needs" and "rhythmic interests." Certain rhythms, such as those patterns we use in cognition and memory, everyday movement, sex and love-making, and those that are needed for our psyche and happiness - are ones we need to experience and express on a regular basis in order to survive. Others might be viewed as more discretionary and relating to personal interests, sports, or work.

Drum Circles & Event Photos

Drumming for Orange County Area Organizations:

Attendees at a local temple drumming. Right, Stephen poses w/ the program coordinator.

Wellness Programs:

Participants enjoy drumming at the OC Young On-Set Parkinson's Conference, Newport Beach

Travel Fit Club & Costa Mesa Senior Center

Orange County Health & Wellness Organizations:

High Hopes Head Injury Center of Orange County

Spinal Cord Injury Association of Orange County & OC Goodwill Center

UCI Susan Samueli Integrative Medicine Center, Women's Wellness Day 2010

Below, Stephen Dolle speaks & facilitates a drumming workshop on wellness in Newport beach as part of Women's Wellness Day.

Orange County Area Community Outreach Events:

Drumming for Fitness

Sobeca Concert at The Camp, Costa Mesa, CA

Friendship Shelter, Laguna Beach, CA

Valley High School & High School, Inc., Santa Ana, CA

Santa Ana Artist Village

Orange County Area Youth Programs:

YMCA After School Programs, Santa Ana

Summer Drumming Program, Girls Inc. of Orange County

Girls Inc. Drumming Program: Course Description (PDF)

High School, Inc. & Valley High School in Santa Ana, CA

Orange County Area Eco-Festivals:

Surf 24 Event, Huntington Beach, CA

Green Valentine Festival, Laguna Beach

Green Go Enterprises Eco-Festival

Earth Hour, Laguna Beach (photo below)

Drumming for Animals & Nature:

Drumming for Snow - and it snowed! (Kaelin Ski Store, photo below)

Drumming with Horses - private ranch

Private Home & Families Drum Circles:

No Photo - Jack's 50th Birthday Party

"I just wanted to thank you again for the highlight of the evening.  Your drum circle touched many people and they discovered something about their passions they never knew they had ." L. Bicer