Team Building & The Joy of Group Drumming
Perhaps no other activity serves as such a perfect metaphor for team building as a drum circle. Take a group with supposedly no musical experience (at least in their minds), and present the challenge of becoming a syncopated percussion orchestra. Everyone has a role, everyone has to listen, and when they work together, it becomes a fine-tuned rhythmic machine that will have everyone bobbing, shaking and smiling to the groove. It’s so much fun.
At La Vida Laguna, we’ve been facilitating drum circles among corporate groups and leadership teams for 15 years. Our management is rooted in drumming, having founded the Laguna Beach Full Moon Drum Circle. Here are a few things you should know:
Drum circles are not the exclusive domain of dreadlocked hippies playing hacky sack. Attend a community drum circle and you’ll find they are enjoyed by everyone, from grandparents to toddlers, because everyone has innate rhythm. It comes from your heartbeat.
Everyone can drum. No prior experience is necessary. Drumming is an ancient ritual enjoyed by nearly every culture on the universe. We drum to celebrate the harvest, to increase fertility, as rites of passage and for welcome ceremonies. It was only in the 16th century when the Western Church saw it as a pagan ritual and systematically banned it, that drumming began to fade from our lives. But take a look at native cultures drumming, and you will see a sacred experience of aligning your body to a beat that synthesizes with the life force of your heartbeat. You just need a little encouragement to bring it out.
As a team building activity, it allows a group of people to throw away the cares and worries of the workplace. Drumming is a stress reliever and a healing modality that has proven to help people’s natural immunity to disease. It’s used in senior living facilities, with at-risk youth, and with terminally-ill patients. It’s even been used to stimulate memory in Alzheimer’s patients. Drumming creates an endorphin rush that feels good.
For corporate groups, it represents a flat hierarchy where everyone has a role to play, there is no right or wrong. Staying on the beat with everyone else produces a collective sound called music, a perfect metaphor for optimal performance in the workplace. La Vida Laguna can bring the drum circle to your campus, your hotel, a secluded beach or a local park. It’s a great way to kick up a meeting at the beginning or end, or just play as a team building activity.
We can provide team building drum circle sessions for groups as small as 12 and up to 500 people. Our group drumming provides an ideal way to begin a conference or you might end a day of corporate meetings with drumming and cocktails or perhaps enjoy an after-dinner bonfire and drum circle.
