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" How does drumming translate into team building? How can something like music help increase productivity, awareness, focus, or creativity? " These are questions we typically hear from HR Directors, CPO's, and Program Coordinators before they work with us. We're always excited to provide an in-depth explanation. Group drumming presents an extraordinarily effective model for corporate team bonding initiatives, moving beyond typical icebreakers to foster deep, non-verbal conne

Rhythmic Mindfulness is a powerful, multi-modal practice designed to deliberately engage the mind, body, and emotional experience through drumming. Far exceeding the scope of simple meditation or recreational drum circles, this methodology is built upon a specific, scientifically grounded formula: Music, Movement, and Mindfulness  must interlock to achieve optimal cognitive outcomes. It challenges the notion that complex techniques must be simplified for accessibility; instea

We take a lot of pride in pushing the boundaries when it comes to drums and mental health. Fortunately for us, half our operation exists in Colorado, where psilocybin has been decriminalized. As a result, mental health practices across the state are booming with new modalities utilizing this compound to treat things like depression, anxiety, and much more. Let's talk a bit about what psilocybin is, how we incorporate it into our retreats, and what we're looking to accomplish.

What does it mean to “stay informed”?  These days, it’s almost impossible NOT to stay informed. We are constantly inundated with information, so to “stay informed” has little to do with exposure and much more to do with choice. We are being informed whether we choose to be or not. The deluge of information won’t stop, so I’ve begun to wonder how else we can approach information? Rather than encourage staying informed (ie. gain more pieces of information), we can “prioritize t

We will always have our problems. Our issues, our concerns, our troubles, our worries, they’re not going anywhere. They may change shape over time, sure, just like energy that can neither be created nor destroyed but can change form. Rather than trying to eradicate them, how else can we approach them to feel that we’re somehow progressing?  Perhaps we begin to inquire further about how we’re being  in them as a reference point for discovering our growth.  We’re bound to expe

Many of us have probably heard of comparative suffering. In short, it’s the idea that we compare our suffering to others’ suffering to help us better make sense of our own pain, and ultimately we find that we often downplay our experiences. We may compare the extent to which we allow ourselves to suffer based on comparing our particular circumstances to others’ (we may deem that death of a loved one allows us to suffer more than totaling our car for example). I want to discus

How do we dedicate ourselves to rituals that generate the change we actually desire? How do we endure when we hit a wall? This is at the root of when we talk about self care, resolutions, goals, desires, longings, cravings, stuck energy, … we’re asking how we can support those in the long run. We want to know how to sustain ourselves with enough consistency of an effort that it will naturally produce the byproduct we’re after. By engaging with a meditation practice every day

What good is good if you’re no good at being receptive to it? If you can’t experience the good when it arrives, what good is it? I ask this a lot. I ask myself if it’s not only about being in the right place at the right time but also having the capacity to receive what’s there. Your vacation is finally here, are you capable of enjoying it? This is where coaching, drumming and intentional moments of focus over sustained periods of time are extremely valuable. They build capac

We have to recycle our language if we’re going to make change. Language, just like us, is dynamic. It accrues baggage over time. Baggage in this case encompasses all that’s been weathering a word during its lifetime to make it unique. Expressions, idioms, jargon, slang, phrases all change shape and meaning as they interface with the world, just as we do. Over time, the same words we may have used in a past scenario no longer capture the experience we’re wishing to convey now.

How often are we using now as a currency for later? In other words, how often are we hoarding our present experiences into some sort of life bank account that we believe we can cash in on for that later moment? I regularly see this in our need to capture each moment, make sure we write it down, remember it, or most commonly these days, take a picture – or 20 – of it. What would happen if we put down the need to capture our inspiration and instead let it be the moment we’re ca

I've been looking at this picture and thinking about joy, playfulness, and the lighthearted parts of being alive. There are countless ways we can talk about the human struggle. And there are also countless ways we can count the glimmers of play flickering all around us. This is why I talk about “paying attention” and “noticing” as portals to discovery. With practiced attention, we can discover the capacity to feel light because this whole human thing can feel heavy pretty ea

Are you slamming on your brakes? What I mean is, when you’re in motion doing anything you feel called to do, how are you stopping? What effort are you putting into developing the capacity to stop, leave, put the brakes on it? We’re so excited by the moments that give us energy to go, to do, to create, to build. Yet we can get a bit bothered when moments give us heavy, slow, lethargic, tired, stopping energy. Are you controlling your brakes or are they jolting you to a halt ou

by Madison Asher Refraining v. resisting, what's the difference? I like to think of it this way: We refrain from indulging in an immediate gratification for the sake of a future one. We resist immediate discomfort at the expense of a future joy. Or said another way, we refrain from immediate positive to experience future positive and prevent future negative; we resist immediate negative even when we know there’s future positive to be gained. Refraining is a form of disciplin

by Madison Asher Important reminder for the humans out there: we WILL get lost and we WILL mess up. These are embedded in our human nature and we don’t need to say sorry for being human. How can we explore acknowledgement without apology? We make a wrong turn, we get lost, we play an off-beat rhythm in the jam session, our pitch falters while harmonizing with other voices and a myriad of other examples. Yes we can acknowledge that it happened but we don’t need to apologize th

by Madison Asher What’s the difference between moving through an experience and sitting the f*** down in it? I recently found myself going through some inner turmoil. It felt different. I wasn’t quite sure what the experience was and I kept asking myself, “how can I move through this?” I was sad and I realized I had very little experience with sadness. Anger – sure. Irritability – definitely. But sadness? This was new and all I wanted to do was move through it in the ways I k

by Madison Asher Cultivate Your Art of Decision Making The art of navigating choice has never been more magnified as a need. There seem to be so many options now for building a meaningful life, perhaps more so than ever before. How to earn money. How to educate ourselves. How to best take care of our bodies and our minds. What to consume. What not to consume. Move this much in these ways and also remember to rest. What does family mean for me? What does community mean for me?

by Madison Asher It’s so cliché to believe that a cliché is a vapid generalization. Hear me out. Clichés are the common denominators that allow the collective to connect across seemingly isolated experiences. It’s a shared understanding that facilitates the conversation between two vastly unique realities – yours and mine. A cliché, when in the form an individual moment is extremely unique. It feels almost impossible that someone else can grasp what I’m going through. Thi

by Madison Asher What if we lived in a world that put a higher premium on the quality of our experiences over the contents of them? What if we measured our days by the way we were experiencing them rather than what we did? When asked “how was your day”, rather than outlining the itinerary of what you did or who you saw – went to the gym, chatted with my mom, wrote 6 emails, closed a deal, – how might you use qualities of the experience as an answer? I can think of many inst

by Madison Asher What do you do for the sake of itself and not on behalf of anything else? What do you say, do, eat, experience for its own sake? Chances are there are few answers to this question. Because we are all operating on behalf of unconscious drivers that dictate our behavior. This doesn’t have to be a cynical revelation. In fact, I argue it’s the opposite. Awareness of our own operating systems (yup, just related us to an iPhone OS, stick with me), is the doorway to

by Madison Asher When we ask ourselves how we handle rejection, I generally take this to mean “how do you receive being rejected?” More recently, though, I’m wondering about my relationship to reject ing . To saying no. How do I give rejection? There’s so much we can discover if we flip the switch on some of our trained thought patterns. Exploring the action of rejection rather than being rejected is like wiring a new route through our well worn thought GPS. How do I handle