So what does the digeridoo, breathwork and circular breathing have to do with everyday life? Well it turns out quite a bit actually.

For just under a year, I have been the owner of a digeridoo (or “Didge”), the quintessential primitive, natural sound instrument. In my opinion, it has all of the elements of spirituality and music rolled into one package. It has a rich history with the Aboriginal people of Australia and is woven into the fabric of their spirituality and beliefs. (More on that in another blog). 

This instrument is really quite challenging, even for an experienced keyboard and flute player such as myself. To play this instrument, you not only have to learn how to make the different sounds, but you also need to learn how to do circular breathing so that you can maintain a constant drone-like sound. 

Lets talk about the first one, breathwork. Just like in our daily lives, good breathwork is critical, particular when things get a little crazy. Proper breathing, along with deep properly timed meditative breaths helps us through some of those critical times. The same is true for the didge. You need to breath properly and have good timing so that you get the correct rhythm for playing the instrument. There is no way you can play the didge until you learn how to do the proper breathwork.

That brings us to circular breathing. (circular-breathing is a sub-component of the breathwork). In order to maintain the drone sound you need to breath-in, hold air in your cheeks, and blow into the didge while at the same time taking short breath intakes, while using the air in your cheeks to keep pressure in the didge. Circular-breathing is just like any other cycle in nature, galaxies are born and die, people come and go in our lives, and we recycle, the list goes on and the didge makes sounds based on a particular cycle called circular-breathing. 

The third factor, persistence, was the “glue” to keep the whole process going. There were times when I was ready to give up on the didge. I said to myself and others, that I am already a flute player so maybe I should focus on just playing the flute and keyboard. It just seemed like I was not making any progress. But then my didge teacher told me that it was all about persistence, and practice, practice, practice. And did I mention practice? (Lot’s of it).

Now due to the persistence, I am making some progress and even though I have a long way to go, I am starting to really enjoy playing the didge. So just like in our daily lives, our jobs, or projects we are trying to finish, you have to have persistence.

Next time...The sounds of the didge, spirituality and its effects on our bodies.