11/10/2026
The rhythm, the zero point, and the space in between…🪘✨
I’ve been chatting with another drummer reflecting on something that happens to me when I’m facilitating large groups, surrounded by drums, bells, shakers and all the different rhythms weaving together.
Standing in the centre of the circle, I notice something quite extraordinary. The faster the rhythms become, the more deeply I seem to settle into stillness.
It’s almost as though another part of me is playing the drum faster and faster, while my spirit sits completely still within the pauses.
The rhythms build, the layers of sound spiral around one another, the time signatures dance together, and yet something within me becomes quieter and quieter. The faster it gets, the more relaxed and still I feel, until eventually it seems as though everything becomes a pause.
A zero point.
And it’s within that space that something else begins to emerge.
Songs rise up from somewhere at the back of my consciousness, calling to the rhythm and weaving themselves through it. Words come to me in languages I don’t understand. Tones emerge that I’ve never consciously developed or spoken before.
Yet somehow, they fit perfectly.
They fit within the different rhythms and time signatures spiralling around me, as though they already know exactly where they belong. I’m not consciously working out the notes, the words or where they should go. They simply arrive, finding their place within the complexity and speed of the rhythms.
It’s as though the songs are responding to something deeper within the rhythm itself.
I can be playing at incredible speed, almost as though something is playing through me, while the song feels slow, spacious and completely still. The sounds spiral around one another, winding through the layers of rhythm, and somehow everything belongs.
And all the while, there is this stillness within me. A presence that seems to arrive within the zero point.
I’ve often wondered whether rhythms are portals or gateways into multidimensional spaces — places where our perception of time shifts, where our usual awareness softens, and where we become available to experiences beyond our everyday understanding.
Perhaps the rhythm takes us somewhere. Perhaps, as the layers build and the patterns spiral around one another, we move into a different relationship with time itself. And perhaps, within those tiny spaces between the beats, something entirely unexpected becomes possible.
I don’t know that I have the words to fully explain it. I can only describe what I experience.
But I’m curious about what happens when we surrender to rhythm, rather than simply trying to play it.
Perhaps the rhythm isn’t simply something we play, but something we enter.
I’m curious to know if any of you who work with rhythm understand what I’m trying to explain here. Have you experienced anything similar — where the rhythm seems to take you somewhere, and songs, sounds or something beyond your conscious thinking begin to emerge through you? 🌀
