 Hello and welcome to the drum history podcast. I'm your host Bart van der Zee and today I am joined by mr. Adam gust who's drummer speaker educator and very excited to have you here. Oh, thank you Yeah, thanks bar for having me. I love the podcast. You're doing really Thank you very much. Yeah, this is an interesting one. This this falls in line with more of some of the like Scientific kind of ones that we've done over the years more brain related There's there's a handful of the episodes which I will list them all in the description Rob Latham's episode is coming to mind Steven Taylor did one on the science of like practice. There's a whole bunch of them So I'll link those so people can see those as well, but great. Um, so you are a monster drummer I got to say out upfront because your website, which is let me let me plug it right here Adam gust GST comm has some great examples of your plane, but you're you're kind of pivoting to Be more in the speaking educational world Which is very cool. So Let me cue this up. So today, we're gonna be talking about And you have a much better explanation But what I interpret it is to be is how emotions play into your drumming basically and yeah Your Vegas nerve and your nervous system and how it all plays together. So All that being said Adam. Tell us more about this topic This topic. Yeah, well, it's been very influential in my life I had an experience that caused me to really have to Think outside the box in how to recovery from an injury that I had and that led me down a path to find a lot of really new Scientific research that's understanding better brain and body connectivity that has everything to do with drumming and Effects all aspects of our life really and I have I Initially got into it because I was trying to find somebody to teach me about it When I first learned that this research and perspective existed in early 2017 I was like man, I got to find some drummer who's been applying this to drum pedagogy So I can get better as you know, just internally and also in my performance and I just couldn't find that person So after seven years of studying and applying kind of the clinical application of nervous system science to drumming I feel like oh, I've kind of become that person. I was looking for in a sense There you go. Sometimes you have to do that where if no one else is doing it then you should be the one But you you got to give us a quick rundown here because I've seen it. You did a Ted talk It's kind of a horror story Maybe a quick rundown of just kind of what happened to you because you were you know again a working Full-time drummer and then something happened. So tell us about that. Yeah, I was on a gig Well, the Ted talk is science of the groove and if you want to know more about it, please check it out It's kind of the tree trunk that I'll be branching out from the rest of my life I think you know, I kind of built it to just be something that I can elucidate on from here on out But yeah, I was doing really well I felt like I was on this upward trajectory in my life as a pro drummer in LA and I was on a gig and I Was walking towards the stage and there was a glass door there That I thought was open and it wasn't and I walked through it And it should have been safety glass if it were up to the specs of at the time and it wasn't it was outdated and it was real glass and It fast shard turned into shards and fell on me and it was a severe injury Particularly as a professional drummer depending on our hands the way we do Wow terrible I mean, it's it's a nightmare kind of situation So, okay, then then pick up from there and again you had to recover you you couldn't play for a long time but that obviously is what got you interested in all of this stuff to connect the dots there of how you go from that horrible incident to Wanting to go down this this path of you know science and how it connects those two Yeah Well the connective tissue with what I'm doing now is the six years that went on with me being oblivious to what the solution was and so I was getting this very strong intense Tension problem in my arm and I was using kind of conventional means of thinking of how to deal with that in terms of Healing and wellness. I thought okay. I need to study some different techniques. I tried acupuncture. I tried I went to medical doctors. I tried to suss this out and after six years I've made it some tiny improvements acupuncture did help a bit But it just never got to a point where I felt like I was on par with people I was competing for work with and I did I would not even want to go to jam sessions or even be involved in my Drumming community in LA because I just didn't feel like I measured up because I had this just Amateurish tension problem when the stakes were high My arm would tense up and I mean that's kind of like that's what I associated with what an amateur is You know, I mean a pro rises to the occasion and that's I was just incapable of that And that just over six years it eventually got me to the point that I just didn't want to be a drummer anymore I just didn't feel like I measured up to my own standards And I realized that this was actually this tension was my body trying to tell me something And I just didn't get that at all, you know I really thought that my brain is telling my arm what to do and it's not doing it There's this brain problem But and I just didn't see it how it was this message coming back like my brain was sending a message to the arm But there was a sensory information coming back from the arm telling me that hey There's some tension here that we need to resolve and I just didn't wasn't aware of that until much later Hmm. So I mean again, this is I'll ask that might be a dumb question But so it was not to break it down more. It's not a physical issue at that point then it was more of the connection of the nerves and and Explain a little more about then how once you understand this and how you because you're playing great now I've seen videos obviously and how does then this study and this, you know, knowledge of what to do Make you get over that that issue Yeah, well, it was I've reached this point where I just knew that I had to Exit my current situation because it wasn't working I wasn't learning what I needed to know and I really just didn't want to go on living that way and So I took time I would took this cruise ship gig and it was six months and I'm just like, okay I'm it was super cushy gig ten hours a week. I Totally lucked out a friend hooked me up Nikhil Karula. Thank you And so I need to give me a lot of time to read a lot of books and do a lot of self-study There was a guy I met on the ship Georgie Orojas who was really into Chinese martial arts and wellness and I got to work with him a lot And so it was just such a blessing for that to happen because that's really where I started doing the work and Looking inside and I've read a bunch of books about psychology and biology and Neurology and then I came the big turning point for me was doctor Bessel van der Kolk's book the body keeps the score And that was really the point where I kind of oh, okay There's this awareness in the body that my mind doesn't have and that just isn't consistent with our culture In a sense. I mean we kind of think like mostly from the top down like the brain is telling the body what to do And if the body isn't doing what the brain says then there's a mental issue And that's just not consistent with what Bessel van der Kolk's talking about that that's really this coordinated Conversation between the brain and the body and yeah, ultimately it has everything to do with trauma And it's like that word is something that might trigger some people even just the word itself But I like to dimension as teaching resilience and understanding mindful awareness That's what I like to think of it more like an acronym like it's sort of a call to action rather than this kind of stigma or something to you know, kind of suppress Sure So I've explained this on the show before and I was telling you before that I have filmed psychology seminars for since I get about 2016 and I have heard the body keeps the score mentioned Multiple times over the years very famous book I've never read it, but I've heard many many great things again I'm the guy in the back with just the camera filming these things But and I've filmed presentations where they put the caps on people's heads and do like the neuro pathways and they control the video game a little game yeah, yeah with their with their thoughts or mind power basically, but All right, so we're drummers. I will I will speak to myself here. We're we're simple people So let's let's break this down to how does this apply to people who are listening who are they don't have the traumatic experience of walking through a you know outdated plate glass window and shattering it and not being able to play but I've got some shoulder pain. I've had lower back pain. We all have these from a life of drumming. Yeah Or maybe someone doesn't have any pain, but they just want to get you know, they want to move forward in there in their plane Let's get into now. How does how does this apply to like? Everyone in different situations. How can every drummer get better by knowing this this stuff? Yeah, well, we use our nervous system to play drums and I really like to think of the best drummers that's sharing a lot with the best athletes I mean it takes a lot of mind-body coordination in order to fulfill our intentions of excellence and There's definitely this connection in terms of modern nervous system research that connects healing with performance. In fact, there's a view of Healing that our resilience is basically healing in real time and to be resilient in Performance is key to being a professional. I mean they when stuff goes wrong. That's the job I really like this Robert Rodriguez interview with the Tim Ferriss podcast rather. He says like, you know You're not being a professional of everything is going right like the job is fixing stuff that goes wrong And I really that made a lot of sense to me because I've been in situations where things go wrong And that's really where you kind of start seeing who who is more or less professional You know, yeah. Oh my god. Yeah, right And so I really want to be a professional and so for the longer the six-year period I noticed when things went wrong I was not a professional and so that's when I realized like healing has everything to do with performance Being able to heal in real time being present being aware of the information your body is giving you and so Yeah, but kind of the hook of the the interview I'd like to give I've worked with a lot of singer-songwriters And I feel like I've always had to support the hook, you know And so like I would like to for this interview like to support this hook of the idea How much we lack awareness of our current emotional state is how much we take out our emotions on others and Ourselves and the groove as drummers. And so like any hook, it's worth repeating you How much we lack awareness of our current emotional state is Proportional it's directly proportional to how much we take out we reduce and damage our Interactions with others ourselves and our drumming. And so that's really not taking care of yourself and treating yourself Well and take taking care of your own Everything you are then going to be in life probably a jerk to other people and you're not going to perform Your best on the drums because you're just bottling everything up and being tense and not You know taking care of the things you should take care of is that a simple? Yeah, I jerked to other people of being from the drums is rushing not grooving not listening playing too loud Not giving the music what it's calling for, you know That's kind of being selfish or just being completely disconnected from our emotions leads to a lot of disconnection from the music we're making And so the music connection music connectivity with this work is it's really deep and so it but it starts Internally like we have to be in unison with ourselves before we can be in unison with anyone else I mean, you know if we can't play unison between our four limbs We're never gonna like kind of be able to connect with some bass player a guitar player who's hyper developed unison between their two hands So yeah, the word the work has I mean so music is just a reflection of this overarching concept of you know We need to be aware of this sensory information our current emotional state is essentially the sensory information That's being fed to us by our body you mentioned the vagus nerve which is integral to this work and Structure and function of the vagus nerve is crucial to understanding this because there are four times more Neuro transmissions coming up the vagus nerve to the brain than there are going down Which means we have evolved to be hyper sensitive to this information that our body is giving us But that's not reflected in kind of our cultural attitudes towards by mind-body connectivity Yeah, so okay back up a second. Let's define the vagus nerve Okay, again in my experience of filming Workshops and again out to explain a little further these workshops are for people who have to keep their if you're a Psychologist or social worker, whatever you have to take courses to keep your license. That's what I've been filming So the importance of the vagus nerve has come up multiple times So can you give a little more definition for you know the layman who may not know what it is? Sure. Yeah It's a very complex system of Nerves, but it's called one it's called the vagus nerve But it's actually an entire system that comes from because it's cranial nerves that come out of the base of the brain And go all the way down our body in this very mangled sort of network Which is why it's called vagus vagus means wanderer las Vegas is for wanderers wanting wandering the desert and so Yeah, yeah, it's this very wandering kind of nerve because all of our other nerve structures are very Symmetrical so the motor nerves come down from the brain and go down the front of the spine and kind of branch out to the limbs in a Very symmetrical pattern and then the sensory nerves come up the back of the spine very Symmetrically, but this vagus nerve is something different and it even is akin to the Structure of our organs like our bodies very symmetrical except for our organs and so I think like evolutionarily This is kind of queuing us in like okay There's needs to be some special attention paid to this because it's out of the ordinary Everything else is kind of been even like mechanical looking how symmetrical it is but the vagus nerve really it Carries a lot of emotional information that's being sent up from the organs and it directly connects to the face So there connects through the top of the eyes the forehead and under the eyes and then also around the mouth It goes up to our ears. It affects our hearing goes a laryngeal pharyngeal Branches which are kind of in the top and bottom of the throat and it connects our purse or it influences our perception of time Our coordination our fingertip sensitivity our emotional state. I mean these are and when I was learning about this It's like oh my god. This is this is the holy grail for drummers like who is out there bringing vagus nerve research to the drums Where are they? Tell me what their hourly rate is. I'll pay it, you know Yeah, and there was all kinds of these Well, I contacted a lot of psychologists who had been doing this work and they're like oh well It's been very well established that you know drumming and the biggest nerve research are Connective and I was like where's the drum set player and so there's Rhythm to recovery. There's like a lot of hand drumming. There's rhythm and bliss. There's uh, yeah I think Rob Latham you talked about he does hand drumming and yeah trauma work with kids But in terms of a drum set pedagogy, I just like where is that person and why do they not exist? Yeah, yeah, cuz if you're I mean it makes you like you said drumming and it kind of relates to like being athletes Where if you're trying to be the best of the best Those and you're figuring out the minor things that you can change or if you're if you're already in very good shape But you're wanting to get that much better Looking at this kind of stuff is is how you can do that or if you're like like like a normal, you know, Joe you then Just addressing this could could be very beneficial to your plane and it's interesting because when you Google it You know take it for what it's worth because it's Google But it's just it's interesting to say that it's the involuntary body functions including digestion heart rate immune system breathing cardiovascular activity Reflex action such as coughing sneezing It's like and and so much more like you said but the in involuntary thing is very interesting because it's like you can't control it Love that you brought up that word because that is of a perspective that I want to talk about so there is a Cultural attitude of what is involuntary and what isn't so there's this language that's coming up from the body as sensory Information which in my TED talk I talk about I say that sensation is a language and I feel like I do a fairly good job of describing and kind of putting it in that context and So we usually think of languages, you know, the brain establishes language and that's how we communicate But really interpreting this language of the body is the key to this work And that might sound a little woo-woo to certain people the language of the body But I feel like culturally speaking that it is woo-woo in terms of Western culture, but in other cultures It makes absolute sense, you know martial arts and Yoga and this chakras and I mean this is all thousands of year-old cultures that Understand that language of the body is hyper important to us our wellness and our performance and healing Yeah, yes, totally. I would agree completely and the TED talk is awesome I'll put it in the description for everyone to see you did a very good job with that All right. Well, then the question at hand would be how do people work on Either repairing or focusing or just you know addressing the Vegas nerve like what are some tactics to See if you need help. You might even know you need help Yeah, well the first thing to do is to get rid of the word involuntary. I think that's I love that you brought that up Because that is this kind of a Western idea like well that the brain controls the body And so the first thing to know is that there's primacy of affect Dan Siegel at dr. Siegel at us or UCLA he's been working on this this Understanding that there's a lot of sensory information coming up the body that it happens before Cognition like two to three milliseconds like our feeling Initiates our thoughts and that's has not been the case for a very long time We I mean ever since Descartes said I think therefore I am we assume that the brain is running the whole show for 400 years All of our systems and education philosophy politics Everything has been predicated on this idea that the brain runs the show and so that's like oh, yeah So well the brain runs the show anything coming up is involuntary and that's not the case And I can I can prove it to you right now a little experiential. I'd like to do I saw if you have drummers in the audience I imagine you have a metronome app on your phone So I'd like you to take your left hand and put it folks out there You can put it up against your throat and you can feel your pulse Hopefully You feel your heart beating there all right and then whip I for those of you listening at home You can whip out your app and bring up the tap function and just start tapping Along with your heart rate and there we are finding out the BPM measure of our heart rate in our current emotional state Now we are going to affect our emotional state by focusing on our breath So I'd effort not as you tap the tap function. I'd like you to breathe in for 10 heartbeats and As you breathe out Breathe out for 10 heartbeats and so now keep doing this as you listen to me It's a little bit of a guided meditation And so you will eventually Ideally notice that as you inhale your heart rate increases and as you exhale your heart rate decreases This is called respiratory sinus arrhythmia. This is the Vegas nerve releasing a little bit of its control the vagal break over the heartbeat on The inhale which increases the heart rate anyway I'll get out of the clinical idea of a more kind of think of that So the idea is that we do have conscious control over our heart rate and our heart rate has control over our emotional state So if you as you continue to do this exercise and the longer you inhale and exhale You will start to notice this heart rate variability which is the shift in your heart rate and how it relates to breath so if you want to Down-regulate your nervous system you would breathe in quickly and then exhale for a long time Thereby making the average, you know increase or decrease of your heart rate go lower And so this guy like singers get this because they take fast breaths in order to sing And so it just kind of undermines this idea that everything's involuntary, you know I mean we can voluntarily control our breath Which volunteer which controls our heart rate and I use that all the time and then the amount we breathe in also Effects our the level of oxygenation of our body, which has a huge impact on how well we're able to perform Yeah, well and it goes to the the I think everyone it's pretty Common knowledge that if you you know, we drum early on in drumming you you kind of tense up and you don't breathe very well when you're when you're like, you know early on in your drumming journey and sometimes still but like Then you speed up or you're not that you're not you're getting off the the metronome, but when you breathe it You are more relaxed and you don't speed up, which you know, I guess is kind of a practical example of that in in play Yeah, exactly tension has everything to do with it and movement and emotion have a lot of connectivity In fact, even when we're not visibly moving we are still moving our heart is moving and in terms of somatic perspective somatic means of the body the somatic understanding of movement is any neural transmission that activates the compression or expansion of muscle tissue and so According to that the somatic movement the heart beating is movement and so and our rate of our heartbeat completely has an influence over our emotional state so movement and emotion are just inextricably linked and Yeah, and so yeah, that's a so somatic movement is a huge part of this in fact the the methodology I've been working on based on a lot of somatic therapies is this idea of feeling and Releasing tension like we there's so many people. Oh, you got a player relaxed as a drummer. Oh, how do you play relaxed? I don't know, you know, I was doing this drum clinic and I remember the drum this particular drummer Was talking all about relaxation. I was like, well, do you have some ways to tell us to play relaxed? You know, and he was like, well, I can't really sit here at him and tell you how to play relax. I was like, really? I can What do you think? I mean, that's a perfect practical thing. I love when people can just like do it, you know Yeah, yeah. Well, so the first thing I think that's why feeling and releasing tension. That's like feeling comes first Again, it's kind of undermining this Western traditional view of the mind being in control like in fact embodied Cognition research is finding that movement has everything to do with sensation. It's like a GPS Like you have to know where you are before you can know where you're going And so you need to sense body position proprioception The brain has to create this prediction coding as how to get from point A to point B And so it tries to move and then it assesses the movement and sees how well it's doing going from point A to point B And it corrects along the way and the correction process is all sensory information And so as much as we think of movement and tension as being controlled by the brain, a larger percent of it is It's very much connected to sensory information And so that's and so even though we think our brain is in control It's really like a reaction to this sensory information that's everything to do with movement and tension And so I like so this methodology I like to call it Feeling and releasing tension is essentially the fart methodology I like I like to kind of I don't want to take it all so seriously You know like we get into some pretty deep concepts of emotional overwhelm And I do I remember the so wise person once told me if you can't explain it to a fifth grader You don't understand it yourself. And so I was like, oh well, dang I better be able to explain it to a fifth grader. So I imagine myself in a fifth grade class I was like, let's talk about farts. So I mean he's four-year-old and we talk about farts many times in the day So I'm you've now got my attention Yeah, so it's really a metaphor for somatic therapy the way I see it So it's because it's really this integration of the outside world our mental world and our biological world And so they're all I mean it gets super heavy kind of the all of the inputs into describing this But I think if we all think of we all have to fart we all have this waste gas that builds up And if we didn't have a way to release it, we would die we would rupture internally And so first first our body lets us know hey I'm feeling this tension internally that I need to release and it lets the brain know that okay I'm feeling it let's like perform the necessary functions to let this come out But wait a minute. I'm in my fifth grade class my teachers here. My classmates are here. Whoa hold up, you know brains like I Brody, I got a problem here, you know, we can't let this happen It's gonna be embarrassing the outside world is Restricting our ability to release this tension and so we hold it and so okay Well, how long are we gonna hold it? Well, how long are we in the class and this tension eventually builds? And so it says a lot to do a systems theory I wouldn't mention that in a fifth grade class, but but essentially it's showing like Okay, there's this whole coordination going on between the outside world our thought process and our body and when we get home Okay, fine. We can let it, you know release the tension there ideally, but still I mean without consequence But the but the point being there's we had to feel the tension first And so a lot of other forms of tension that happened in the body We struggled to feel because our culture has It's kind of dismissed and devalued how important sensory information is in our lives in a lot of ways Yeah, I mean and and really to again on the fifth grader thing you're holding that in It's probably going to be more painful. Yep. If it slips out It's probably gonna be louder and you're gonna be more embarrassed. Yeah, the for the fart the fart Theory really does work though because then you're Exactly, it's so it's not good. Yeah, it's just it's compounds on itself And so yeah, and so that's really what somatic therapy is the one that I participated in I was a client of somatic experiencing which is a somatic trauma Therapy and the therapist I worked with Debbie J. God bless her. She did Wow, man Thank you Debbie man, I get a little emotional when I think about it She was able to pair Alexander technique and somatic experiencing in a way that not only did I find so much Resolution of tension but also so much improvement here at the drums I mean I just was really so much and it just feels so much better to play drums And that was really that moment when I was like wow healing and performance are really two sides of the resilience coin They're really just there. There's a relationship there that I think we need to understand as drummers. Yeah Okay, but again to kind of put this a little simpler and even in drummer terms all farting aside Feeling and releasing. Let's just have a practical example of like a drummer who's working nine to five who goes home I mean what would be the feeling would the issue be like a stressful day? Would it be there's something tension in your body? Would it be there's literally a damaged like ligament or all of the above and then how can that drummer? really address this and Fix it on their own without you know or at least to begin to fix it on their own. Yeah Yeah, I'd like to answer that with a few examples But first I'd like to mention this work these workshops I did with Sabian education network So I was working on this stuff for a long time I was trying to figure out how to connect it with drummers and I saw Dom Fomolaro talking about Physical manifestations of tension with an emotional basis and so he was talking about injury prevention for drummers He had dr. Nadia Azar talk about this musculoskeletal perspective. She's taking I mean it's which is brilliant He talked about trigger finger and dystonia, which for a long time have thought to be neurological But there's a lot of evidence that it's actually biological in fact Victor Wooten was working on his dystonia With dr. Ruth Chiles who it wasn't looking at his hand. She was looking at his autonomic nervous system They're Vegas nerve, which is the key to our autonomic nervous system. And so there is this nervous system kind of Interface with everything that we do we can't just fix the brain and so I'd like to just so maybe in the the links below the Then for this episode we can give a referral to the Sabian education network the workshops I did because it has Dom's workshops and Nadia's and two of mine I did one and the community there insisted on another It was really was great. It felt really good to me to connect with that audience I met Dom through a friend of mine Tony Bronegal at NAMM and he I said Yeah, I feel like I have a yes and voice to this thing You're talking about injury prevention from a nervous system perspective And he was like man, let's get your stuff going You know had me on SCN and of course we lost Dom a few days ago, which is just peace to Dom Yeah, yeah, exactly I mean the outpouring of love for that man on social media has been overwhelming and I just really Want to honor him in any way I can and I mean even one person posted That he wrote this book emotions and motion and the kind of the theme of somatic drummer My methodology is the language of emotions in motion. I'm like, okay. Wow. Yeah, there's He's on to something that's he was coming from a different angle than I am and I definitely want to yes and you know what what he was doing and kind of the Towards the end of his career as an educator an inspiring person definitely, yeah okay, so again some some things that people to get back to that that like If examples of something someone can do at home like Are there tactics that you like to do relaxation things or just meditation? Yoga, what what is something that people can do kind of as they're sitting there in their drum room that you recommend? Yeah, the first thing is breath that's a breath affecting heart rate because that is our control of our emotional state because emotional state When it gets elevated it triggers tension in the body And so I feel like a lot of people focus on oh, I have tension here I need to address the tension specifically But oftentimes it's a reflex that the body has to an increase an elevated emotional state So the first thing I like to think of is resourcing the nervous system And so there's a there's an acronym I love for that that I stole from the esolin institute some trainings that I did there which is grace So grounding relaxation awareness Centering and energizing and I added one in this I talked about it in my sen thing that's synergizing So it's essentially like a six-way program for four-way coordination So feet to hands hand to feet left to right right to left and then cross left Hand right foot to right hand left foot and then the opposite and so I talked about this program Which goes into more detail But essentially I think if you're sitting there at a pad and you're practicing rudiments And you're not paying enough at all attention to what your feet are doing You're missing out like there's a whole lot of stability that you could be imbuing and bringing into your body just by having your heels on the floor and I think heal up technique Is a serious problem for a lot of drummers and your anyone's welcome to send me all the hate mail They want but I'm going to say this when you go to open high hats How can you possibly play heal up? So you're playing along closed high hats your chorus kicks in you go to open high hats If you're playing heal up, you have to drop the heel You can't just suspend your leg there and the minute you go from the heel up to heel down In a shift change or a scene change in the music you are reorienting your entire grounding And this might seem like a small thing to so many people, but oh my god, it's not like it is not a It is such a big deal to shift how we are planted on the ground because our nervous system job For hundreds of thousands of years is to keep us from face planting And so the minute we start messing with how grounded we are with our heels on the ground Our nervous system elevates. It's like, oh, we're on our heels We when we must be ready to run or we must be ready to fight or so it immediately activates So if you're practicing rudiments on a drum pad, make sure that your heels are planted And so the next thing from there I like to think of is we need to have an awareness of when we shift from heel to toe Because heel to toe is I mean you can play just heel down. You can play just heel up But I feel like advanced drummers they have some understanding of this Variation this relationship between heel and toe in martial arts. It's very prevalent in the hands I like to think of it as like push pull So like this though, this is kind of more closed and this is more open and going between the two In-hand balance the radial media and ulnar nerves it gets into a whole lot of kind of somatic Therapy and kind of work that's being done with the nervous system But just shifting back and forth from heels to toes because we want to try to get a little more concrete here So if you're pulsing if you're playing rudiments, you have a metronome going Just try to like drop your heels together and then move to the toes and just try to go back and forth And now we want to connect that grounding With the back of the neck because the back of the neck is where all of our sensory Information's coming up the back of our spine up from kind of the the limbs Not the vagus nerve, but the the limbs all that information the back of the neck And so if we can connect this back of the neck, which is about a two to three millisecond Latency from queuing any neural activity in the feet Or then we can kind of like pulse when we go to the heels drop the head back And we go to the toes drop the head just a little bit forward And this is a vagus nerve regulation exercise studies have shown it's just doing this Kind of regulates the nervous system. It calms us. That's why well, probably why mentally ill people do it because it calms them Yeah, and just like doing this pulse it helps to kind of center us It gives us more composure and so just by heels to toes and just coordinating this bottom of our Body to this more top of our body while we're playing rudiments And so the next level of this is to alternate that to drop the right heel with the left toe And now orient that so we drop left heel right toe I'm sorry left heel right toe and then right heel left toe So just try like see what that feels like and see if you can even play a unison Yeah, and then are you are you doing are you like alternating that kind of to the the rhythm that you're playing there? Yeah, same thing. You have the metronome on you're practicing whatever rudiments whatever stickings Whatever hand stuff you're working on on the pad And so just being able to understand this difference in heels to toes and alternating Alternating left to right and so then you can start kind of playing paradiddles and keeping pulse in the feet that way And suddenly the brain and body are like, okay We're kind of working on balance and so I do this when I'm standing Because I think a lot of problems that drummers have is they expect the drum thrown to balance us And that's one of the worst things you can do You have the more balance you can bring to your feet and the less strain on your tailbone The more your nervous system is going to be regulated and ultimately the fewer problems You're going to have with your back later on when you're over 50 like I am But uh, yeah, and so that what so if you do this when you're standing This is a serious balance exercise. I mean to go play like one Like paradiddle paradiddle. Sorry if you're just listening to the podcast you miss the visual, but yeah Alternating feet kind of yeah, so there's first heel to toes You can do rudiments heels to toes and then there's this alternating which is really A heavier version of balance and coordinating. So this is just grounding I mean in terms of like the six layers of the graces This is just grounding and so this is the first step before we get to relaxation Is just know it like but that's like kind of sweet before you mop like make sure first That your nervous system feels like it's not going to face plant. That's like step one, right? Sure, and it's so and there's so much work you can do with that with just a pad Like I think I feel like there's You know, don't keep you're working with a kid with just working on his rudiments on a pad Like make sure that you are paying attention to his feet making sure he or she is grounded I mean that has yeah, so that's one kind of more granular aspect. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that's a good thing that's Again, I think in my experience of filming these things and talking about these topics they can be Overwhelming which I think if you're speaking you've been studying this for years You've seen a lot of the I mean it helped you a lot But for someone who's again listening to a you know 50 60 minute long podcast It's it's kind of the getting it in their their mind to like it's good to have those simpler ways to start I think and and awareness is huge to be able to Be Cognizant of like you said that it's not involuntary and you can control these things. Yeah, I think it's huge So starting and being aware is big. Yeah, I'd like you can influence it. It's not completely involuntary like just Yeah, like the I like this BMW like I'm I like to roll up in life in a 2023 BMW It's got all the latest technology great body. It's got a really efficient use of fuel And so BMW isn't an automobile. It's actually body mind world. It says bio psychosocial science Which is really cute and ever since the functional magnetic resonance imaging machine Was a technological advancement in science in the 90s that gave us movies Of neural transmissions rather than just snapshots That's changed the game in our understanding of brain body connectivity and that was 30 years ago And so but I think there's like so many of our systems are still kind of Thinking of this brain, you know leading the game in this mind body connection But the science the technology has proven otherwise and it's like we all need to catch up really and Yeah, yeah, so absolutely So, um, if it's it's an interesting thing like it would yourself Pre Accident with your hands. Would you have believed that you know in in you know, however many years ago that was 20 years ago or whatever it is Were you always kind of into this stuff or was this like totally not even on your radar to begin with And I mean that by giving people hope like I'm not this isn't my world And there's a lot of people who have no concept of this which I'm more in that camp It was were you always inclined to this kind of thing? Absolutely not zero And that's and it's been such a benefit to me because I feel like I have this kind of Consultant who was me before my accident like anytime I think of something. I'm like man What would pre accident adam think of this and I it's so funny like I feel like it's almost this other person Because I had no clue and it's been a complete Shift in my view of the world And so yeah and to think like man, I'm no scientist What the heck am I applying nervous system science to drumming? But I'm at this point like even uh, dr. Pamela serifin I've done trainings with her. I remember Uh, Rob Latham talked about you know working with her. She came to my sc n workshop And I was really curious what she would think, you know, it's like, oh man Was all my theory okay, you know, she has a you know, a doctorate nervous Or a neuros neuroscience and I was kind of worried what she's saying. She's like adam You are kind of overboard on the theory She's like you need to like dial that back in terms of a workshop half as much theory twice as much concrete And so that's really what's kind of her consultation with that and her help and her brilliance I mean, she's really ahead of the game and applying neuroscience to drumming as a drummer and like You know with being a PhD neuroscientist So yeah, they're really like, okay. Wow. I need to make this more accessible And so I'm trying to do that and I saw that when I really appreciate you having me on this podcast And talking to talking with me and like any questions you have any rewording you have is vital information for me Oh, yeah, well, you're uh, You're doing you did an amazing job. You are doing an amazing job But she is right where I have again in my experience of filming these we we get um You know, you get you give people give feedback at the end and sometimes what happens is people will say like even in a room full of like psychologists and therapists Even people of that level don't want it to be Non-stop theory they want to hear the funny stories and the practical kind of examples of how to actually use this So then they can then translate it to their Everyday life or their clients or whoever so yeah That's that's great advice. And I'm sure it's uh, you know, you've done a phenomenal job of explaining it and I I am a big believer in like If you're trying to lose weight like walk five minutes and then the next day walk Six minutes and then then seven minutes Like you just you don't need to go nuts overboard with all of this So I think right away just what you've talked about about being aware of your breathing And calming things down and just knowing that it's what's going on in there And how it's all connected is is huge for people. Um, I think that's a good starting point Yeah, I love that you connected weight loss and breath because I would have never thought that those two things had anything to do With each other, but it brings up an opportunity to talk about how meaningful it is to breathe Less there's sort of this conflicting idea that okay, we need oxygen in the body Let's breathe in a bunch of oxygen and so if we breathe in a ton of oxygen we can hyperventilate And is that is that an over oxygenation of the brain? No, it's actually the brain not getting enough oxygen And so there's sort of this cognitive version of that like what how can taking in too much oxygen result in a lowering of oxygen in the brain And it's because we our blood gets so oxygenated that it the pH goes into base That which means that the hemoglobin can't release the oxygen into our tissues And so so it needs to end we need to increase the acidity in our bloodstream in order to oxygenate our tissues Which means breathing less oxygen, which is super counterintuitive, but it's called the bore effect boh r I did not making this up And so but what's funny is like so many people they have a strong inclination towards acidic food often because it's the body crying out for acid in the blood to Oxygenate its tissues that it needs and so there's this like the breath is so important But somehow it got kind of cast in the woo-woo bin, you know like somebody i'm a licensed certified breath practitioner with oxygen advantage and i've Because I felt it through polyvagal theory. I did a certification with them I've been a mentor for the last two years for with Michael Allison Just working with all these people studying polyvagal theory and like the breath is just the baseline just like the feet Or the baseline of relaxation the breath is the baseline of all the organizing principles of how our body works and yeah i'm sure uh it As we kind of get close to the end here I think that uh, I've heard a lot in my experience of the seminars of the importance of sleep as well That has to play into this to some degree. I mean i'm I think we're all kind of uh guilty every now and then of not sleeping enough or just not getting it regulated or there's kind of the You hear about sometimes how it's like oh, I was up all night working. It's kind of like again It's more of a culture thing where it's like it can seem like a good thing like Cranking and just cramming all night to get something done where really focusing on sleep Will make you better at drumming and you know more focused and the the things you practice will actually be retained more Um, yeah has sleep come up in your your work. Oh sleep and breath again. Yeah, I have I have a little Kind of admission to make is that I have developed some tinnitus that caused some problems with me sleeping And I've had to do breath exercises that helped me fall asleep and down regulating the heart rate according to breath is Huge for sleeping. It makes a big difference. And so yeah, I'd like to kind of ask you like, okay Here we are coming towards the end of this. I'm I feel like I've done a lot of work trying to bring Scientific understanding of the body into drumming and now at this point I feel like wow next year I really need to kind of flip the script on it and feel like how to explain this to drummers So in terms like what do you think landed with you having done all these podcasts and being a drummer? Yeah, well, I would say first off Let's open it up to people in the comments uh on youtube Because I think and and I mentioned this to adam before and I think this is interesting for people listening that sometimes um People get defensive when they're being told things About maybe their body if you're saying something physiologically about The way I am and what I'm not doing Uh, I'm not talking about me, but I'm saying a person would get offended by that So I think that's something that's a a watch out and you didn't do this at all, but I'm saying You need to be careful of that whenever presenting stuff like this because uh, I remember with the brandon green episode Which he did a phenomenal job about the ergonomics and drumming people said Don't talk about buddy rich and how he was bent over and things like that and brandon and I talked about that but um I would say the takeaway I've gotten from this especially is just I like the practical things that you brought forward of of Drummers need examples. How can this help me? What's an example of what's wrong? How can it be fixed? I think you did a good job of that and and basically like anything and In presenting a good call to action, you know what I mean? I think that that's really we all like to walk away with Uh, what can I do right now? Which I think Again the sleep being aware Knowing about our breathing a couple couple exercises. I think it uh drove it home But again, let's open up people in the comments. Let's hear what you think too about this whole topic Yeah, final takeaway. I'm trying to think of like what's the button to put on the end of this and I just really feel like there's this Drum education systems focus on the brain telling the body what to do and so there's I feel like almost we need to kind of get out Of our drumming education systems in order to better understand how our body works because we all have these sort of Funnels that we immediately fall into and we talk about drumming and I mean one of the biggest Benefits that I've found for my drumming has been Japanese fighting staff and that's I've never like I would have never thought this would have been the case But as I've looked back like I've really been exploring like who is the first drummer? You know who why do we play drums like this person evolved? there was this body mind connectivity that eventually evolved to the point that we've Changed the elements of our environment to create these tools to communicate through rhythm and like why did that happen? What evolved and the vagus nerve is a huge part of that like why social engagement? I mean that's could go down a whole rabbit hole with that But I feel like I've traced that and I've been moving forward and I was like where did stick control? How did suddenly we only have French German and American and like how you know the gruber and Stone and Gladstone and blah blah blah like where did what isn't there just kind of like a universal Movement that we all can work on and I've so I that's when I started noticing like wow the Japanese fighting staff was really like the first recorded stick control in the history of humans And so I started messing with it and I've started noticing like wow It's all about expanding infinity and so that might sound strange But to the body it makes total sense so within whatever range of motion we're capable of we have an infinite Access to movement like we can move in an infinite number of ways According to however, whatever our range of motion is but if we expand that then we can We've just expanded our infinity of movement and so so oftentimes it's beyond that threshold Of movement that we currently have that we gain access To playing the drums because the more we can reduce how much we move our body And increase how much we move the stick the tool of drumming the better we can play drums And I know that gruber's technique has a lot to do with that and there's all these complex ways to You know deal with fingers But I've noticed like when you start working with a bow staff and you don't worry about rebound You really start to find where those Movement inhibitions are that live in the body and that can cue you into to our tensions lie And how our biography is imprinted on our biology how like our lives where we hold tension and why And so I anyone who's struggling or feel like they plateaued as a drummer I would highly recommend just go on youtube get a dowel The four-foot dowel from home depot and just start moving it around in the air And I mean just this movement Well, it's hard to do on screen But like once you can get that movement and you really kind of understand where the parameters are of that movement And applying it to the drums like a whole world opens up rather than reducing it down to just american german and french Yeah, and if you're married or have a girlfriend or boyfriend don't tell them you're going to do it So they walk in and eat you just messing around with a dowel that you got from the hardware store Yeah, that's awesome. That's really a cool idea. I mean, that's really unique because it's all This movement of your shoulders and everything and it's that's a unique Exercise very unique. Yeah, I mean essentially it's like then the funny thing about that is that that Philosophy like especially chinese and japanese martial arts. They have a whole associated emotional aspect that ties into that like georgio rojas I have to thank him for kind of hipping me to that Tai Chi movement has been something that's made a huge difference for me I feel like our best drumming lives outside the range of our current range of motion Like once we can expand How much we move and when then you start noticing wow, I can't move as much on my left side Why is that and so you start expanding that and suddenly you get this symmetry and then it's a nervous system I'm just like oh gimme gimme, you know It's like wow, okay now instead of like trying to compensate for my left hand dragging because of this asymmetrical tension Now that I relieve that I can just let rhythm flow out of me and that has everything to do with somatic experiencing somatic movement And yeah, just how Stress lives in the body as pattern tension Yes, and it's not uncommon. It's a pretty common theme that there's a lot of drummers who have studied martial arts And that's actually sort of a common thing and I see it now They post on social media and stuff like that and buddy rich was into martial arts and all that stuff So, um, that's cool. And you also said expanding infinity. That's a cool jam band name or a fusion band So if all else fails you can We can start expanding infinity. Oh shucks. I better grab that url Get the get the hashtag or the the at All right, adam. Well, let's tell people now as we kind of get close to the end here Where they can find you we will put all the links for the ted talk and everything in the description But maybe do you have anything coming up here? It's october 2023 when we're recording this Anything coming up you want to promote? Right now and plus the links and all that stuff. Yeah. Well, okay. Yeah adam gusts.com I'd like to include the referral link with sabian education network because that's anyone who's found this interesting There's two or complete hours of me talking about this and the folks who checked it out I've gotten incredible response. That's the response is really what's kept me going It's really met some people on a technique level It's met others on an emotional level and then there have been some folks That uh, there's some folks that who are who are dealing with some of overwhelm or injury There's not a lot for drummers out there if you want to check out my trauma story on my youtube page adam gust I've there are some folks that that meant something to them I wish that that had existed when I had my accident and so that's really the reason I'm doing this It's not to make I mean I feel like I do need to eventually make a business out of this if I'm going to continue to do this work But really the reason I'm doing this is because I see this need that exists in the drumming world that Needs to be fulfilled and I feel like I have a voice in this kind of missing piece Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. It's extremely interesting and I'm glad that uh I could be a way for you to maybe reach if if 10,000 people watch this and you connect with like 500 on a really deep level or one on a really deep level and it changes How they drum um Then that's great, you know, that's that's that's very cool. And then they'll tell someone and it'll just help It things take time. Yeah, especially with with things like this It's I don't know I find that sometimes you start to do something and then you fall back into your old ways I'm speaking about myself and then you try it again You get a little further and then you resort back to what you were doing But I think it's important to try this stuff and And learn and this is a good starting point for people to be interested in it. So Yeah, I'll put all the the stuff in the description for the videos and the ted talk and everything So um adam, this is awesome, man. I appreciate you reaching out and kind of teaching a different topic and sharing your knowledge and I'm glad to that it's all worked for you and you're back to drumming and it's been been a great experience for you and Yeah, man. Appreciate you being here. Thank you very much Yeah, thank you for this platform that you offer to people as such diverse Kind of inroads to talking about how we evolved and how drums evolved how drummers evolved And I feel like the nervous system has been evolving for millions of years And to really kind of put that in context to see where we've come from And there's so much more to talk about on that level And so it's cool that I'm glad that we've had this opportunity and yeah Any of the audience who wants to reach out adam at adam gusts.com. I am I am yearning for connectivity because I feel like I'm okay I need I want to be this liaison between this huge body of work that I feel like I've just scratched the surface And when I come into the drumming world like there's nobody talking about this or if they are it's on a fairly dare I say superficial level sometimes maybe they're just trying to be Connective with their audience But I feel like really the deep work that's brilliant people are doing in nervous system research has such Uh such a foundation to better drummings. I really am so ultimately I want to create a drumming pedagogy That is the clinical application of somatic therapies. So that's my end game There's an audience out there for it. Uh, it might not be everyone but This show in particular there's this might not be for everyone because it's so history based but but there's an audience so just stick with it and um And I will help anyway. I can but uh, again appreciate you being here and stick with it. It's good stuff And uh, you're on the right track. Cheers. Yeah. Thank you Bart