Out & About: Higher Octave Healing

On Wednesday June 9th, CHEEERS participants, led by fearless leaders Angela and Sasha took a visit to ASU’s Community Center. The group met with Higher Octave Healing, an organization dedicated to healing through music therapy. 

In this session, participants explored emotion and expression within a drum circle. Though the group’s music taste differed from swing music to hard rock, they all agreed that music is a powerful force when used to relax and calm down.

Higher Octave healing had a number of drum games planned and the participants shared lots of laughs as they tried out a completely new experience. In addition to learning a new instrument, participants were given the challenge to convey a certain emotion through purely drums and facial expression. While some emotions such as “bitterness” were difficult to guess, things like “peace” and “joy” were immediately recognizable. This activity gave participants an opportunity to work together and explore how to read others’ emotions.

The session went by quickly and by the end everyone was smiling. The participants expressed how much they loved the music therapy. One participant even declared “Music practice time is music happy time.” There is no doubt that the participants will return next week for round 2 of Higher Octave healing.