Didge therapy
Surprising (and not so) uses for the native Australian instrument
The didgeridoo and its hypnotic drone is associated globally with Australia, just like Kylie Minogue and kangaroos.
But aside from its cultural importance to Aboriginal peoples, what kind of physical effects does its playing have?
Research has thrown up a number of health benefits – for those playing the didgeridoo, and for those listening to it – which split into the prosaic though undeniably useful, such as helping with asthma and sleep apnea, and the more esoteric, such as meditation and energy cleansing.
Rock and cave paintings of the instrument (classed as brass, not wind, due to how it’s played) started appearing in regions across the north of the country about 1500 years ago, initially in the Kakadu region of the Northern Territory. They’re usually fashioned from termite-bored eucalyptus. (The below map is from here, click for more information by region.)
I’ll use the word “didgeridoo” as shorthand as it’s a modern invention, attributed to an Australian anthropologist, Herbert Basedow, in 1925. There are at least 45 different names for the instrument including gambak in Kakadu, artawir in Katherine and yirdaki, yiraka and yirtakki in Arnhem Land.
Let’s examine the prosaic first, beginning with a 2005 British Medical Journal study into whether didgeridoo playing can help with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome – basically, snoring so heavy that sufferers briefly wake up multiple times a night, and spend their days exhausted. It’s so bad that trial subjects’ partners were canvassed for how badly their sleep was disturbed on a scale of zero to 10, with the “for the love of God, stop it” end including ratings of severely, very severely, very, very severely and extremely.
Participants at the Swiss trial centre were given four lessons over eight weeks, beginning with learning how hold a note for about 30 seconds (week one); the practice of circular breathing, vital for playing – inhaling through the nose while exhaling out of the mouth (week two); bringing the vocal tract into performing, enabling a wider variation of sound (week four); and correcting technique overall (week eight).
Would the trial fail due to subjects not putting in their minimum five days a week and 20 minutes per day? Not at all – in contrast with anyone who learnt an instrument as a child and put in a panicky half-hour before weekly lessons, this lot practised more than they were asked to, at almost six days.
Daytime sleepiness improved significantly in the 14 didge players compared to the 11-strong control group, who were waiting to start lessons. And happily, the first group’s partners were getting much better shut-eye due to the effects of playing, thought to strengthen the upper airways and reduce snoring.
The researchers did consider giving the control group a “sham intervention” such as playing a recorder, but … no. Imagine what that might conjure up in sleep-deprived partners. “Compliance might be poor,” they (probably rightly) note.
Another respiratory benefit was found in a 2010 University of Southern Queensland study in the Journal of Rural Health examining whether Aboriginal children, adolescents and adults would engage in music lessons to help manage their asthma. Remarkably, the authors claim it’s first study involving the instrument and Indigenous Australians.
In line with cultural norms, the men got to play the didgeridoo while the women were given singing lessons. Weekly one-hour lessons were held over 26 weeks, with each group having six members. Males were given a didgeridoo made by an Aboriginal craftsman and taught how to play it, while women received an MP3 player with backing tracks and voice exercises.
The men’s breathing improved more than the women’s, though they also showed gains, leading to a conclusion that music therapy proved helpful. All the junior boys attended every lesson and filled in the majority of their survey sheets, while every junior girl dropped out in the second month. “During their limited period of attendance, the girls showed up to class without lunches, singing books and their MP3 players,” the authors note.
Owning and being able to play the didgeridoo was a status marker for the males. “It is unlikely that such a positive response would have resulted from a trumpet or saxophone,” the authors write. Unlikely indeed.
What other health benefits have been researched? A 2019 paper in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health looked at the effects of didgeridoo playing on the mood, stress and autonomic nervous function of 20 healthy Japanese subjects.
The 19 women and one man (hmm) were given plastic tubes that imitated wooden didgeridoos (the horror!) and led through the protocol of the Didgeridoo Health Promotion Method at its Okayama branch. They spent 10 minutes cultivating a sense of connection with nature and each other, and then spent the rest of the one-hour lesson tooting their pipes in a not particularly large room.
One 10-minute period is spent “playing with imitation”. Imitating what, you ask?
The sound that kangaroos make when they bounce.
The sound of a boomerang.
Barking like a dog.
Cries of a chicken.
Others, enjoy freely the sound of motorcycles and cars.
From measuring the likes of blood pressure, pulse rates and saliva for stress hormones over three months and 10 lessons, they found that mood improved – and the worse the mood, the greater the improvement – and that heart rates and stress were lowered. Also, there was a move to a state of parasympathetic dominance in the nervous system, representing a peaceful life. Mind you, if I got to pretend to make a sound like a bouncing kangaroo, I’d be pretty happy, too.
And there’s the more esoteric side. A 2019 study in Global Advances in Health and Medicine looked at how a 30-minute didgeridoo sound meditation compared to a silent meditation focusing on breath when it came to self-perceived stress and mood.
A prior Witness Space feature looked at sound meditation but in terms of mantra. This is more akin to how shamans enter a trance, with the authors citing characteristics that can induce a trance, including repetition, slower tempo, lower pitch or low frequency, and tonal sound. Relaxing, sedative music can also trigger the parasympathetic nervous system.
The 74 students at the University of North Carolina who bothered showing up had similar levels of perceived stress before their respective meditation practices. But Team Didge were significantly more relaxed and less stressed than Team Silent.
The authors suggest this may be due to the different approach each form of meditation takes. Listening to an external stimulus, they say, takes less effort than focusing on breath, which is an active cognitive process and not in itself relaxing. “In addition, relaxation could have been due to unknown psychopathological effects of the sound waves themselves,” they write.
Which brings us back to sound and vibrations. To clear the mind of thoughts – the “monkey mind” – replaces beta waves (13-40Hz) with alpha (8-12), and even theta (4-7Hz) and delta (0.5-3Hz). The below graph shows the distribution of didgeridoo frequencies – not only up to 1000Hz, but with that little spike to the left way below the alpha range. (It’s hard to know how accurate this reading is.)
That would help induce an altered state of consciousness. And ultra-low frequencies can also be produced by interference, according to the Didjshop website, between two didgeridoo frequencies close to each other. This seems a legit claim, but there aren’t many examples of duets online. Here’s one (may not induce altered state of consciousness).
The same website is looking at combining didgeridoo playing and mantra, such as in this clip where the Latin words oro Deo (“I pray to God”) are added to the mix.
And its comments page is enlightening. Bill Hayes, from the USA, writes, “Our people believe the Creator put certain instruments into the hands of our people for use in ceremonies. We American Indians have started to use the sound of the didj for healing.”
Indeed, it should be possible to hit the resonant frequency of chakras to help clear them. Scientific research into the subtle body is still a millisecond after the firing of the starter pistol.
But didgeridoos have power. Just watch these two increasingly delighted elephants for proof.
Bonus pic
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Great post, Mark. Interesting and uplifting. And fun!